Thank you to all law enforcement in the state of Massachusetts. (Boston: house, buying)

[bugelrex]

Originally Posted by timberline742

That isn't what happened. He's promoting more lies.

I guedd a video would clear this up, there s no way cvs does not have video of the ENTIRE event. Although the fact the manager read fired pretty quickly may point to the truth. Who knows...

[BostonMike7]

Originally Posted by timberline742

If that was a white person, the assumption would have been that the white person having the gun was perfectly ok and it would never have happened. They certainly would never have been shot for running away.


.

Why would you assume that? I'm white and if I ran away with a gun in my hand, I would expect a high likelihood of getting shot when ordered to drop it and refusing to do so. What else would you expect to happen?


I mean when I was young I learned three pretty basic lessons in life. Don't break into someone's house, you might get shot. Don't assault people, you might get shot, and don't f around when it comes to cops cuz you might get shot. I can remember a specific event in my life when I had cops draw their weapons on me (mistakenly) but you bet your ass I did everything they told me and didn't dare do anything expected.

Seems like a pretty basic concept. Trust me I didn't like swallowing my pride being cursed out and pushed around either. Not a single one apologized once the mistake was realized.

Bad enough that a lot of cops are relatively inexperienced at firearm handling. Last thing you want is a nervous cop with bad trigger discipline holding a gun on you. Plenty of vids of cop negligent discharges on YouTube.

[bugelrex]

Originally Posted by BostonMike7

Why would you assume that? I'm white and if I ran away with a gun in my hand, I would expect a high likelihood of getting shot when ordered to drop it and refusing to do so. What else would you expect to happen?

Yeah, using that instance is a pretty poor example of alleged widespread police bias. If you walk around with an unregistered gun, then expect to be shot by the police. Period.

[BostonMike7]

Originally Posted by bugelrex

Yeah, using that instance is a pretty poor example of alleged widespread police bias. If you walk around with an unregistered gun, then expect to be shot by the police. Period.

Unless you tell the cop you aren't going to shoot anyone with it. Then it's cool and they let you go.

[massnative71]

Originally Posted by bugelrex

Yeah, using that instance is a pretty poor example of alleged widespread police bias. If you walk around with an unregistered gun, then expect to be shot by the police. Period.

Especially when you pull it out and turn to the side (while you are running), as this thug was shown doing.

[ogre]

Originally Posted by timberline742

That cop should be in jail if not fired. He is running away, posing no threat to anyone and they gunned him down. Disgusting.

Remember this case?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_C...acility_escape

Think back three years. Early summer '15. Two inmates escaped from a prison in upstate New York (aided in various ways by at least two prison employees, one of them a female employee who had been having an affair with one of the men before the escape). They were at large for several weeks. This was in a heavily forested wilderness area, where the escapees broke into hunting cabins and stole various items, including guns. At some point they separated from each other. One was shot and killed while brandishing a gun at cops who had found him and were in position to move in and capture him.

Now, about the other one. Two days after the one escapee was killed, the other guy was captured. He was shot in the back while fleeing from a state trooper.

The guy lived, but was in critical condition when taken to the hospital. He might very well have died. He was an escaped inmate with a bad history (both men were in for murder), yet according to your reasoning the trooper should have been punished for shooting him. As long as the fleeing suspect is not doing anything that obviously threatens anyone right during the moments he is fleeing, the cops should just let him get away. That's essentially what you say in the post quoted here, and in another post from earlier in the thread.

Timberline, in that case in Minnesota you seem to focus totally on what the fleeing suspect was doing at the time the cop shot him, and the fact that, according to your assessment, at that moment he was doing nothing that threatened anyone.

All well and good so far, but do you actually know what the law says about police shooting fleeing suspects? When you say the cop should be in jail, that implies that you know of some law the cop violated by shooting the guy. We don't throw people in jail just because a guy on an internet forum thinks they did something wrong, do we? People have to have broken the law to go to jail, correct?

You can't really know whether the cop should be in jail unless you know whether he broke some law by firing at the suspect. You can't know that without being familiar with the law. So, once again, do you actually know what the law says about this?

[timberline742]

Originally Posted by ogre

Timberline, in that case in Minnesota you seem to focus totally on what the fleeing suspect was doing at the time the cop shot him, and the fact that, according to your assessment, at that moment he was doing nothing that threatened anyone.

