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Notes -
A woman in Minneapolis has been killed in an altercation with ICE. I don’t really trust any of the narratives being spun up. Here are
twothree angles:Angle 1
Angle 2 [Twitter] [youtube]
Angle 3 (Emerged as I was writing this)
This is actually a fairly discussed type of shooting. Law enforcement confronts a person in a vehicle, the LEO positions himself in front of the vehicle, the person in the vehicle drives forward, and the cop shoots the person. Generally, courts have found that this is a legitimate shoot. The idea being that a car can be as deadly a weapon as anything.
Those who are less inclined to give deference to law enforcement argue that fleeing the police shouldn’t be a death sentence, and that usually in these situations the LEO has put himself in front of the vehicle.
I have a long history of discussing shooters in self-defense situations [1] [2] [3] and also one of being anti-LEO. However, I’m softer on the anti-LEO front in the sense that within the paradigm in which we exist, most people think the state should enforce laws, and that the state enforcing laws = violence.
The slippery slope for me: “Fleeing police shouldn’t be a death sentence”
“Resisting arrest shouldn’t be a death sentence”
“If you just resist hard enough, you should be able to get away with it”
People really try to divorce the violence from state action, but the state doesn’t exist without it.
Classic noncentral fallacy. When you say "fleeing the police", the audience imagines an unarmed person running away, not a person trying to run over a policeman with a giant hunk of metal. Sure, fleeing the police alone should not result in deadly force, as it is not imminent danger to the policeman. "Fleeing" in form of ramming the policeman with the vehicle should elicit immediate deadly response, as it is a deadly threat. If you can not flee without threatening deadly harm to the policeman - well, you are fucked, do not flee, or try and eat the bullet. It doesn't even have to be the police - if you try to murder anybody with a vehicle, they have obvious right to self defense. The victim being the police just aggravates it, because the criminal must have known attacking the police is a crime - any sane adult does - and did it anyway.
You more or less staked out my position, and the important point is that most situations involving self defense are hard to apply boilerplate to. Often each one is unique to itself. We saw this with Rittenhouse as well, his incredible trigger discipline rubbed some people as evidence that he was a madman, others recognized it as a display of calmness in chaos and good training. I am typically inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the person claiming self defense, not just police, but also to someone who's in the opposite situation, that of being a driver being surrounded by a mob of people. It is very difficult to re-create from video the real world tensions and feelings that were being generated. Was the lady actually trying to kill him? Probably only she, the officer, and maybe his partner have any real insight, and one of those 3 is dead.
There are of course corner cases. This is not one of them. If you have a police officer standing in front of your vehicle, you do not drive forward. In fact, you do not drive anywhere at all when the police officer is near your vehicle, until they clearly tell you you can go. But most of all, you do not drive forward when the said forward is occupied by the body of the police officer. Nothing unclear here. Just as nothing unclear was in Rittenhouse's case - the thugs clearly were about to inflict grave bodily harm (look up Andy Ngo if you want to see what happens when the victim is not armed), so self-defense is justified.
It does not matter. The concept of self-defense does not require psychic powers. You don't need to know what the attacker really thinks - you only need to know their actions would cause a reasonable person to fear for their life and bodily integrity. Having a car driving over you is certainly one of these things that would, whatever the driver might be thinking about at that moment.
I don't see why it matters that this person was supposedly a "police officer." I disagree with calling ICE employees police officers, but even if he was, that doesn't give him special privileges. If you surround someone's car aggressively, it's understandable for them to react in a self-preserving manner. Even if the arrest is justified, no human can be blamed for not wanting to be detained. Almost every video I've seen of someone being arrested, they resist at least a little bit at first. Nobody likes to be in captivity.
In the matters of self-defense, it does not matter much, the rules of imminent danger are for everybody (though police officers probably will get more leeway in court afterwards). It matters in the context - obstructing police officer is a crime. Refusing lawful orders of a police officer is a crime. Nothing in it justifies deadly force - since our legal system does not have summary in-situ execution as a criminal punishment - but it at least justifies an arrest. If the person being arrested resists with deadly force - then using deadly force in response becomes justified too.
I'll remember it for the next time the leftist rioters block the streets, I am sure you would unconditionally support running them over. However, self-preserving manner in case of encountering police officers - and here's where it is relevant - is stopping the car, shutting the engine down and following the orders of the police. If you need further instructions, there's a good video from an esteemed self-preservation expert named Chris Rock, who explains the details, look it up. Trying to run over police officers is not a good recipe for self-preservation.
A human can - and will be - blamed, and shot - for trying to achieve their desires by means of murdering other humans. Not "wanting" to be arrested is fine, trying to avoid being arrested by attacking a police officer with deadly force is very bad for your future life expectancy.
Stop watching videos of people being stupid. It is not good for you, as instead of intended effect - pointing at them, laughing and saying "that would teach me to never do that!" - you seem to arrive at the opposite conclusion - "resisting arrest is what everybody should do". Don't do that, it is bad for you. Even if you do not get shot, you certainly will not get any sympathy from the police and the court for that. Unless, of course, it is politically convenient for Democrats, then you'll get plenty. But it could be posthumously, so I do not recommend that at all.
If you don't do the crime, you don't do the time. If you do not want to be arrested, do not mess with police officers on duty.
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