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Post by: OrlandotheTechnicoloured
From the Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/09/12/west-virginia-cop-fired-for-not-killing-a-man-with-an-unloaded-gun/?utm_term=.3d945fc2a192
West Virginia cop fired for not killing a man with an unloaded gun
By Radley Balko
September 12 at 5:23 PM
We’ve tracked countless cases here where cops were able to keep their jobs after killing unarmed people, killing people after responding to the wrong house, killing people and then lying about it . . . the list goes on.
Give the Weirton, W.Va., police chief some credit. He’s come up with a new spin on the the same problem. He just fired a cop for not killing someone.
After responding to a report of a domestic incident on May 6 in Weirton, W.Va., then-Weirton police officer Stephen Mader found himself confronting an armed man.
Immediately, the training he had undergone as a Marine to look at “the whole person” in deciding if someone was a terrorist, as well as his situational police academy training, kicked in and he did not shoot.
“I saw then he had a gun, but it was not pointed at me,” Mr. Mader recalled, noting the silver handgun was in the man’s right hand, hanging at his side and pointed at the ground.
Mr. Mader, who was standing behind Mr. Williams’ car parked on the street, said he then “began to use my calm voice.”
“I told him, ‘Put down the gun,’ and he’s like, ‘Just shoot me.’ And I told him, ‘I’m not going to shoot you brother.’ Then he starts flicking his wrist to get me to react to it.
“I thought I was going to be able to talk to him and deescalate it. I knew it was a suicide-by-cop” situation.
Mader was responding to a 911 call from Williams’s girlfriend. In that call, she told police that Williams was threatening to kill himself, not anyone else.
What Mader did upon arriving at the scene is a hell of a lot braver course of action than simply opening fire when the suspect doesn’t immediately disarm. What Mader did is in fact exactly what we want cops to do when someone is in crisis. It’s also precisely what law enforcement officers say they do on a daily basis — put themselves at risk in order to save lives. Mader should have been given a medal. Unfortunately, two more cops then showed up, and quickly shot Williams dead.
As it turns out, Williams’s gun wasn’t loaded. There’s no way any of the police officers could have known that. But it does show that Mader had read Williams correctly — he wasn’t actually a threat to anyone but himself. His life could have been saved.
The Weirton police department then refused to name Williams for three days and assigned an investigator to look into the shooting . . . who then promptly left for a weeklong vacation. Then came the punchline.
Mr. Mader — speaking publicly about this case for the first time — said that when he tried to return to work on May 17, following normal protocol for taking time off after an officer-involved shooting, he was told to go see Weirton Police Chief Rob Alexander.
In a meeting with the chief and City Manager Travis Blosser, Mr. Mader said Chief Alexander told him: “We’re putting you on administrative leave and we’re going to do an investigation to see if you are going to be an officer here. You put two other officers in danger.”
Mr. Mader said that “right then I said to him: ‘Look, I didn’t shoot him because he said, ‘Just shoot me.’ ”
On June 7, a Weirton officer delivered him a notice of termination letter dated June 6, which said by not shooting Mr. Williams he “failed to eliminate a threat.”
The city mentioned two other incidents in firing Mader, but it seems clear that his failure to kill Williams was the motivation for his termination. Even the rare cop who gets fired often gets to keep his pension. Mader won’t be getting one.
After he received his termination notice, Mr. Mader sought attorneys to help him fight the city. He was told because he was still a probationary employee in an “at-will” state, he could be fired for any reason and there was no point in fighting the city.
One attorney told him the best he could hope for was to ask to resign instead of being terminated.
“But I told [the attorney] ‘Look, I don’t want to admit guilt. I’ll take the termination instead of the resignation because I didn’t do anything wrong,’ ” Mr. Mader said. “To resign and admit I did something wrong here would have ate at me. I think I’m right in what I did. I’ll take it to the grave.”
