I can see the argument how you would treat a suspect with a gun differently than you would if they have a knife.
However, American cops also use guns against suspects with knives or other weapons that they also use in places like Scotland. Why couldn’t American police use these techniques when the suspect doesn’t have a gun?
I know the standard response is, “well, they COULD have a gun!”, but I don’t think that is a good enough reason to always go straight to extreme response. If a suspect is brandishing a knife, he probably doesn’t also have a gun.
Historically speaking, there were a few shoot-outs in the 80s and 90s. The Hollywood shooting and I think one historically bad incident with cocaine traffickers in Miami - bad days for the police showing up with .38 revolvers and a shotgun or two fighting against a dedicated enemy with AK style weapons and body armor.
The sadly predictable response of the police in America is to overmatch the “enemy.” Presume they have a weapon for crimes of certain classes, obvious violence crimes like kidnapping and also drug crimes, which poor Afroman was accused of both.
Personally, having been SWAT’d as a young man, it’s not that I think they shouldn’t have access to armaments. It’s that their rules of engagement are obscenely lopsided to the point that they just bring them always, all the time, and will not use common sense judgement.
This could have been a knock-and-talk from Officer Friendly and if things didn’t go well - send in a higher level of officer. Starting at bootleg Navy SEAL raids for every accusation is a blight in modern law enforcement.
> Historically speaking, there were a few shoot-outs in the 80s and 90s. The Hollywood shooting and I think one historically bad incident with cocaine traffickers in Miami - bad days for the police showing up with .38 revolvers and a shotgun or two fighting against a dedicated enemy with AK style weapons and body armor.
An important note for this is that this situation only happened because of Americas "war on drugs" strategy. The US government created those armed trafficker groups the same way they created the rum-runner mobsters of prohibiting.
The insanely armed domestic "enemy" generally exists because of the combination of high profit motivation with government threat. The more punishing the government is of the enemy group, the greater protective lengths they're going to resort to.
Personally I’ve had encounters with LE and have not had a gun drawn yet, so it’s obviously not the default. But I disagree, I think brandishing a knife is already extreme behavior, I don’t think it’s logical to think “because he has a weapon he probably doesn’t have another!”. And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
> Personally I’ve had encounters with LE and have not had a gun drawn yet, so it’s obviously not the default.
What does the default have to do with it? We are already not in the default situation. Interacting with police at all is not the default! If you mean to say something like "it's not likely" or "they're not doing it in unreasonable cases" then your anecdote is not relevant.
> And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
Several reasons, which would be obvious if you tried to think of them. Most knife-wielding maniacs are, well, maniacs, and aren't fully in control of their actions. Innocent bystanders are regularly killed by police discharging guns accidentally or inappropriately (in fact, even police are frequently killed this way). People are routinely misidentified by police as carrying weapons when they aren't. Police often give misleading or unclear instructions while trying to de-escalate, and with a gun drawn, failure to comply can and does result in the suspect being shot.
Bear in mind that what you are excusing is essentially a (substantially increased likelihood of) extrajudicial execution. It should be a last resort. It's not enough to say "well he's clearly a bad guy, why give him the benefit of the doubt?".
Why is it not zero? This strikes me as the exact sort of calculus they used way back when they stopped chasing fleeing suspects in vehicles: the danger to the public is too high to justify the use of force. If you can't hit your suspect without hitting other civilians, then don't fucking fire! And no I don't particularly care if the LEO's life might be in danger either, that's literally the job they signed up for: to put themselves in danger to enforce the law. It's ridiculous that cops just get complete power of life and death every time they feel a spot of stress, and have to be handled with kid gloves by the general public less they be murdered in the streets.
I will never be zero because perfection is impossible. It's like saying there should be zero car fatalities. We should work to get them down (enforcement against drunk driving, maybe checkpoints, stronger driving tests), but asking for zero accidents just isn't reality.
