h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"Tensions are escalating dangerously in the wake of a controversial police shooting of a 15-year-old mentally disabled boy who was holding a kitchen knife.
The death of Paul Childs - the fifth killing by Denver police this year - is raising new questions about the use of excessive force."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0714/p01s02-ussc.html

My commemnts;
I do not know when or understand why officers are not trained to disarm. Some time in the last 20-30 that has changed. Four shots at close range into a person within 10 foot & less circle of officers. The kitchen knife was reported to not have an edge or a tip. There was an officer ready with the stungun, one with mace to spray within the close circle. The one officer in the circle decided to shoot.

This is the second shooting/killing in 18 months for this officer.
The day before a family member reported he'd threatened them with a large knife. There was No police response, no interview of that incident was done. He was on duty the next day when this shooting took place.

129 police shootings in the line of duty , Denver since 1990.
Denver ranks 10 in fatal shootings by officers in US cities.
(I do not believe this number reflects officers and their use of firearms in domestic , traffic, and bar disputes off duty)

The last highly publicized fatal shooting of a mentally ill boy *different officer* claimed the boy was lunging at him in a threatning way. The boy was at the bottom of the long and step basement stairway with no weapon. The officer at the top stairs with his mother. The young boy was killed.

If you are on your porch in a drunken rage without a gun and have anything in your hand, (knife,bat ) you are shot with no apologies. It has been said here and on this site by officers that you shoot to mortally wound if you draw your gun. NOT to disarm or wound to incapacitate.

Why? I know being an officer is a world away from my responsibilities and I can appreciate that domestic disputes are the most dangerous for them. In these an many other cases there is no violent free for all , no hostages ,no guns, a sole mentally disturbed person ranting on there own property., why are they shooting to kill?

I think ANY officer using his gun off duty to threaten or have power over someone NOT in a police situation should automatically not be suitable for duty. Any officer threatning the life of a family member in a domestic dispute should be disqualified. Officers that threaten drivers with their guns in off duty road rage should be disqualified!
It does not happen here,fairly frequently millions in damages are awarded in similar police-citizen disputes.

Addition city paper covereage also at http://www.denverpost.com

Hi Abbi, these cases are dreadful, there are some in London which are just unspeakable.

One guy was walking along with a chair leg wrapped up, he left the pub and not long after someone with a grudge called the police to say he was holding a gun. The police asked the guy to put his hands up, but he was undergoing treatment for cancer (I think) and couldn't lift them. So he was shot, dead.

What is there to say? I have had just had a great chat with a police man, he is protecting the area where I live. We have had a great fire near the ponds and there is a risk that gas canisters may explode. We were on a midnight walk and say hi to the guy. Remember the local pervert? I asked for advice about him and the policeman took it all down and it will be presented to the new criminal briefing tomorrow. Finally we are being taken seriously! There are times when I love the police, but obviusly there are times when I do not.

Do you have a problem with the police running people over, we get a fair bit of that as well?

That is great news about being taken seriously Kaz, with the pervert situation.

I have not heard about the police running over anyone. Plenty of citizens do that. It was especially bad for the city school children. They really had to get tough and film school crossings because people where hitting them reguarly

There are a lot of traffic deaths due to police. In the process of chases and more likely is when they take off suddenly for a call. Just last week another car was broadsided and the people killed. The officer could not have possibly looked both ways. Accidents happen,but sloppy driving skills like that are really preventable.
Many innocents have been killed in chases. They did change some of those policies.

To use a gun in a non-lethal situation is about the same as excessive force anyway you cut it. So the police naturally try to justify the existence of a lethal threat no matter what, although sometimes they're less successful in that than others.

A knife at less than 20 feet or so is most definitely a lethal weapon. It's possible to close with and kill somebody at that distance before they can draw and fire a pistol effectively. This has been true since long before firearms were invented so it shouldn't come as a surprise that police get nervous around people with knives the same way they get nervous around people with guns.

On the otherhand this particular cop appears to be a very loose cannon with a track record that should have given his bosses pause before this incident ever happened. Denver cops are actually pretty notorious for shooting and not especially well when they do. There's probably a lot of panic with these people that doesn't bode well for the average person of color on the street or in her/his house.