Over the weekend, the New York Times ran an article about the longstanding problem in which even the rare bad cops who do get fired are often able to quickly find work at another policy agency. Mader, who served a tour in Afghanistan and has two sons under five-years-old, told the Post-Gazette that he’s now studying for a commercial truck driving license, but he’d consider another job in law enforcement if he were offered one. I hope that happens. I hope he’s given the same second chance that corrupt, trigger-happy cops are given. My hunch is that he’ll be driving trucks.
Officer Mader seemed to be behaving how a police officer would (be expected) to behave in most of Europe, using his skills and training to determine whether the offender was presenting a clear and present danger,
or whether negotiation could be used to achive a non lethal result
now taking the story at face value (dangerous I know as there is mention of 2 other unspecified incidents which could also be significant) that's cost him his job
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Post by: djones520
He should have zero problem getting hired in another police organization.
Kudo's to him for keeping a cool head in that situation.
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Post by: LordofHats
Ain't no reward for doing the right thing as they say.
Any news on whether or not there will be an investigation into why two cops shot a man with an unloaded gun when an officer already on the scene had determined the man wasn't a threat? This seems like such an obvious suicide by cop scenario that I think Office Mader would have needed to be a blatant idiot not to see it. Why didn't the other two?
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Post by: MrDwhitey
Fortunately the real policemen turned up and did their duty.
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Post by: LethalShade
I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic.
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Post by: LordofHats
I had that same problem earlier today lol 
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Post by: Frazzled
Thats pretty damning.
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Post by: purplefood
It's Whitey, of course he's serious.
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Post by: Future War Cultist
I'm absolutely gobsmacked at this. I think this proves without a shadow of a doubt that in America the police really are trained to shot first and ask questions later. It's a disgrace.
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Post by: Iron_Captain
Wow. Russia doesn't even need to make up anti-US propaganda anymore. 
On a serious note. This is bad. Really bad. Please tell me that Americans are just as outraged at this as Europeans would be...
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Post by: Frazzled
 Iron_Captain wrote:Wow. Russia doesn't even need to make up anti-US propaganda anymore. On a serious note. This is bad. Really bad. Please tell me that Americans are just as outraged at this as Europeans would be...
The difference of course, if our police don't do it with a T-80 tank (which admittedly Americans have to respect that level of overkill), or stab them with a radioactive pellet from an umbrella...
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Post by: Dreadwinter
Are you fething kidding me? Is there an investigation in to this shooting at all? If he said "Just shoot me" it is pretty clear what he was intending. I just.... I cant come up with a reason for..... wait no, guys I got it. I FIGURED IT OUT! This is an M. Night Shyamalan plot twist! HIS IQ WAS TOO HIGH THE WHOLE TIME! That is why he got fired!
But no seriously, our justice system is a clown fiesta.
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Post by: feeder
Well, it's good to know a toy gun and a one-way ticket to West Virginia is a good way out if you can't afford the fees at Dignitas.
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Post by: Vaktathi
Iron_Captain wrote:Wow. Russia doesn't even need to make up anti-US propaganda anymore.
On a serious note. This is bad. Really bad. Please tell me that Americans are just as outraged at this as Europeans would be...
many of us are, and that's why partially why police actions face far more scrutiny now than they did 5/10/25 years ago (also the spread of cameras and social media means everything is recorded and shared so they cant hide things the way they used to).
That said, police like this are generally employees of local governments as opposed to state or federal level agencies the way most European police agencies are, and tend to have the most variability in quality as standards and pay vary wildly.
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Post by: Mario
 Frazzled wrote: Iron_Captain wrote:Wow. Russia doesn't even need to make up anti-US propaganda anymore.
On a serious note. This is bad. Really bad. Please tell me that Americans are just as outraged at this as Europeans would be...
The difference of course, if our police don't do it with a T-80 tank (which admittedly Americans have to respect that level of overkill), or stab them with a radioactive pellet from an umbrella...
