Gauge
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quote:
ORIGINAL: cloudboy
I know you have been an advocate for the process, which under the circumstances makes you look on the side of the police.
And the insistence that I am on the side of the police makes everyone look like they haven't read a fucking word I have said. Think what you want, that I favor due process means I am on the side of the truth, not convicting them before a trial. It may well be that the cop was wrong, and it may well be that he wasn't. No one here on this message board knows any more details than what is readily available through news sources, so I will defer to the experts to investigate the events and decide what, if anything, should be done.
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Police officers have the authority to use deadly force when it is reasonable and necessary and usually are not second-guessed. Experts could not think of a case when an officer accused of misusing deadly force was arrested at the scene.
Why would they arrest the officer without an investigation? The police have procedures to deal with an officer involved shooting.
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“Police are not usually indicted for this,” said David Harris, an expert on policing at Pitt Law School. “In the majority (perhaps great majority of cases), shootings by officers are found to be justified. Officers do have the power to use force, even deadly force, when reasonable and necessary in the performance of their duties, so they get the legal benefit of the doubt.”
The operative word being used in the above statement is "the majority of cases" not "all" cases. You know, the police should get the benefit of the doubt mainly because their jobs can turn deadly and violent in a split second. You hope that they are restrained and trained enough to deal with it proportionately, but shit happens and sometimes they fuck up. It happens, it is not excusable, and should be prosecutable if a crime was committed. This kid that was shot may have done nothing to deserve it, and if that is the case, I will lead the brigade to prosecute the police officer for whatever crime they see fit to charge him with.
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The above shows a kind of impunity when Police officers use deadly force. (Great majority of cases the police can't even be indicted.)
Statistics can be made to look like whatever you want them to. I do not have the time, or inclination to investigate how many police officers have been charged with a crime vs. those that haven't. The above statement could also show that the percentage of police shootings that end up being unjustified is exceptionally low. I am no fool, I know the system doesn't always work, I also know that the police are not above protecting their own. This isn't me siding with the police, it is simply me being patient and waiting for more information to come out.
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If Wilson walks away from this in total innocence, it suggests that the police are exempt from the legal standards an average citizen would face
Or, you know, he could be totally fucking innocent of wrongdoing. Look man, we could piss up each others leg all day like this, but the bottom line here is that no matter what happens, this kid is dead and the officer's life is ruined. No outcome will make that any better, none.
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My other takeaway is that if a trained police officer misuses a firearm in self defense -- the average gun-owner is likely to exercise even worse judgement.
Not a shocking statement by any means. You just have to look at drunken hunters in the woods during deer season to see that not everyone is a responsible gun owner with good judgement.
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Earlier, I put my tent pole down on GUARANTEED EXCESSIVE FORCE. After reading the above, I'm thinking I might swing and miss here.
No, you already missed by jumping to a conclusion. It isn't very complicated, it just is not as simple as people want to make it.
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People naturally side with the police.
They do? Seems to me that this very thread says the exact opposite.
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Combine that here with the victim's theft of cigars, jaywalking, size, and race -- the legal system looks stacked in favor of the police.
Yeah the kid may not have been a saint, it isn't much of a big deal to me. His size doesn't mean shit except to say that he was a big man. His skin color doesn't matter to me in the least because I don't see skin color, I judge people on whether or not they are a good person or an asshole. I broke laws before, I did some petty theft as a kid and raised some hell, but you know I turned out OK. That this kid did these things doesn't make him a bad person anymore than it makes me a bad person because I did what I did. The case boils down to what happened to make the officer use lethal force, why did the officer feel that shooting to kill was his only option?
I don't live under an idealistic rock and wear rose tinted glasses, I just like to keep things as simple as possible. The race issue is a great drum to beat in any case where violence is done between races, it sells papers and makes headline news and draws viewers. Sometimes it has merit, other times it is a tired rant that really needs to go away. The people in Ferguson have a legitimate gripe about their police department being predominantly white in a population with a large black population. I disagree that their assertion of this being racially motivated has any merit simply because the law of percentages would ultimately dictate that a shooting like this could happen between a black man and a white officer because of the demographics. Not everything is racially motivated, that people think that way is pathetic.
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"For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men." Herman Melville - Moby Dick
I'm wearing my chicken suit and humming La Marseillaise.
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