You asked how many I'm "OK" with, and when coupled with that unhelpful and unreasonable "too close to home" remark, seems to hint at a perceived complete disregard for life on my part.
You think so, when I've stated outright that I'm willing to accept a non-zero innocent death rate myself?
As far as the too close to home part, you seem at times to be quite defensive. As seen in the post that I replied to with the too close to home remark, where you complained that the 976 deaths link doesn't tell the whole story, despite me not using it to tell a story at all.
As for the question you didn't ask but are still holding over my head as though you did, I just plain don't know what figure is actually attainable.
That's not the question that I asked, and it's not the one I'm holding over your head. Let's go back to the original post and look, shall we?
I can accept that it can be tough in the heat of the moment, and even with perfect training and judgement there are occasionally going to be innocent people shot and killed. I do not believe that zero innocent shootings is achievable or reasonable.
My question to you would be what proportion of shootings where the target did not present a credible threat (such as say, the Daniel Shaver incident) would you accept from a modern police force? The intention is not to aim that question specifically at the US, but you may have to because the US presents such a unique policing situation compared to many other countries.
I believe around 1000 people are shot and killed by police in the US each year. Many of those are justified, I'm sure.
However, of those thousand what would be the maximum number of "non-threats" (like Shaver or Andrew Finch) that you would deem to be reasonable?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2017/
The bolded are essentially two rewordings of the same question, to try and make sure that I'm getting my point across clearly. I'm not sure whether I'm not, or whether you're just reacting to questions that you think I'm asking but aren't there.
Admittedly, the "how many are you OK with" was poorly worded, but it was referencing the post above and so I assumed that you would take the multiple paragraphs I wrote on the subject into consideration instead of a single sentence intended to remind you that you missed a (to my mind fairly important) question.
There's something else that I really need to address, and that's the unnecessary and baseless remarks regarding my thought process ("too close to home") and biases. Nowhere have I stood up for individuals that harm others in any manner, and have even assisted with keeping the harmed away from further and/or increased harm--but I won't go into that about dangerous pranks (*cough* *cough*).
I haven't implied or said as such. However, you're quite defensive regarding the police and their tactics, which arguably lead to these situations.
You came out with anecdotal evidence that the police are approachable providing that you follow their instructions, which is a distraction and doesn't address any of the points of the discussion that was ongoing at the time.
You provided figures that only 1.4% of people interacting with police have force threatened or used against them (and never answered whether you thought that was low or high), without consideration that it's the range of force used that is the problem.
As said above, you expressed dislike for the 976 shootings link based on something that I wasn't saying.
I can't tell whether you're avoiding answering questions about your opinions intentionally or just skipping over them.
Edit: See one of your later posts, "
As unfortunate as they are, these incidents are not typical."
I only know about you what you write here on the forum. If the image of you that I'm building is incorrect I apologise, but it's hard when you won't clarify questions about your own opinions. I'm forced to assume given that you won't spell it out for me. If you'd like to correct that, then please do.
"If he returns to the house then it's time to regroup and open a dialogue". You're leaving out some important information here. In their minds he's not just a guy answering the door, he's a murderer holding his family hostage and he's spread gasoline around the house. Letting him go back inside could result in the deaths of several people.
Fair point. I actually considered it, but I didn't elucidate explicitly. Allow me to do so now.
The only source of information that they have that there's a murderer holding his family hostage with gasoline around the house is an anonymous phone call. SWAT teams should be well aware at this point that SWATting exists.
I don't think it's reasonable to take a shot at an unarmed man (assuming he turned around and walked inside) based on a single anonymous phone call. For all the SWAT team knows, he could have killed the family already and so shooting him accomplishes nothing. They have about as much information to suggest that as to suggest that he's a murderer holding hostages.
I mean, they don't even know if the guy on the porch is the "murderer". All they know is a male walked out of the house to see what the noise is. They assumed that the only male free to do so would be the "murderer", based on an anonymous phone call. That's a big assumption to start shooting at someone with.
I don't know what the SWAT handbook says on incidents like this but I doubt, "let the murderer who's spread gasoline all around the house go back inside and just bring out the bullhorn" is part of the protocol.
It should be the start, but I'm not suggesting that they just sit there and wait. They can approach and attempt to gather more information, or breach if they deem it reasonable and safe to do so. They are potentially time limited if the report of the situation is accurate, but I don't think that's an excuse to go guns blazing based on a single anonymous report.
In hindsight it's easy to see the guy shouldn't have been shot but I don't envy these guys and the split second decisions they have to make.
Neither do I, but that's why there's training and protocols. Nobody can be expected to make good decisions in such high stress and limited time situations. For the vast majority, it should simply be following procedure that you have practised and discussed for significant periods of time in the peace of your own station.
If shooting Andrew Finch in that situation is part of the protocol, the protocol is wrong. Which is sort of what I've been getting at, it's not so much about the decision that was made. It's about the procedures and thinking that led to putting that officer in that situation and training him to respond in that way.
I give the officer a little credit in that he too should have thought about what he was doing and identified that the procedure was extreme, but the larger problem to me is the system that creates situations in which the "correct" choice is to shoot people.
Mistakes will be made, several dozen a year I would expect, given the tens of millions of interactions with police every year.
You're coming around to the question I asked
@TexRex. I expect the same, mistakes will be made. See above if you'd be interested in taking a crack at the question of how many mistakes might be considered acceptable in a well functioning system given a thousand shootings a year.
I know it's an uncomfortable question. It's very un-PC to say anything except "any deaths above zero are unacceptable", but that's just not how the real world works. I think here we can get beyond PC culture to having a reasonable discussion of reality.