Is a "who has it worse" competition the right approach to this type of problem? Is everything okay as long as one can point at some other country that has it worse in some way? It's not like people are praising Putin for how he's handling Russia… well, Trump does occasionally think highly of him but on average nobody's really saying that Russia is the epitome of democracy or civil liberties (at least from western social democratic/capitalistic countries). Besides, US police forces got quite militarized beyond anything they should need to do their job.
I know everything is relative but that just doesn't sound like an attitude that should lead to improvements. They have, to some degree, the power to self-select the people who work with them and if they just get to push out nonconformists time and time again then things will never get better.
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Post by: Future War Cultist
Which is why I think eventually the time will have to come to scrap county and city level police and bump it all up to state level.
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Post by: Frazzled
 Future War Cultist wrote:Which is why I think eventually the time will have to come to scrap county and city level police and bump it all up to state level.
Why would that be better? Our federal police (DEA) helped popularize the use of SWAT to make simple arrests, and seizing assets for forfeiture and resale.
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Post by: Vaktathi
Yeah those are the downsides of federal LE, there's definitely issues both ways.
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Post by: Future War Cultist
@ Frazzled
I would assume that state level police are going to better trained and organised than the county bumpkins.
As for the DEA, things like that are probably why those sorts of agencies should probably leave the actual arrests to the ordinary police. It's why here in the U.K. for example MI5 stick to counter intelligence only and leave the actual investigations and arrests to the special branch of the police.
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Post by: Frazzled
Future War Cultist wrote:@ Frazzled
I would assume that state level police are going to better trained and organised than the county bumpkins.
Why? They have no proven themselves better.
As for the DEA, things like that are probably why those sorts of agencies should probably leave the actual arrests to the ordinary police. It's why here in the U.K. for example MI5 stick to counter intelligence only and leave the actual investigations and arrests to the special branch of the police.
But then the DEA wouldn't GET THE MONEY. [i][u]
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Post by: Future War Cultist
Well one other thing you need to do is to give the job of policing the police to another organisation. Because asking a police department to investigate itself is ridiculous. Here we have separate organisations who deal with matters of police misconduct and it works out pretty well.
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Post by: LordofHats
Future War Cultist wrote:Well one other thing you need to do is to give the job of policing the police to another organisation. Because asking a police department to investigate itself is ridiculous. Here we have separate organisations who deal with matters of police misconduct and it works out pretty well.
I think one of the problems with police forces in the US is that the Blue Wall has gone from being an informal arrangement between officers to standard operating procedure. Many police organizations, as bodies, seem to protect and serve themselves more than the public to me.
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Post by: Vaktathi
More to the point, they are obligated neither to protect nor serve anyone legally speaking, but rather to dispense fines or arrest for trial those who have potentially broken the law, which is not necessarily the same thing as serving and protecting the public.
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Post by: Prestor Jon
Future War Cultist wrote:@ Frazzled
I would assume that state level police are going to better trained and organised than the county bumpkins.
As for the DEA, things like that are probably why those sorts of agencies should probably leave the actual arrests to the ordinary police. It's why here in the U.K. for example MI5 stick to counter intelligence only and leave the actual investigations and arrests to the special branch of the police.
Local and municipal police departments are more responsive to the will of the people just like state police departments are more responsive to the will of the people than the federal govt agencies. Disbanding local police departments would make the police less accountable and make it harder for people and politicians to change police policies and procedures.
Here in NC in addition to police departments having their own internal affairs officers we also have the State Bureau of Investigation which is like a state level version of the FBI so it's an investigative agency independent from state and local police departments.
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Post by: SomeRandomEvilGuy
People trying to commit "suicide by cop" can still shoot at and kill cops in the process.
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Post by: Relapse
To play devil's advocate, I see the other side of this in that if he was wrong, it could have gotten him and the other two officers injured or killed.
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Post by: Prestor Jon
Except this guy had an unloaded gun and wasn't pointing it at anyone or overtly threatening anyone.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Relapse wrote:To play devil's advocate, I see the other side of this in that if he was wrong, it could have gotten him and the other two officers injured or killed.