"Helsinki hasn’t registered a single traffic-related fatality in the past year, municipal officials revealed this week."
"The limits were enforced with 70 new speed cameras and a policing strategy based on the national “Vision Zero” policy, with the goal of achieving zero traffic injuries or deaths. Data collected by Liikenneturva, Finland’s traffic safety entity, shows Helsinki’s traffic fatalities have been declining ever since."
That's not analogous at all. Everyone drives, and so everyone is a possible source of a car crash. Police are not (in theory) just whoever wanders into the goddamn precinct. They're (in theory) trained professionals, educated in what they do, and therefore entrusted with both the force of law, and the deadly force they wear on their belts.
And no we probably can't make it ZERO, but we could surely get it under 1,300!?
1300 is not the rate of innocent bystanders being killed. It's the rate of people killed by police period. Maybe if we didn't have police being killed by criminals in the USA then they wouldn't need to go in armed and scared for their lives.
By definition, every person the police interact with is innocent, because at such time as they are talking to a cop, even being detained by one, they have not been convicted of a crime.
No, it's the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" and even if you'd like to craft a scenario next where we're going to talk about Officer Friendly stopping a rape-in-progress, yes, that person is almost certainly guilty, AND the punishment for that crime is usually not death, AND the cornerstone of our justice system says that the officer in question, no matter how pure of heart he might be, cannot exact a death sentence on a clearly guilty person because that is not how justice works.
A cop killing ANYONE, be they a bystander, or a suspect, or an assailant, should be RARE. It should be notable.
Let's aim for a max of once every year, then, over the entire USA. And once that's achieved, let's aim for once every few years. Once a decade should be good enough, you probably won't get better than that.
The EU has a much bigger population than the USA, in a smaller space, and I'd bet they're already around this number.
Well... the sicilian mafia comes to mind... the french can be quite violent too... Western Europe is not so bad either, with guns.
I guess you mean "normal" non-criminal people in the EU are not allowed to have AR-15 assault rifles in their homes, that they can use if they have mental health issues.
I personally believe that is one of the reasons the USA has so much gun violence. Get rid of the guns in people's homes and things will change for the better.
Personally as a teenager I’ve been met with a group of cops all pointing guns at me when I was just walking around at night with no weapons whatsoever. They got a call from a paranoid homeowner nearby.
They’re trained to shoot first and ask questions later.
Actually same happened to me - small group of friends maybe ~14 years old walking around late at night through our middle-class very safe neighborhood.
Two cops in a car rolled up and jumped out of the car with guns drawn and screamed at us to put our hands up because we “looked suspicious”.
They then asked us what we were doing, we said “walking home”, and they put their guns away and said “be safe out there, we didn’t realize you were kids”.
Absolutely no idea why it warranted guns pointed at us
They should not have guns out at all. Also, expectation on cops are super weirdly low.
Untrained random civilians encountering cops are supposed to have perfect sefl control. Supposedly trained professionals can be irresponsible, escalate for no reasom, risk others and shoot if they merely feel afraid - regardles of actual danger.
As that woman said out loud in the video: "preservation of the pecking order"
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You start asking questions like this and it becomes clear how we voted in the current administration. We spent generations structuring around such buly mentality.
I got pulled over in Cleveland and had a cop point a gun at me and threaten to shoot - I was apparently wearing the wrong color on the wrong side of town with out-of-state plates and reached for my ID instead of waiting for the cop to tell me to get it. In later stops I've been admonished many times for not preemptively getting out my ID, but I really can't help thinking about almost getting my brains blown out for grabbing my ID too quickly.
Hands on the steering wheel for your and the officers safety until they ask you to do something. It really is not that difficult you can always just ask. Legally speaking a traffic stop means you are detained = follow orders.
They don't know you or what you could be capable off.
