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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.
I mean, running from the cops shouldn't be a death sentence, but trying to run them over should be. Not hard to make the distinction.
Cops should be willing to take some risks to serve and protect the public. Which most cops are, because they have a sense of civic responsibility to the town they live in. That's the problem with having masked federal agents roaming the country shoving random people into the back of a van. They don't know anyone in the neighborhood they're supposedly "policing", and they begin to see the people as pests getting in the way of meeting their monthly deportation quota.
It is not reasonable to tell them that one of the risks they have to assume is not being allowed to defend themselves from being murdered.
Words have meanings. There is nothing random about identifying people who have broken a specific law and sending them back to the specific countries they are citizens of.
Even under the most charitable assumptions for the police, there was at most a small chance she was trying to run him over. I don't think it's unreasonable to say the police cannot always kill someone just because they think the person might be trying to kill them. I also think the police have a duty to avoid unnecessarily creating situations where they don't know whether someone is about to kill them if they're going to respond to that uncertainty by killing someone.
She literally hit him with her car. It's on video. You can just watch it. There's three different angles in the top post. He's folded over on the hood. I never cease to be amazed at the willingness of people to refuse to believe their own eyes.
Now, I will grant that with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that she was probably a) distracted by the officer at her window, and thus unaware of the officer in front of her car, and b) she was likely attempting to flee rather than actually kill anybody
But this is hindsight. This is information we can gather by looking at the video from the comfort of our phones and laptops and replaying the footage until it makes sense.
A person can be reasonable in believing something, even if that thing is not true, if the information available in that moment led them to believe that thing. It is not a felony to not be omniscient.
What are you trying to say with the word "might"? It's already not legal for anyone, including police officers, anywhere in the US, to use lethal force if you suspect your life is in danger, with low probability. It is settled case law that the use of lethal force requires that a person should reasonably believe, with the information available to them, that their life is in danger. This is a higher standard than "might," and it is definitely met when you are a police officer and a criminal suspect hits you with their car.
The person who was shot drove herself over 500 miles from Missouri to Minneapolis, used her car to barricade a street against federal law enforcement (a federal crime), and tried to escape when they tried to arrest her, striking one of them.
Which of these decisions were the cops responsible for? How did the cops "create" this situation? I would be amazed if any law enforcement officer had told her to do any of these things!
What on earth are you talking about here?
In none of the videos do I see the officer folder over the hood, or even significantly struck.
Oh dear. You should schedule a trip to the optometrist right away.
This sarcasm does not further the discussion.
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