But he wasn't wrong and the two other officers weren't in any danger. Even if the gun was loaded the man was pointing it in a safe direction and was engaged in a conversation with the fired cop in a manner that was deescalating the situation. Unles the man pointed the unloaded gun at the other cops there wasn't an immediate threat to them even if the gun was loaded.
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Post by: Henry
So, an ex-marine tried to de-escelate the situation using military and police training and it was two other idiots who slaughtered the person who needed help. I thought part of the problem was the police hiring all these psycho killer butcher-snipers from the army.
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Post by: Relapse
Prestor Jon wrote:
Except this guy had an unloaded gun and wasn't pointing it at anyone or overtly threatening anyone.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Relapse wrote:To play devil's advocate, I see the other side of this in that if he was wrong, it could have gotten him and the other two officers injured or killed.
But he wasn't wrong and the two other officers weren't in any danger. Even if the gun was loaded the man was pointing it in a safe direction and was engaged in a conversation with the fired cop in a manner that was deescalating the situation. Unles the man pointed the unloaded gun at the other cops there wasn't an immediate threat to them even if the gun was loaded.
Someone who is potentially hostile with a gun pointed in a "safe" direction can very quickly put a bullet through a person. There is a huge spike in police being murdered this year. This memorial page gives a rundown of officer deaths in 2016 and how they died. A large portion was from being shot: https://www.odmp.org/search/year
A story from the link of an officer who opted to taser a suspect and ended up getting shot and killed: https://www.odmp.org/officer/22739-sergeant-jason-goodding
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Post by: d-usa
Relapse wrote:Prestor Jon wrote:
Except this guy had an unloaded gun and wasn't pointing it at anyone or overtly threatening anyone.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Relapse wrote:To play devil's advocate, I see the other side of this in that if he was wrong, it could have gotten him and the other two officers injured or killed.
But he wasn't wrong and the two other officers weren't in any danger. Even if the gun was loaded the man was pointing it in a safe direction and was engaged in a conversation with the fired cop in a manner that was deescalating the situation. Unles the man pointed the unloaded gun at the other cops there wasn't an immediate threat to them even if the gun was loaded.
Someone who is potentially hostile with a gun pointed in a "safe" direction can very quickly put a bullet through a person. There is a huge spike in police being murdered this year. This memorial page gives a rundown of officer deaths in 2016 and how they died. A large portion was from being shot: https://www.odmp.org/search/year
If three officers are on scene, one of them is talking to the guy and two of them being afraid of the guy, then it may just be possible that two of the officers could have their weapon drawn and aim at the suspect ready to fire if he made an actual aggressive movement such as raising the weapon to point it at them. This would let the officer that made the initial contact and who has already established a relationship with the guy continue with his current approach while the other officers provide backup and the ability to quickly neutralize any thread as it develops.
But if we pretend that the only two solutions are "kill the guy that is holding a gun and who is not pointing it at anybody" and "keep your weapon in your holster while talking to the armed guy so that if he decided to raise his weapon you cannot respond and have to let yourself get killed", then there really is no point to keep the discussion going.
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Post by: Ouze
I'm not sure how huge that spike is. Right now the number is at 39 officers shot this year. That's about 5 per month, which means that assume all else remains equal, we'll be at 49 cops shot this year. That's up over last year but not a huge outlier, historically:
2016: 49 (projected)
2015: 41
2014: 49
2013: 33
2012: 50
2011: 73
2010: 60
2009: 50
2008: 41
2007: 70
and so on. And will all else be equal? I doubt it. 15% of the YTD shootings were all in a single, hopefully isolated, incident - those are fairly rare. I think the Dallas shootings are probably the #2 biggest single loss of officers in the line of duty after 9/11 (I'm guessing here though).
Obviously any number of shootings is too many.
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Post by: Relapse
 d-usa wrote:Relapse wrote:Prestor Jon wrote:
Except this guy had an unloaded gun and wasn't pointing it at anyone or overtly threatening anyone.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Relapse wrote:To play devil's advocate, I see the other side of this in that if he was wrong, it could have gotten him and the other two officers injured or killed.