While this is certainly pragmatic advice, we should not normalize it for "what ought" to be. It should not be an individual's job to act perfectly (while being assaulted!) to compensate for police officers' (supposed professionals!) inability to remain in control of their emotions and properly judge what is going on. A police officer who is unable to remain in control in such situations should not be doing traffic stops (or really any interaction with the public) in the first place.
(Also there are some mistakes in your framing. For a regular motorist who isn't planning on attacking the police officer, putting your hands on the steering wheel does nothing to effect the officer's safety. We're talking about a point before they've given you any orders beyond signalling you to pull over, so there is nothing to follow. Furthermore they're also generally pointing a bright spot light directly at you, destroying your awareness and ruining your judgement, so it's reasonable to expect that orders are going to be followed sluggishly and imperfectly)
>For a regular motorist who isn't planning on attacking the police officer, putting your hands on the steering wheel does nothing to effect the officer's safety.
It very much does. Cops are humans if they see you know how to behave instead of making there job harder they will notice and appreciate that.
>Furthermore they're also generally pointing a bright spot light directly at you, destroying your awareness and ruining your judgement, so it's reasonable to expect that orders are going to be followed sluggishly and imperfectly)
Only if it's too dark to see, so once again help them to help yourself and turn on the light inside the car. If these simple instructions are too hard to follow you shouldn't be driving in the first place.
> making there job harder they will notice and appreciate that
Their comfort is not safety. Your original claim was that this had something to do with safety.
> these simple instructions
What "instructions" ? You have no authority to issue instructions that others must [0] follow. And if the cop hasn't gotten to the vehicle yet, then they haven't credibly given instructions (orders). So there are no relevant "instructions" here.
The reality is that the police officer is the party aggressing to create a confrontational situation. Therefore they are responsible for managing that situation. This includes not capriciously harming individuals who are acting reasonably but perhaps inconveniently. As I said, if they cannot handle their job of being public servants, then they have no business being in a position of authority over the public in the first place.
[0] "must" being implied by your general position of "[then] you shouldn't be driving in the first place" and the fact that similar "instructions" are often trotted out as a justification after the police kill somebody.
If you do that daily, sure it is easy. But a lot of human behaviour is automatic, based on what we are accustomed to do daily. (During covid there were many videos, where person on the screen says “… also avoid touching your face …”, while touching his/her face)
I had a gun drawn on me and was told “I’m going to blow your f** brains out” because I was a stupid teenager toilet papering a house when I was young. That’s when fight or flight kicks in and logic goes out the window. Needless to say I didn’t fight.
Pulling a percentage out of my ass that can't be terribly inaccurate, 99% of police encounters with guns drawn the police are under 21 ft away, at which distance a knife is as dangerous as a gun.
If someone is less than 21 ft from you and they are going to be using a knifes against you, then you should still draw a gun just as often as if they had a gun. So at <21 ft you think guns should be drawn less because they have knives you should also be thinking guns drawn the ~exact amount less no matter which of the 2 weapon they had.
I don't dispute that. But in most those 'other countries' literally anyone could be hiding a knife as easily as someone in US could be hiding a gun. So it appears in the vast majority of the cases where people are already right next to each other where both a knife or gun could kill someone, whether it is a knife or a gun is almost a moot point. It's only at a distance that you can treat a knife as a less lethal threat. Therefore the problem lies with the police, by vast majority.
A knife is not equivalent to a gun. One is a kitchen appliance that can be used as a rather ineffective weapon, the other is a tool literally designed for eliminating life as efficiently as possible
Disarming someone who poses a threat with a knife (especially via the use of modern equipment) is absolutely possible and can be performed in most cases with training, even with just one officer. Meanwhile, disarming someone with a gun is a much more complex task, often requiring a coordinated effort from multiple officers
>a knife (especially via the use of modern equipment) is absolutely possible and can be performed in most cases with training
I want to see you attempt that in real life when someone is within 21 feet. If you watched enough training videos and the literal flood of body camera videos that show even tasers are more often than not infective you would not speak so conveniently about a split second life or death situation.
