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The difference is that in that case the officer would be shooting people who are intentionally violent, not nonviolent people who looked violent because the officer set up the situation in a way that made it hard to tell. It would be as if the officer arrested someone, handcuffed a knife to his hand, and then shot the suspect when he tried to flee because of fear that the suspect would use the knife on him.
(Obviously there is a sliding scale of such things. An arrest causes some increase in nonviolent reactions that appear violent and standing in front of a car causes some increase in actual violence. But I'd say that standing in front of the car is much farther along the scale.)
So I understand, you are saying that Good's decision to speed off when an officer is in front of her was set up by the officer in the same way as if he'd handcuffed a knife to his hand?
The decision to speed off was not set up by the officer, but the inability to distinguish between two types of speeding off (fleeing and attacking the officer) was set up by the officer.
Likewise if the officer handcuffs a knife to your hand, and you flee, your decision to flee was not set up, but if the officer says "for all I know he might be trying to use the knife on me", that lack of knowledge was set up.
Does it matter at all that she actually struck the officer?
Imagine a hypothetical where I am on foot, and under arrest. The cops surround me (to arrest me). Would you say that in this situation that the inability to distinguish between "me fleeing" and "me having to attack an officer to flee" was set up by the officer, and as such, they do not have any reason to be afraid when I attack an officer to escape?
If they shoot you because you "attacked an officer" and he "feared for his life" then sure, it was set up by the officer. It's a form of the officers gaming the system.
If the officers try to stop you using a level of force that would be justified in a regular arrest of a fleeing person who is not surrounded but who they (for instance) managed to catch up with, then no.
I feel like this is untenable, and would simply lead to no one at all being arrested. If officers are forbidden from physically stop me from fleeing, why wouldn't I just flee? Under your rules, they cannot put themselves in a situation where they could be in danger regardless of what decisions I made.
I am not suggesting that officers can't stop you from fleeing. The problem is that we already have standards of what they are permitted to do to stop you from fleeing, and those standards don't let them shoot you.
Either let them shoot you for fleeing, or don't. Don't say "they can't shoot you for fleeing" and then let them game fleeing into looking like a threat so they can shoot you for that.
The issue is that (as someone who does not want to be arrested) I can game-theory them into letting me flee under your rules. That means they literally can't do their job, as anyone who does not want to be arrested can force the issue by engineering a situation in which the officers can must choose between:
You have stated that #2 is not permissible - so it collapses back into #1, of every criminal must be allowed to flee.
The issue is that the police can escalate from one level of force (the level permitted on a fleeing person) to a greater level of force (lethal force, permitted on a threat) by creating a situation where the first looks like the second. The first level of force is not zero, so this doesn't require that the police avoid all physical confrontation. It does mean that sometimes people will flee, but if that's a real problem, then change the standard so that more force is allowed at the first level--don't blur the first and second levels together.
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The police arrests people for non-violent offenses all the time, you still don't get to floor it to get away from them, and flooring your car at them is violent in itself.
The police are not permitted to shoot you if you floor your car to get away. Even though you "don't get to" do it, the procedure the police must follow in that situation is different. They should not be permitted to blur the difference between that and a situation where they do get to shoot you, and then shoot you because they can't tell the difference.
Yes they are, if you floor it at them. We've been sharing this video that shows what happens when they're not fast enough. Another poster mentioned they were watching police cam videos in thr wake of BLM and seen plenty of cases of policemen shooting cars driving at them, all of which were ruled justified.
They can shoot you if you drive at them, but they can't shoot you if you are just fleeing.
If you think they should be able to shoot you for just fleeing, make a law that says they can. If not, don't have policies whose effect is that it's hard to distinguish between fleeing and driving at them, thus letting them shoot you for fleeing.
Right, which is the scenario relevant to the discussed case.
There's nothing to distinguish. It doesn't matter if you were "just" fleeing, if you do so by means of driving your car at the police. If you choose to do that, you are putting their life in danger, and they have a right to defend themselves.
In this case it takes two to choose. Unless you're really aiming the car at the police intentionally, I would say that it's not you who are putting their life in danger, it's them, by creating the situation where fleeing can't be distinguished from a threat.
If they handcuffed a knife to your hand almost anything you do would "choose" to put them in danger. Nevertheless, I wouldn't give the police the benefit of the doubt for "danger" when they handcuff knives to suspects' hands.
No, it doesn't He wasn't putting himself as a roadblock. You can argue he should have been more careful and thought about all the things that can go wrong, but the argument is pretty dubious. Arresting people is inherently dangerous, and they can fuck you up whether you're in front of the car or approaching it from the side. But setting it aside for the sake of argument, a tactical error does not negate your right to self defense.
She on the other hand had the actual choice of simply not putting anyone's life in danger.
Whether you're doing it intentionally or not is irrelevant, thr police can't read your mind.
Even if they did, and in her mind she would pull off some badass maneuver to escape without hitting anyone, there's still the issue of thr car's actual trajectory which did hit the guy, and would hit him harder and sooner were it not for the ice on the road.
If you are saying that he did it but not intentionally, I'd reply that creating an excuse for lethal force unintentionally is jabout as bad as doing it intentionally, and should be discouraged for similar reasons.
If you are saying that he didn't do it at all, has what is known about the incident really changed that much?
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