But he wasn't wrong and the two other officers weren't in any danger. Even if the gun was loaded the man was pointing it in a safe direction and was engaged in a conversation with the fired cop in a manner that was deescalating the situation. Unles the man pointed the unloaded gun at the other cops there wasn't an immediate threat to them even if the gun was loaded.
Someone who is potentially hostile with a gun pointed in a "safe" direction can very quickly put a bullet through a person. There is a huge spike in police being murdered this year. This memorial page gives a rundown of officer deaths in 2016 and how they died. A large portion was from being shot: https://www.odmp.org/search/year
If three officers are on scene, one of them is talking to the guy and two of them being afraid of the guy, then it may just be possible that two of the officers could have their weapon drawn and aim at the suspect ready to fire if he made an actual aggressive movement such as raising the weapon to point it at them. This would let the officer that made the initial contact and who has already established a relationship with the guy continue with his current approach while the other officers provide backup and the ability to quickly neutralize any thread as it develops.
But if we pretend that the only two solutions are "kill the guy that is holding a gun and who is not pointing it at anybody" and "keep your weapon in your holster while talking to the armed guy so that if he decided to raise his weapon you cannot respond and have to let yourself get killed", then there really is no point to keep the discussion going.
A really novel idea would be to try to understand what it was the cops thought they saw, or perhaps read some of the stories in the link I provided, such as where the cops tried to use non lethal force and got killed for their troubles. This could give a clue why the other two officers weren't so inclined to give the potential shooter a chance to kill them.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Ouze wrote:
I'm not sure how huge that spike is. Right now the number is at 39 officers shot this year. That's about 5 per month, which means that assume all else remains equal, we'll be at 49 cops shot this year. That's up over last year but not a huge outlier, historically:
2016: 49 (projected)
2015: 41
2014: 49
2013: 33
2012: 50
2011: 73
2010: 60
2009: 50
2008: 41
2007: 70
and so on. And will all else be equal? I doubt it. 15% of the YTD shootings were all in a single, hopefully isolated, incident - those are fairly rare. I think the Dallas shootings are probably the #2 biggest single loss of officers in the line of duty after 9/11 (I'm guessing here though).
Obviously any number of shootings is too many.
I read there was a 78% spike. I'll try to find the article.
Here it is: http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/17/us/police-shooting-deaths-july-2016/
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Post by: d-usa
Some of the cop killers were legal gun owners, best way cops could protect themselves is to kill anyone that says "I am licensed to carry and I am carrying". They can pull that gun out and kill pretty quickly.
It's also very easily to quickly escalate from compliance at a traffic stop to running over and killing the cop, so it's better to kill people in their cars after they pull over.
I don't really care about how quickly something can escalate, if he's not a threat right now you don't kill him. It doesn't matter one bit how much of a threat he can be 5 seconds later, you don't kill people based on the potential for a threat. If someone can't live with that they need to go switch to a profession with more certainty, because you can't be a cop if you think you need to kill because someone might be a threat later.
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Post by: Relapse
d-usa wrote:Some of the cop killers were legal gun owners, best way cops could protect themselves is to kill anyone that says "I am licensed to carry and I am carrying". They can pull that gun out and kill pretty quickly.
It's also very easily to quickly escalate from compliance at a traffic stop to running over and killing the cop, so it's better to kill people in their cars after they pull over.
I don't really care about how quickly something can escalate, if he's not a threat right now you don't kill him. It doesn't matter one bit how much of a threat he can be 5 seconds later, you don't kill people based on the potential for a threat. If someone can't live with that they need to go switch to a profession with more certainty, because you can't be a cop if you think you need to kill because someone might be a threat later.
If you read the links provided, you will see how quickly a situation can escalate, making the decision to shoot someone with a drawn gun more understandable.