> I want to see you attempt that in real life when someone is within 21 feet
Sadly I did not film it, but you could have been! I have attended multiple classes during which I had to disarm people with knives and other weird objects. It is absolutely possible with the right circumstances and training, but it's a completely different story when it comes to guns - the element of luck is much more meaningful, as a instructor who was shot quite a few times in their career has pointed out
> You can but you absolutely should not try just because you can in training
For incapable civilians like me - absolutely. But I expect more from police officers than from myself when it comes to non-lethal disarming capabilities
>But I expect more from police officers than from myself when it comes to non-lethal disarming capabilities
It's asinine to expect someone to put there life in danger for little to no benefit just because they are trained for it and there is a chance it might go well instead of certain death.
If someone comes at someone with a knife (which is deadly force), they should expect to be met with equal or more force, this isn't some game with retries. Others don't have to go along your stupid games just because you drag them into them. Play stupid games win stupid prices.
> It's asinine to expect someone to put there life in danger for little to no benefit just because they are trained for it and there is a chance it might go well instead of certain death.
Whether it's asinine or not depends on context. Where I live, it is expected for police officers to protect you with their lives from a lethal threat if necessary, both legally and socially, and failure to commit to that means that you shouldn't be a cop
For the US, I think that the Uvalde shooting revealed a lot about what people actually expect from cops in life threatening situations, never mind what they are legally obligated to do
I'm glad you're making this point. It's something that only people trained in combat would know, and it's very non-intuitive. But it has to do with reaction times, how quickly the person wielding the gun can pull the trigger, and how quickly the person wielding the knife can move. That 21 feet can close blindingly fast.
> under 21 ft away, at which distance a knife is as dangerous as a gun.
No, it is not as dangerous.
To use gun from 7 meters away, you have throw it, which takes way more movement hand movement and time. While you should not rely on it, it is very feasible to just move out of the way of the thrown knife.
Other possibility getting closer to you. Running will take 2 seconds. (Not a lot, but definitely not as dangerous as a handgun)
The statistic isn't related to thrown weapons. It's how quickly you can close the space between you and your adversary, as well as how much bearing drift you can create as you do so.
Then you shouldn't be a police officer. We can't have a society where police shoot first and ask questions later just because they want to make sure there is zero risk to them.
> Personally I’ve had encounters with LE and have not had a gun drawn yet, so it’s obviously not the default.
How police respond to you is very dependent on a lot of factors, including your age, race, what you are wearing, where you are, and what time it is. I don’t think you should use your own personal experience as a universal template.
> And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
Because, as a society, we should do everything we can to prevent harm to everyone, even people who are acting erratically. There could be all sorts of reasons for the behavior. Anyone can have a psychotic episode, and that shouldn’t immediately earn a death sentence. Of course, I understand that even an innocent person having a psychotic episode can be very dangerous, and I don’t think they should be allowed to hurt others, and it may be necessary to use force, and potentially deadly force, to protect other people.
However, I think that is very different than saying “we shouldn’t worry about the perpetrators well being at all”, or that it is preferable to kill the person rather than take ANY risk that they could hurt someone. The answer lies somewhere in between.
I had a rifle pointed at me about a week after I got my first car, because I accidentally drove on the wrong side of the median.
Guns are definitely pulled way more often by the police than they should be. but to your point I am okay with cops shooting anyone brandishing a knife or any other deadly weapon.
As a fun example I had a coworker who collected handguns. I once asked him how many he had and he asked for clarification, should he include unregistered?
However, American cops also use guns against suspects with knives or other weapons that they also use in places like Scotland. Why couldn’t American police use these techniques when the suspect doesn’t have a gun?
I know the standard response is, “well, they COULD have a gun!”, but I don’t think that is a good enough reason to always go straight to extreme response. If a suspect is brandishing a knife, he probably doesn’t also have a gun.