Fear is endemic in cops and typically encouraged under the topic of officer safety I guess. It's too bad. If they can't take the heat they shouldn't be in the kitchen and police work is a good deal less dangerous than ranching, something they hardly ever appreciate.

So at the least hint of resistance, there's going to be lead flying and who knows where it's going to land? The cop's buddies aren't going to armchair quarterback him under the theory that but for the grace of God or blind luck there they go too.

But obviously something's got way out of hand and it's not going to be resolved by saying "oops" like they do among themselves in jest sometimes when discussing these types of incidents. If the cops don't get some control over their loose cannons pretty soon predictably they're going to be faced with legal limitations they aren't going to like.

You can't teach somebody to fight well with a gun or any other weapon in a couple of weeks. And as long as that's true the majority of cops are going feel at a disadvantage in any street situation because they have to think about how to shoot as well as when to shoot when in many cases they really need to be thinking mostly about the when.

And it's not going to be decided correctly if they don't consider some gut reactions like you get around a horse or any other kind of big livestock. Sometimes you're wrong too, even on a good day but that's the risk you take and you can't be shooting every steer or gelding that threatens you.

I don't know what the answer is really but I suspect it has a lot to do with attitudes.

As long as cops are a law unto themselves with their own little society separate from the one they're supposed to be protecting these things are going to happen and more frequently. Maybe they need to, indeed must, get reconnected to the community in a very concerted and serious way. Then they need to stop wringing their hands about officers killed in the line of duty and just accept the risks or get out of the occupation.

If you treat everybody as if she/he's going to kill you, sooner or later somebody will. A self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one.

In short cops need to grow up and damn fast if they know what's good for them and all the stuff that's done in selecting them doesn't seem to matter that much. What matters is do they have a good and brave heart. How do you measure that with your psycho tests?

Maybe it's time too to reconsider the whole idea of a professional police force as first conceived by a guy named Peel in Britain. Maybe what we need aren't pros but humans connected to their community and therefore holding a stake in what happens there. People who appreciate that they can't do it alone and shouldn't try and most importantly that they're not God because they passed all the tests which mere mortals mostly flunk. Passing tests is not the same as doing your job and aspiring to divinity is not appropriate for people given the power of life or death over their fellow citizens.

A little perspective is in order maybe.

Expect a lot of national publicity on this one. The family has hired Johnnie Cochran.

From the Rocky Mountain News:

http://makeashorterlink.com/?A22126145

Lawyer Johnnie Cochran vowed Saturday to bring justice to the family of a developmentally disabled 15-year-old boy fatally shot by a policeman.

"We can turn justice right side up and we're going to do that," Cochran said from the pulpit of Denver's Macedonia Baptist Church, where Paul Childs' funeral was held. "We have to make sure there are no other funerals like this."
------------------------

Over the past decade, 14 people have died under questionable circumstances at the hands of Denver police and prosecutors have cleared the officers every time.

Childs, who was black, was shot four times July 5 in the doorway of his home after his family called 911 and said the boy was threatening his mother with a knife. Officer James Turney, who fired on him, said the boy refused to drop the knife.

After speaking, Cochran shook hands with Webb, a longtime friend, and both sat in the fourth row next to Mayor-elect John Hickenlooper. The crisis comes as Webb, Denver's first black mayor, is preparing to leave office after three terms.

The Childs family hired Cochran, who said witnesses said the teen never threatened police. Besides winning an acquittal for O.J. Simpson, Cochran won an $18 million judgment from Chicago for the wrongful police shooting of a black woman.

I think that's about the size of it. Using a gun in any situtation is excessive force. If it wasn't, shooting people non-fatally wouldn't be attempted murder rather than assault and battery or grevious bodily harm. However, when talking about law enforcement, it is absolutely neccessary for the guarding force to have a greater strength than than the public. Unfortunately, anything we make we corrupt, it is our nature. Until they come up with a painless, fool proof, safe way of stopping, restraining and detaining offenders, there will always be those who go too far! Shame really!

MadHamish
(Tazers don't work, they don't even give you a rush!)