All well and good so far, but do you actually know what the law says about police shooting fleeing suspects? When you say the cop should be in jail, that implies that you know of some law the cop violated by shooting the guy. We don't throw people in jail just because a guy on an internet forum thinks they did something wrong, do we? People have to have broken the law to go to jail, correct?

You can't really know whether the cop should be in jail unless you know whether he broke some law by firing at the suspect. You can't know that without being familiar with the law. So, once again, do you actually know what the law says about this?

Fleeing. Crying for his life to be spared. Shot.


And no, not according to my assessment. According the the video.



Suspect? Why are you calling him a suspect?



You care about laws. I care about justice. The legal system is not the justice system. In fact, they're often opposed to each other.



He might not have violated any laws. That wouldn't surprise me, the laws often let cops get away with literal murder, which is why social activism is so very important. That doesn't mean he shouldn't be in jail from a justice perspective. The "laws" are set up by those in power to keep and consolidate power. It has little to do with right and wrong, or justice.

[massnative71]

Originally Posted by ogre

All well and good so far, but do you actually know what the law says about police shooting fleeing suspects? When you say the cop should be in jail, that implies that you know of some law the cop violated by shooting the guy. We don't throw people in jail just because a guy on an internet forum thinks they did something wrong, do we? People have to have broken the law to go to jail, correct?

You can't really know whether the cop should be in jail unless you know whether he broke some law by firing at the suspect. You can't know that without being familiar with the law. So, once again, do you actually know what the law says about this?

Tennessee v. Gardner covers fleeing suspects:



https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/471/1.html


In this case however (as per video), the suspect is seen pulling his firearm out as he was running away while turning to the side. That is not characteristic of a surrendering suspect, but indicative of an imminent danger to the cops. Had he kept his hands fully visible up in the air and off the weapon, it would be a completely different story but that wasn't the case. It was a justifiable shoot, all day long.

[ogre]

Originally Posted by timberline742

You care about laws. I care about justice. The legal system is not the justice system. In fact, they're often opposed to each other . . .



He might not have violated any laws. That wouldn't surprise me, the laws often let cops get away with literal murder, which is why social activism is so very important. That doesn't mean he shouldn't be in jail from a justice perspective . . .

You still haven't answered the question about whether you even know what the law says.

From the last part of the quote it appears that you do believe that we should throw people into jail because some guy on the internet judges that they have done something wrong . . . as long as you are that guy doing the judging. Who are you to make this judgement, God almighty?

There's a longstanding idea that something that distinguishes truly civilized societies from others is "the rule of law rather than the rule of men." It's a very dangerous notion that people should be punished by the legal system even if they have broken no law, just because some individual believes he has some Godlike authority to judge when someone has done something wrong and needs to be punished.

Even if many people share that judgment, if they push for someone who has broken no law to be punished because of their personal views, you've got nothing better than frontier justice, mob rule, vigilante justice, anarchy, or other term of your choice. Do things that way, and anyone can be thrown into jail for any reason, because you never know what the ephemeral mood of the public will be at any time, and what their shifting notions of right and wrong will target as wrong at a given time.

So you have not answered the question of whether you actually even know what the law says about this. You also have not answered the question of whether it is your judgment that the state trooper who shot the fleeing escapee in New York should be in jail. Care to answer those?

[ogre]

Originally Posted by massnative71

Tennessee v. Gardner covers fleeing suspects:



https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/471/1.html


In this case however (as per video), the suspect is seen pulling his firearm out as he was running away while turning to the side. That is not characteristic of a surrendering suspect, but indicative of an imminent danger to the cops. Had he kept his hands fully visible up in the air and off the weapon, it would be a completely different story but that wasn't the case. It was a justifiable shoot, all day long.

I have to acknowledge that I don't know a lot about that incident in Minnesota. I've seen just enough on the news to know the bare-bones-minimum about it. I have not had time yet even to look at the information posted on this thread about the case.

I don't have to know much about that situation, though, to see a problem with Timberline's view of things.

I do know that there are circumstances where the law does allow cops to shoot a fleeing suspect in the back. That's all I need to know to see that when someone's automatic judgement in such a case (as with Timberline) is to say that the cop should be in jail just because it is that person's emotional reaction that the cop has done something wrong, and when the person is talking about jail without even knowing what the law says (as Timberline clearly does not), there is something wrong.