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Post by: Dreadwinter
Relapse wrote:To play devil's advocate, I see the other side of this in that if he was wrong, it could have gotten him and the other two officers injured or killed.
I was under the impression that the two officers arrived after he did, so they would have knowingly put themselves in danger by entering the situation. They needlessly complicated matters and he suffered for it.
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Post by: Relapse
 Dreadwinter wrote:Relapse wrote:To play devil's advocate, I see the other side of this in that if he was wrong, it could have gotten him and the other two officers injured or killed.
I was under the impression that the two officers arrived after he did, so they would have knowingly put themselves in danger by entering the situation. They needlessly complicated matters and he suffered for it.
I'm pretty sure procedure for this kind of situation is to get as many officers on the scene as possible as opposed to leaving someone on their own.
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Post by: d-usa
Relapse wrote: d-usa wrote:Some of the cop killers were legal gun owners, best way cops could protect themselves is to kill anyone that says "I am licensed to carry and I am carrying". They can pull that gun out and kill pretty quickly.
It's also very easily to quickly escalate from compliance at a traffic stop to running over and killing the cop, so it's better to kill people in their cars after they pull over.
I don't really care about how quickly something can escalate, if he's not a threat right now you don't kill him. It doesn't matter one bit how much of a threat he can be 5 seconds later, you don't kill people based on the potential for a threat. If someone can't live with that they need to go switch to a profession with more certainty, because you can't be a cop if you think you need to kill because someone might be a threat later.
If you read the links provided, you will see how quickly a situation can escalate, making the decision to shoot someone with a drawn gun more understandable.
It's never understandable to shoot someone based on a potential future thread, end of story.
If you can't handle that you have zero business with a badge and a gun.
When a situation escalates, you escalate your response, not any sooner than that.
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Post by: Relapse
d-usa wrote:Relapse wrote: d-usa wrote:Some of the cop killers were legal gun owners, best way cops could protect themselves is to kill anyone that says "I am licensed to carry and I am carrying". They can pull that gun out and kill pretty quickly.
It's also very easily to quickly escalate from compliance at a traffic stop to running over and killing the cop, so it's better to kill people in their cars after they pull over.
I don't really care about how quickly something can escalate, if he's not a threat right now you don't kill him. It doesn't matter one bit how much of a threat he can be 5 seconds later, you don't kill people based on the potential for a threat. If someone can't live with that they need to go switch to a profession with more certainty, because you can't be a cop if you think you need to kill because someone might be a threat later.
If you read the links provided, you will see how quickly a situation can escalate, making the decision to shoot someone with a drawn gun more understandable.
It's never understandable to shoot someone based on a potential future thread, end of story.
If you can't handle that you have zero business with a badge and a gun.
When a situation escalates, you escalate your response, not any sooner than that.
Read the links.
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Post by: Spetulhu
Relapse wrote:I'm pretty sure procedure for this kind of situation is to get as many officers on the scene as possible as opposed to leaving someone on their own.
But shouldn't any latecomers be under the command of the first officer on the scene? If he's already working on it the others shouldn't interfere unless he says so.
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Post by: d-usa
I can give you links of legal gun owners killing cops. Should we kill them?
The one link you posted is a guy who resisted arrest, who then got tazered, and who continued to resist arrest and killed a cop.
This relates to the guy who was talking to the cop while holding a gun how?
If the first cop would have killed him as soon as he noticed he was armed it would be a story. The fact that he was able to continue a peaceful interaction with him makes the action of the other cops wrong. Let him continue to talk and engage, provide him with backup by aiming and being ready to pull the trigger to kill him if he makes the wrong move, and go from there.
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Post by: Ouze
Yeah, it's very unclear to me why the first cop was peacefully de-escalating the situation, the second 2 cops show up, shoot him, and he's the bad guy. They were free to take cover, hell even draw and target the guy from cover while the first cop did his thing. Ultimately the only life that needed to be at risk was the first cops, and he clearly was OK with that risk. It's kind of amazing to me that he got fired for that.