I almost emigrated to Denver (well, Aurora) three years ago and I've got to say that I'm kind of glad I changed my mind.

I've been in the States many times and love (most) of the people but since Clinton paved the way for Bush (and Bush paved the way for (ahem) 'the Devil') I wouldn't want to be working and paying my taxes to any power that governs itself the way it has done in recent years. Boys with learning difficulties on Death Row? Minors shot by police? Troops 'Yeehawing' , 'Wow-ing' and laughing as they blow up Iraqi houses? etc etc etc etc. I just couldn't let myself contribute to a power that believes that violence is the answer to everything and that, more worryingly, violence is okay so long as it's the government that is committing the violent acts (and actually think, to use Bush's own term, that they are 'the good guys').

Maybe I should have moved the Almost Heaven, Idaho?

Have you heard about the awful cricket problem in Idaho. Very gross! The roads are slippery with crickets the fields eaten and the surfaces of waterways covered. Idaho is *heaven* for crickets at the moment!

In addition to the crickets who typically breed like crazy during or immediately after droughts, there's an infestation of white supremacists around Coer D'alene. They breed during Lent I think or in the backseats of Chevys.

Yep.
I have not read stories about the supremacists lately, I am sure they are still breeding.

Actually, JT, I think you should probably stay in Scotland since obviously somebody's got to stick around to see if they can't find Blair a real job.

Since he's such a close associate of GW, it would make sense to enlist them in a model airplane club where they get to handle the codliver oil fuel cans. It'll keep them busy with something they probably can't blow up.

We have a deacon in our church who used to be a police officer.
Early in his career on a civilian force, after five years in the MPs in Germany, he and his partner responded to a domestic.
They separated and cuffed the male and the female, who were common law spouses, and put them in the car.
As the deacon was going through the house, shutting off lights and making sure the stove was off, a ten year old kid whacked him across the head with a baseball bat.
He didn't come to for a half an hour.

He considered it one of the most important lessons of his career.

One of the basic principles of self defense and the martial arts is retreat. If it looks like a bad situation, then you have better places to be.
Cops don't have that option.
They are paid to go where a sane man wouldn't want to go.
If you call Smokey and tell him that you have an angry family member with a weapon then you are going to get the cavalry. The last thing they want to find when they get there is a dead body.
They face those fairly often.
The atmosphere that the police live in is not their own creation.
It is created by the moronic legislators and the moronic populace.

The legislators like to hobble any authority but their own.
The populace want the cops to behave until they want them to do something for them. Kinda like pizza delivery.

Now I've known cops that I wasn't too happy knowing that they had keys to a vehicle, let alone ammunition for a pistol.
And I've had family members with a criminal record that made me wonder just why something wasn't done about them.
I've got a brother-in-law in a federal holding facility right now, awaiting arraignment. He doesn't think he's going to get charged with anything because he claims that the Border Patrol beat him up when he attempted to flee and then ditch his peyote harvest. He's going to attempt to file a civil suit against the Government.
Nothing like dealing with experts.

There are a lot of weirdos running around. Some of them are bad. Others are just strange.
People who apply to be cops are filtered to a certain extent, but the job can change anyone.

Considering that practically every law enforcement officer in the US is armed, it is actually surprising that more shootings don't occur, particularly if you follow the currently fashionable thinking that firearms are evil and they call to the possessor to use them.

Firearms training is an interesting thing. Those who receive the most of it and who practice regularly are less likely to use their weapons on duty.
Many officer related shootings involve a barely trained person handling an unfamiliar piece of equipment.

Martial arts training is also a good way to cut down on incidents and deaths.
An untrained person in a physical confrontation can actually do more damage accidently than a trained person.

Analiese is right.
A knife will make your life interesting.
A blunt knife can do more damage than a bullet.

The various toys currently used or experimented with for nonlethal take-downs are relatively ineffective. One idea that some like but has legal problems is a tranquillizer dart. The legal question has something to do with rights and drugs.

As for shooting someone in a nonlethal manner...
You never know really what is going to happen when a shooting occurs.
If you shoot some people and wound them, they will become more enraged.
If you shoot others, they sit down and ask to call their mommy.
Shooting to wound is never a good idea. That's like punching someone in the face to get their attention.

