The US Politics |OT|

[Zoombael]

JWeinCom said:

KLAMarine said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h1wE9gk1kc

Lawyer basically concludes that the shooting of Blake was not unjustified.

Thanks for updating. In the future those, a few key points would be even better.

As for the video itself, I'm not going to watch it, because I'd probably agree with its points. To the best of my knowledge, in a situation like these where (according to the police report which may not be true) multiple warnings were issued, a weapon was present, less lethal options had been attempted, and there is a valid warrant, lethal force is legally justified.

But I think that is missing the point. The more important question is whether the lethal force rules themselves are justifiable.

The laws are skewed heavily in favor of law enforcement. Assuming Blake did have a knife, the risk of him turning around and actually killing people was relatively small. Don't get me wrong I think there was some reasonable apprehension of extreme physical harm or death. But how great must the threat be before you can shoot someone seven times in the back? According to most current laws, any reasonable possibility of force can be justified with a lethal response, but I don't know if I agree with those laws. 

The laws place a significantly higher value on the lives of police officers than the lives of suspects. Others would argue that all lives matter equally, and thus there should be a much higher requirement before lethal force can be used (for instance confirmation of a firearm or even an actual attack). And these laws would, almost certainly, make police less safe. Personally, I'd go for a middle ground. I do generally place a higher value on the officer's lives (assuming they are operating by lawfully themselves and the laws are reasonable), but I think the imbalance is too great. 

There's also a question of, careful I'm about to use a dirty word, defunding the police. There were three police officers involved. If there were two officers and a social worker or someone specifically trained in psychology/deescalation, would the situation have turned out differently? Did the third officer make either the other officers or the suspect safer? There were three officers looking on while George Floyd was killed. Could having some other kind of personnel have led to a better outcome? I don't know the answer, I haven't done the research. But it's a worthwhile question.

The tl:dr version though is that something being legally justified does not make it right. 

How do you know that? Police didn't see him as imminent threat when he pulled the knife on them. They would've shot him, prbly not trying to taser him first. The threat level changed when he walked to the drivers side and tried to enter the vehicle. It was impossible for the police to know if there was a gun in the car or no. More importantly however, as a deadly weapon a car has a lot more potential than a small knife.