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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33066 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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It's obvious why officers like it as a tactic. Most people are probably not willing to make contact with a person with their vehicle to flee a crime, so it effectively prevents the obvious way someone might escape. If they are wrong about that individual's willingness it lets them escalate to shooting.

I continue to have mixed feelings about it. I don't like it as a means of manufacturing an excuse to use deadly force where you wouldn't normally be able to but it is not clear to me what reform of it as a tactic would look like.

This logic strikes me as dubious. Are cops (or ICE agents) really so dedicated that they're eager to put their lives on the line -- and the danger of standing in front of a car that might abruptly accelerate is very real -- for marginally better clearance rates? Isn't the standard leftist line that cops are so quick to escalate to lethal force because they're cowards unwilling to accept the risks associated with de-escalation? I'm not sure that's true, but it's at least not obviously contrary to their individual interests.

(I could envision a version of this scheme -- leaving out an unloaded gun in easy reach of a suspect, maybe -- where they could try to manufacture an excuse to escalate to lethal force without any substantial personal risk, but this certainly wasn't that. If we're arguing about tire angle, then the officer's life was in the suspect's hands.)

As to why the cop did step in front of the car? I think incompetence is more likely than suicidal malice; the latter exists, but the former is vastly more common.

There were a bunch of people around. This woman was literally barricading the street. It was a chaotic environment.

The real harm here is that Minnesota refuses to let local LEO help ICE so that ICE would have the manpower to de escalate these situations. If there were five cop cars there, they could box the woman in, have people to deal with the crowd, and arrest the woman in an orderly fashion.

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