It is very hard to second guess a person's reactions in a violent situation.
But when a civilian is faced with a man in a uniform with a badge and that man has drawn his weapon and that civilian does not respond in a suitable manner according to the judgement of the man in the uniform, it is a foregone conclusion, even to an idiot, that there is a 50/50 chance of that civilian getting out of that situation alive.

Don't irritate anyone who would rather be holding a donut or a copy of Playboy instead of pointing a pistol at you.
You may think you have rights before you encounter them and you will be able to babble about your rights if you survive the encounter, but in a faceoff with a police officer you only have the rights that that armed and peeved person accords you at that moment, because if they've drawn their weapon, then you've crossed a line somewhere.

Thanks for that post TR
.

I was arrested for beating nine colours of s**t out of a neo-nazi wanker a few years ago! I got away with a suspended sentence on the grounds that I was defending a couple of asian girls who had strayed into this idiot thug's path at a night club. He hit one and shoved the other, so I punched his lights out! I normally never get physical unless there is a good reason (ie: life/death and defence)
He gave me a bottler of a reason. The USA will attack anyone on the ground of economic gain and the so called "moral high ground" outside thier own country, but will put up with KKK, neo-nazis and all other kinds of redneck hysteria in their own country. The blatant hypocracy of the US government is a sign of it's trully evil intent.

MadHamish
(Hate the USA Government with spite and pure bile, got nothing against the people, they got little to do with it really!)

Yeah, thanks for being cop's advocate, Mr. Revenge. We probably needed the balance right?

I bet you get along well with cops too because you use a lot of the same phrases I've heard them use delivered in pretty much the same matter of fact, no nonsense tone too. Did you want to be one once?

If you did it's probably good thing your aspirations were thwarted I think. Like you said, it can change anybody, and often does although I think it's an occupation that attracts certain types of control freaks who can make things difficult for everybody else.

And having been on the receiving end of some of those difficulties, I guess I might not be as sympathetic as you and that's why I might take issue with some although not all of your assertions.

First, regarding the lesson the deacon learned. You would think maybe that if you invade somebody's house you might expect to get whacked with a baseball bat at the very least, but somehow that doesn't occur to many cops. They can't seem to understand why people might object to being invaded, slammed up against the wall and cuffed, or abused in a variety of ways for the entertainment of the assembled cop throng, because of course they run in gangs you know? Officer safety.

And since many want to prove how safe they can make it for the others there's sort of this game that's played involving who can look or act the baddest. Nevermind that when the balloon crashes in a serious way you just never know what people will do. What's important is that we demonstrate on some drunk how tough we can be.

The drunk's a good target because you can sort of assume she/he is impaired both physically and mentally and therefore not likely to put up any serious resistance so there's little risk. And the drunk probably won't remember what happened anyways. But some do nevertheless. But even if they do complain it doesn't matter because any complaints filed will be dismissed as drunken delusions right?

But to be fair we should note that some drunks can be damn dangerous because they do some things better drunk than most people can do them sober. So the precedent's there and that's main thing when we're assessing totality of circumstances with our thin blue line filter.

So now we come to the hobbling of authority issue you mentioned. You know most of that hobbling is the cop's own fault. It's not like legislators got up one morning and said, "Hey let's go hobble some cops."

It's usually because some heavy badgers beat a confession out of somebody or shot a black kid in the back of the head for doing a burglary and having the temerity to try to jump over the back fence rather than dutifully surrendering. And the courts rightly concluded that torture isn't how confessions should be extracted and burglary ain't a capital offense so why are we shooting people for it?

Stuff like that.

No, cops have plenty of authority. They can take away your freedom when even the President of the United States can't. They can shoot you in cold blood with impunity. They can question you about what you're doing hanging out somewheres, stuff your average Joe wouldn't even try, and they can do all of it legally, if not morally. But still some insist on pushing the envelope even further or crossing the line and because of them, all cops end up being constrained further.

So yeah, blame the legislature or the courts or the moronic public. But never ever blame a cop! If you know what's good for you, especially if you're another cop.

