This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Having seen the videos, I will say the following:
Shooting her was utterly ineffective at saving the agent's life, because it did not stop her car from going forward.
It appears that there was more than one agent around. My understanding is that police tactics generally involve teamwork. There is no reason that one agent should be tasked with blocking her escape path, watching out for weapons etc.
I think that you will be hard-pressed to find a demographic less likely to shoot a person than middle-aged urban white women. Also, if a cop feel that is a threat, they should already be brandishing your weapon before they see the suspect drawing his, they are not a cowboy in the Old West who needs to rely on his ability to draw faster than his opponent so that he can claim self defense.
Standing in the pathway of a suspect's car to impede their escape is plain stupid. This is the reason why for example the CBP has explicit rules which say "don't do that".
I see the events as a tragic tale of two fuckwits. Fuckwit A decided to play #LaResistance by using her car to impede ICE in an unlawful manner, then panicked when it became apparent that she would get arrested for he trouble, and in her panic recklessly endangered an ICE agent.
Fuckwit B, having previously been hit by a car driven by another suspect in the line of duty, decided it would be a great idea to again stand in the path of a suspect's car, thereby turning any escape attempt into an assault with a deadly weapon. Rather than brandishing his weapon and making his threat explicit, he waited for her to move the car forward. At that point, he drew his gun and shot her, an act which would not have saved him if she had aimed for him. By the time he fired his shots, he was already out of danger.
If one fuckwit kills another while both are engaging in fuckwittery, it is customary to charge the surviving one with manslaughter. If A had killed B by ramming him with her car, we definitely should be charging her (and her defense would try to make the point that only an idiot would stand in the path of a panicking suspect). Here, B's defense will make the valid point that only an idiot will panic and try to recklessly escape when about to be arrested for a petty crime.
What are you talking about? An officer is not supposed to just "brandish his weapon" at someone sitting in a stopped car. There are rules about that. Likewise, where do you think an officer is supposed to stand relative to a stopped car? You're not supposed to make it easier for someone to escape in case they decide to use lethal force. There are rules about that.
You're calling the guy a "fuckwit" (cringe) for following standard police protocols.
So standard police procedures are to stand in front of a car, relying on your quickdraw skills to be able to shoot the driver if she starts to accelerate towards you before get run over (which would empirically not prevent you from getting run over -- if she had aimed for him as he had aimed for her, then he would be lucky to be in a wheelchair)? Do you have any citation to back that up?
I have already quoted the CBP guidelines about "do not block the path of a vehicle with your body" elsewhere in this discussion. I see this as clear evidence that the shooters behavior is not "standard police protocols". If you want to argue that for ICE it is, please provide evidence.
Your idea seems to be that the ICE officer is a “fuckwit” for not actively aiming his gun at a woman in a stopped car. Your very strong opinion that he should not have been in front of the car is based on very ambiguous video evidence, nobody can even agree if he was in front of or to the side of her car before she turned her wheels. And now you want citations to prove that cops don’t wave their guns around at civilians and can’t walk in front of a parked car.
This is very stupid. I’m not sure there’s a nicer word. You would be better off arguing that the ICE officer should have exercised magically perfect split-second decision making. Because what you are actually suggesting is that the ICE officer shouldn’t have shot her, he should have just aimed his gun at her. Actually I don’t need a citation to know that’s not how cops work.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think you are, actually. For good reason. You're putting your life in the driver's hands in the hopes he doesn't call your bluff and just run you over. If the priority is officer safety, how is this a good move?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It shouldn’t matter if shooting her was ineffective at preventing the hit, because if there is even the tiniest chance that shooting mitigates serious injury, then it is rational and moral. The person receiving the unjust serious injury has every right and reason to prevent as much of it as he can; it is the aggressor who forfeits their claim to life. The chance of being stuck on the front of her car until she crashes or runs you over is slightly lower if you shoot her.
You can’t profile this woman as the average member of the general class of women, because she belongs to a very small class of people trying to illegally impede the law. I imagine those who go out of their way to impede ICE have a much higher risk of carrying a weapon.
I think that your concept of "lawbreaker woman", which includes Ulrike Meinhof, Bonnie Parker and Renee Good, does not really carve reality at its joints.
While Good was engaged in illegal activity intended to impede ICE, it is notable that her planned way of impeding them was non-violent. Anyone willing to murder a few ICE agents in the process of impeding their progress would not waste their time on non-violent resistance. Anyone planning at shooting ICE will likely not engineer a situation where their car is surrounded by ICE agents as a starting point.
I will grant you that there is a tiny probability that contrary to tribal (and gender) cultural norms, she was a gun enthusiast and a crack shot, and had also stupidly taken her pistol along 'for self defense' on her non-violent resistance, and would in a panic try to shoot her way out of getting arrested.
But realistically, the probability of her starting to shoot was still lower than for a 20yo white dude at a routine traffic stop.
It seems intuitive to me that a woman who goes out of her way to impede the law and disobey orders is going to be more likely to resist arrest violently, whether with a firearm or a blade or a car. The average woman would not do this, thus you can’t place her in the population of average woman, any more than the average Jan 6 protester is not representative of the average population of Trump voters. The small segment of the female population who would do this is radicalized, which is a small sliver of the female population, like 0.001% of them. A woman who believes that ICE is so evil that you must illegally stop them and then evade them is simply going to be more likely to commit violence against them than the general population of women. This is a filtered, or “preselected”, radical population, in a climate where the news is constantly radicalizing people and where death threats have previously been made.
The officers did not / would not know that. She could easily be luring them to the vehicle, which is common tactic in anti-police violence.
Disagree per above, and also because the violent do not behave rationally. Irrationally and violence go hand in hand.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Not to address anything else in your post, but I will say that a lot of people, especially blue-tribers, claim that brandishing a weapon is an automatic escalation (see all the accusations of how Rittenhouse was provoking people by being armed).
I am sure the blue-tribers say that. Personally, I would prefer to have a gun brandished toward me or even trained at me by a cop 20 times to being shot without warning even once.
If someone is standing in front of a vehicle wants to signal "I will treat you moving forward at any angle as a deadly assault and blow your brains out", then I would very much prefer that threat to be made explicitly.
Not letting suspects know when they are one sudden movement away from getting shot will greatly reduce stress for the median case, but it will also result in unfortunate failures of communication when they try to get their papers from their glove compartment a little too fast.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
+1 for constant profiling by law enforcement. I am not being sarcastic.
Again, this falls into the trap of "why didn't the cop just have 100% perfect awareness of the entire situation, perfect emotional control, and ninja like reflexes!"
When someone fails to obey repeated police commands, police have to default to treating them as hostile. When that same person them, immediately and without hesitation, engages in dangerous behavior, lethal force is now on the table. When all of this happens within ~ 5 seconds, it's just a dice roll of who ends up injured or dead.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link