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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   32904 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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Let's say he thought she was going to hit him. Why does that mean he should have shot her? It didn't prevent him from being hit. It couldn't have unless he did it before she started moving, but surely you're not saying he can pre-emptively shoot her in case she starts driving towards him. The argument seems to be that, once she started driving towards him, then he was sufficiently threatened that he was justified in shooting her. But at that point, it is not at all reasonable to think shooting her can prevent her from shooting him.

So that just leaves the possibility that she has a weapon. But at no point did he have any reason to suspect that she did have a weapon. He only thought she might because anyone might. And doesn't it become much less likely that she is going to shoot him once she's driving? Now he's a moving target and she is a vehicle to operate while shooting him. It seems very unlikely. If he can shoot her in this scenario, he can shoot anyone disobeying police orders.

And why the time constraint apply here? He has one second until what, exactly? Until the car reaches him. But that is how much time he has to decide whether to shoot her to prevent her from hitting him with the car. It doesn't apply to the weapon concern. You don't just immediately shoot every non-cooperative person because you have time to determine whether he's armed.

For either concern, why is he standing in front of the car? Why is he standing in front of a moving car if he's worried she'll him? Why is he standing front of someone who might have a gun?

If standing in front of a vehicle is helpful in determining whether a driver is reaching for a weapon, then this would be a complicated determination.

So the police officer solves this by creating a situation where he's likely to have to kill her because he isn't going to immediately find out whether she's armed. You said he drew his weapon because she wasn't co-operative. If she isn't co-operative, why not expect that she'll drive away? Why isn't this far more likely than that she's armed?

The trade off here just doesn't make any sense. The police officer is deciding to do something that will probably result in him killing her to gain the slightest bit of information about the probability of her having gun.

Even if we're only concerned about the police officer's safety, why is the supposedly substantial risk he gets run over by the car worth the tiny risk that she's going to shoot him and he's going to prevent that by getting in front of her and getting a better look at her?

The shot appears to be fired just as the officer is hit by the side of the vehicle, though the officer probably had no idea that the driver intended to swerve out of the way in the last milliseconds so that it would simply brush against him

I think he probably did know, because he made no attempt to get out of the way. It's possible he just had bad judgment and thought the right move to being run over by a large SUV was to shoot the driver when it was already in motion, but I think it's more likely he noticed it turning and understood he had time to get out of the way. He's actually leaning to his left and the moment he fires his first shot, seemingly to maintain his line of sight so that he could shoot her.

I think the solution to this is simple. No, don't stand in front of vehicles, especially if you think they might try to run you over, and definitely don't try to shoot someone if they do try to drive towards you. Just get out of the way.

Someone might say, “were I the officer I would have used my split second reaction time to get out of the way”. But for you, this event would put you in a hyper-vigilant and high adrenaline state of heightened attention. For the officer, this is simply one of the 40 hours of monotonous work that he must do every day. You can’t compare your state to his; you should compare his state to the periods of low or moderate attention that you sustain in your own occupational hours.

OK, but he needs to be trained for this. If his instinct is to draw his gun and he doesn't have sufficient training to know what to do once his gun is drawn, that's a serious problem. The two key decisions he made which he should have consciously avoided if he didn't think he was mentally prepared for this situation were positioning himself in front of the vehicle of a non-cooperating suspect and drawing his gun. Maybe the split second decision once in that situation is tough, but then don't put yourself in that situation.

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