Now, speaking of the moronic public, you know something? The bulk of police calls have virtually nothing to do with law enforcement. They're what you might call community service calls. People need help and don't know where else to turn. Most of them after all inhabit communities of strangers, sometimes very large and uncaring communities of strangers so who else are they going to call except the cops?

And many are having a bad day, which means the cops often get a skewed view of people "like them" and sort of start making assumptions about "those people" before the cops ever get to the scene. And that can pose some serious hazards for "some people" it turns out.

Not only that but many cops consider these sorts of calls a nuisance because they get in the way of real police work like what you see on tv.

These cops would rather be sitting on their asses talking to each other through the patrol car windows at some vacant lot than taking some call concerning some moron who can't get along with his mom. Because then they should write a report that might get the kid referred to some agency that might actually be able to help the moron and his mom, but since, in the cop's authoritative opinion this kid is a moron anyways, why should the cop care right? And the last thing he really wants to do is have to write a report unless it's got felony potential.

Fortunately, many cops do care and do their jobs very well taking even the "nuisance calls" with good humor and a willingness to help as best they can but you'll never hear about them. Instead you'll hear about the heavy badgers dressed like ninjas who took down the drug dealers in a hail of gunfire or for who finding a dead body at the scene of the domestic violence thing wasn't a tragedy but an opportunity they'd been waiting for since they got out of the academy. Gawd, a homicide. Now that's something worth working on. Unfortunately, there aren't that many homicides to go around and that can be a problem.

So then you'll hear about the New York squad that started setting up people to rob liquor stores just so they could shoot them and add to their dubious shooting gallery score. Or the detectives who arranged for their snitches to do burglaries so the dickheads could swoop down like Batman and Robin and save the day.

There are a lot of temptations that probably argue for more restrictions on cops not less.

So what can you do? Just let it go or give in or whatever?

Well, you're right about doing what the thug with badge and the gun says. At least if you want to live awhile longer, and I quickly learned that you watch what you say and say as little possible because the cop is better than you no matter what and he's asking the questions not you.

And also because of his martial arts training courtesy of the Japanese police he can probably hurt you in a hundred ways that won't show on a polaroid snapshot so you bide your time.

So by now you're probably asking yourself, "Gosh, Analiese, don't you have anything good to say about cops and just what kind of a scumbag are you to know all that stuff?"

Interesting choice of terms isn't it? Scumbag? What's that? Well, my understanding is that it denotes a used condum so that's what many people are considered in the eyes of many cops. Consequently it's with a good deal of relief when we encounter one or two who treat people like human beings not used condums. And they exist believe it or not despite the pressure to prove inane things to their colleagues or whatever.

I met a very nice, honorable, courageous rural cop one time, an older guy, who didn't own or need a heavy badge, his was regular size and weight in his own mind. I'm friends with him still and would defend him to my dying breath and my last drop of blood because he's always treated me with respect and one time actually saved me from doing time for something I didn't do.

If he hadn't taken apart some white rancher's bogus story I would have been writing this from jail probably, your happy as heck pen penpal. It was only about seven years ago and when you're indian you do the max usually no matter what it's for and what it was for in my case would have got me 10 years or more even though I was the victim really.

So you see there are good cops and bad cops.

Unfortunately, in a place like Denver the bad cops seem to be getting the upperhand, which I understand they've been working on doing for a long time. A generation ago they were doing burglaries. Now they're snuffing black kids, because either through greed or their own bare fear terror, they behave in most inappropriate ways.

Now, I have no illusions that any of them are reading this much less taking it to heart. If they were reading it they would probably blow it off as some whiny liberal scumbag street slut's revenge for some imaginary insult she was too drunk to fully comprehend anyways and continue with business as usual, but that's really the last thing we need here, business as usual.

I come from a very ancient society who, until the Anglos showed up, found no need for any kind of police force. Now granted, it helps when you know or are related to everybody in your community. You know who they are, what their little quirks or peculiarities are and so on.

One of the downsides of large communities of strangers is they seem to need police forces and nobody's seemed to have come up with anything better to do the job of keeping people safe from each other. On the otherhand nobody's tried very hard really to try to change the strange into the familiar.

Cops can if they get on a firstname basis with the community and even with the known criminals on their beats. It's still understood those criminals would probably snuff them in a heartbeat under appropriate circumstances, as would anybody given sufficient provocation, but that doesn't mean a cop needs go out of his way to insult, offend, humiliate or otherwise abuse people whatever their criminal leanings.

Police forces aren't judges or juries or penitentiaries. They are police and they aren't contrary to popular police opinion on the front line of the war on crime or anything else. They are public servants who need to respond to the needs of the people who ARE on the frontline, the average civilians many of the cops like to denigrate, and who just happen to be paying the cops' salaries among other things.

Now, it's a tough job. I won't contradict that, but it doesn't take divine beings or divine right and the cops shouldn't have to do it alone and wouldn't need to if they behaved respectfully towards their fellow citizens. Because ultimately for better or worse all these people are in it together whether they like it or not so they might as well make the best, not the worst of things, don't you think?

I'm on a firstname basis with a few Denver cops and some others in other jurisdictions nearby. I'm not scared of them really and that probably helps a little. Fear is often the catalyst that gets people into the trouble of both sides.

And I frequently joke with them about how lazy they are and when are they ever going to get real jobs and the ones who can take that kind of humor with some semblance of good sportsmanship I probably don't need to worry about. It's the ones who get all huffy and stuff that I know I need to watch really close, because cops can be as bad or worse than the criminals they're supposed to be protecting everybody from. There's no shortage of applicants but a good person is always hard to find especially in a community of strangers.

If I can make things a little less strange for those people with badges, well, eventually we might all live longer or at least a little more comfortably.

So when they start talking their hostile violent trash about liberals or minorities or morons I usually try to get things going in a different direction even if it's sort of vulgar like,

"Hey guys give me a break okay? I already got a hangover and I'm supposed to do a barrel race tonight at the arena and the last thing I need is to hear Rush Limbaugh with a badge right?"

"Oh, yeah, Analiese, and whose fault is it you're a drunk."

"Yours, hun. You make me so nervous with your big gun and dick I just got to get a drink you know?"

"Aren't you still underage?"

"I'll never tell."

"Vee have vays you know?"

"Yeah and you're probably getting hard just thinking about them too aren't you? You savage you!"

"Who's the savage?"

"Sorry, me, raising my hand here, forgot again okay? So shoot me, please?"

"Not before you buy us coffee."

"Oh no no no. You buy me coffee and a danish then I tell you what I saw down at 32nd and Curtis right?"

"You're lying."

"How can you tell?"

"Your lips are quivering."

"Oh, gosh, that's just my hummer muscle going into spasms of anticipation."

"Oh oh, I think she's soliciting again."

"Soliciting? In your dreams? You're still wearing a cup aren't you?"

"Yeah so what?"

"Do you ever wash it?"

"Hah hah, very funny, Analiese. Do you ever brush your teeth?"

"Yeah, after every meal. Honest injun!!"

So, you see, nothing like talking about sex to get people's minds off of violence. I wonder why that is?

Another great H2G2 paradox - we need some form of law and order to protect us and our families but every police man/woman I've met or known has been a total asshole. I've had three close(ish) friends who, before they joined were sad individuals desperate for some kind of power, they were so insecure as people; they joined the police and instantly (and I do mean instantly) became power crazed idiots.

In fact one of these so-called friends was actually responsible for the death of a young girl: - my 'friend' was on traffic duty and him and his partner chased and stopped a young girl by the side of the road to chat her up and try to get a screw (whilst no doubt actual crimes were being committed elsewhere) - the car had her boyfriend's stash in it (ecstasy) and the girl promptly crapped herself and ate all the pills. She lasted two days in a coma and then died. Obviously no-one was charged - under the police's point of view, she was carrying drugs and the officers did the 'right' thing but I know better - I know that they were chasing the girl for sex, not any crime.

Needless to say I don't associate with any of my ex-friend police officers now. The only difference I've found between them and the criminals is that they are the thugs with a licence and the rest of us had better beware.

Unfortunately though I can't think of any other system to keep the populace (relatively) safe.

Analiese, I totally agree with you on the "community of strangers".
I have lamented that fact many times.

I also grew up in a small town with few strangers. The resident criminals were considered part of the scenery. The cops and the community did very little about them.

As a fellow who has had a beard and long hair for most of his life and rarely wears a tie and a suit, who also received his only speeding ticket while driving a Volkswagen Beetle, I am aware of the perceptions that appearance can garner from cops.

I had my only pickup (I wasn't actually arrested) for something that I wasn't even aware was illegal.
The sheriff's boys picked me and a friend up and we were handcuffed and taken in and searched and after a couple of hours released and told to come back tomorrow.
I heard from a cop friend of mine that he had to intercede for me with the sheriff's boys. They wanted to hold me not for what they thought I had done but for the fact that my last name was the same as three other habitual offenders in the county. It's true, I was related to them. They were cousins.

I never wanted to be a cop because I don't like habitual offenders.
I couldn't have tolerated running into the same people all the time and wondering why I couldn't find a way to just get it over with.
I've lived around them all my life and when I'm not frightened of them I find them boring. Not much imagination or initiative.
I find drunks boring, too. My stepfather was one.
Not a big fan of potheads or speed freaks, either.

I do not use the term "scumbag". And I haven't used it in reference to you.

I do have a brother that I refer to as s***head, who has had an adversarial relationship with all authority figures in his life, most particularly cops.
He has a kind of an aura that makes them gravitate to him.
Then he gets to telling them to mind their own business and it goes down hill from there.

Lookism defintely affects how the police see people TR.
I have a few stories myself.
My sister can also attest to how same named family members disrupt a whole family putting them under suspician. People with middle eastern sounding names go through it too. People change names daily so what makes them think security it is all in a name anyway? How do they think they get fake ids and under what new name? There are so many ways to get around it or get stuck in it.

JT I have wondered about the overstressed vets that are in Iraq now. They should have ben rotated out. I have thought about these boys-men fighting a guerilla urban warfare.(like the police do on a different intensity scale) I figure these soldiers will be looked upon favorably for police and security hirings when they are out of the service. It is worrisome, not that all will be severly damaged but certainly affected.

Our police force which is busy weeding through immigrant poulations like most at this time. The summer before the 9-11 event our new police chief (hired because of his LA experience with urban street terrorists) wanted very much to suppliment our police force with non citizens. HUH? I thought the city would be outraged,it wasn't.

I do not understand what security we are seeking from where for what reasons anymore. Law seems very preoccupied with non violent crimes,spending money in areas that do not hold down violent criminals. A lot of time and money is spent convicting unwise non violent persons.

For the Texas case on sodomy, the executions of mentally ill (age 8-10 mentally) boys to be forced all the way to the supreme court says a lot Unfortunatly it's led to the possibilty of more executions not less, and of 14 year olds being considered for the death penalty! I still say if the original sodomy laws had not been written with white heterosexuals in mind they would have gotten by with prosecuting. The fact they were not put into effect with homosexuals in mind is very intresting! It would be a case of prejudice if they prosecuted only one group for the same private act.

To have private prisons operated by corporations cannot be healthy way either. Coprorations are not interested in downsizing (unless they benefit)or loosing customers and neither is the government. As we all know US Corporations love off shore deals. We will be having private off shore prisons soon along with the " out of site out of mind " senarios continuing.

Oh dear, still very tired, I ramble & meander more at these times
i hope it's not a double too! EEk!

This is pretty clearly a good shoot. The family called the police because they were scared of the kid with a knife. A knife is deadly weapon, the appropriate police response is to use deadly force to resist deadly force. It's stupid to use a lower and less effective weapon. Especially when you're only ten feet away. An untrained person with a knife can deal a mortal wound before a person can draw and fire at 21 feet.

Pepper spray is aroun 90 percent effective in fairly ideal situations. By effective, I mean it does force the person to close their eyes and causes pain. Having a blind, disturbed kid in pain flialing about with a knife doesn't sound like a very good solution. Besides, the officers would have been partially effected by it as well, which would made things even worse. Mace is even less effective than pepper spray.

A taser might have been a good choice in this situation. If one was a immidatly availble, and the officers had time to plan their attack on the kid, then it would be a great choice. At a range of ten feet though, each officer has an equal right to defend his life. It's a deadly force situation for all of them. Ant the article said they called for a taser, they didn't say one was at the scene.

>This is the second shooting/killing in 18 months for this officer.

If a person threatens you with deadly force twice in 18 months, is it your fault? It may bring up some questions, but I won't blame a cop for protecting his life and the lives of those around him.

I have never heard of law enforcement being taught to shoot to incapacitate except for snipers. Snipers have the advantage of going into planned situations where there is no threat to themselves. They get to consider thier options.

A typical officer invovled shooting is within 3 yards, it takes 3 seconds, and 3 or more rounds are fired. All you can do at that range is to shoot to stop the threat, and that means aiming center mass. That's how we train.

Actually, I find the 3 bullet figure to be surprisingly low. I've been susprised in training and fired off 10 subcaliber rounds off without even realizing it. Most of the officers that I've seen interviewed after real life shootings have fired far more shots than they realize. Most empty the magazine.

>There are a lot of traffic deaths due to police.

What? The number of innocent bystanders killd in chases is miniscule. Usuaully it's the idiot who started the chase that dies, if anyone dies. Fatalities involving officers responding to scenes are pretty bad, although I'm sure the numbers are pretty low. If an officer is responding to a scene with lights and sirens and he gets in a wreck it is almost always his fault, and it's bad all the way around. The officer may have hurt someone, damaged their car, damaged his car, been hurt himself, and the person he was going to help, isn't going to get it.

>Fear is endemic in cops and typically encouraged under the topic of officer safety I guess.

Awarness of the possiblity of an attack is what keeps us alive. It trains us to keep control of situations and to be ready to use force when necissary.

>So at the least hint of resistance, there's going to be lead flying and who knows where it's going to land?

Actually, fear of liability is something we're working to traini out of cops. We've emphasized it so much, that officers are freezing up when they should be defending their lives.

>I know that they were chasing the girl for sex, not any crime.

How do you know they were after sex? I missed the part about the officer forcing the ecstacy down her throat?

I couldn't care less about sex. I stop cars to cite, warn or investigate. I generally get pretty offended when someone does try to use sex to get me to do or not do something.

Officers, for the most part, do not force people to commit crimes, force them to be armed, violent, drunk or drugged, we just have to react to it. There is an element of risk to it, but we are not here to sacrfice ourselves because some mope decided that he wants to stupid in public. We have to act, and take him away, because the you the public don't want to deal with him (with the exception of a few public minded citizens willing to take a poke at skinheads). We'll deal with it. When we screw up, we are discplined, fired, sued, and sometimes arrested. However, when I'm dealing with human garbage, I get a little tired of being blamed because he takes actions that make me hurt him.

Although to be quite honest, I've very rarely used force. I haven't punched a person since I was 14. I've never used pepper spray. I have had to decide whether or not to shoot people, although I haven't had to shoot anyone.

It makes me more suspicious of two shootings by one officer in 18 months when most officers do say like you; you have rarely used force,you have been in situations where you chose not to shoot. I find that a common response, I have not talked to many officers in the last decade but did weekly working in emergency medicine.

I realize the officer may be in a particuarly bad area but he should be sent elsewhere after a shooting at least temporarily.

I have rarely gotten a police officer to discuss the family violence within their own homes and the the lack of response to complaints. That has also been an isssue with many of the more questionable shootings. I know the statistics are rather high as a profession. If shooting is rare why is there not more relief or stress counseling after one? Why are domestic problems ignored in the police officers homes? How have they been handled in your experiences with departments?

In cases of deaths during chases here in Denver ,I do not know of a single suspect dying in a collision during a chase. Innocent drivers and pedestrians and officers have. Many have not been chasing but quick responses to calls without looking both directions. These are not t boning suspects, just unlucky travelors.

The one reporter said the officers with the gun drawn and the one with the taser were fully prepared equally close. I do understand from your comments the number of shots can reasonably be higher than I previousy thought.

Thanks for your input 2 bit. I do hope you wiil-can comment on the threatening domestic situations of officers in their own homes and any correlation to over reaction on the job or disciplinary actions.