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Post by: Relapse
Spetulhu wrote:Relapse wrote:I'm pretty sure procedure for this kind of situation is to get as many officers on the scene as possible as opposed to leaving someone on their own.
But shouldn't any latecomers be under the command of the first officer on the scene? If he's already working on it the others shouldn't interfere unless he says so.
It depends on what they thought they saw, I imagine. Best thing that could happen in this link is if someone who is a cop could pitch in on what the training is for this kind of thing.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
d-usa wrote:I can give you links of legal gun owners killing cops. Should we kill them?
The one link you posted is a guy who resisted arrest, who then got tazered, and who continued to resist arrest and killed a cop.
This relates to the guy who was talking to the cop while holding a gun how?
If the first cop would have killed him as soon as he noticed he was armed it would be a story. The fact that he was able to continue a peaceful interaction with him makes the action of the other cops wrong. Let him continue to talk and engage, provide him with backup by aiming and being ready to pull the trigger to kill him if he makes the wrong move, and go from there.
I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.
Another incident from the link that shows you don't know what can happen: https://www.odmp.org/officer/22733-police-officer-douglas-scott-barney-i
Here, another officer was killed while questioning a suspect. He attempted to taste him when the suspect tried resisting. Once again, the taser failed and the officer was killed: https://www.odmp.org/officer/22745-deputy-sheriff-derek-geer
Here's an incident where an officer tried talking to an armed suspect and was killed: https://www.odmp.org/officer/22749-senior-deputy-mark-logsdon
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Post by: sebster
Relapse wrote:To play devil's advocate, I see the other side of this in that if he was wrong, it could have gotten him and the other two officers injured or killed.
Of course, and that's why policing is hard. You have to make judgement calls in a split second when there are lives at stake.
The absurdity in this case is the guy got the call right - he had great instincts and explained his positioning extremely well after the fact. He seems like the kind of guy that you'd want in a police force.
But he gets fired for that call. And while it isn't said outright, it seems to be that the police dept is saying there is no discretion possible in this situation, officers are expected to shoot. That's kind of terrifying.
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Post by: Ouze
Relapse wrote:I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.
It kind of sounds like you're arguing for cops to shoot everyone they encounter, since they can't react before someone could potentially draw and fire.
Obviously there needs to be a middle ground there. Police are supposed to protect and serve, and while there is some danger of being shot on the job, ultimately you're not in a war zone. If you want a job without risk, be a librarian or a technical writer.
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Post by: sebster
Relapse wrote:Someone who is potentially hostile with a gun pointed in a "safe" direction can very quickly put a bullet through a person. There is a huge spike in police being murdered this year. This memorial page gives a rundown of officer deaths in 2016 and how they died. A large portion was from being shot: https://www.odmp.org/search/year
"Huge spike" is something of a stretch. It's more 'tiny uptick in fairly noisy data that none the less has shown a major decline over time'.  Automatically Appended Next Post: Yeah, you shouldn't put too much stock in big sounding percentages that are just showing single year movements in sub-categories.
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Post by: d-usa
Relapse wrote:Spetulhu wrote:Relapse wrote:I'm pretty sure procedure for this kind of situation is to get as many officers on the scene as possible as opposed to leaving someone on their own.
But shouldn't any latecomers be under the command of the first officer on the scene? If he's already working on it the others shouldn't interfere unless he says so.
It depends on what they thought they saw, I imagine. Best thing that could happen in this link is if someone who is a cop could pitch in on what the training is for this kind of thing.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
d-usa wrote:I can give you links of legal gun owners killing cops. Should we kill them?
The one link you posted is a guy who resisted arrest, who then got tazered, and who continued to resist arrest and killed a cop.
This relates to the guy who was talking to the cop while holding a gun how?
If the first cop would have killed him as soon as he noticed he was armed it would be a story. The fact that he was able to continue a peaceful interaction with him makes the action of the other cops wrong. Let him continue to talk and engage, provide him with backup by aiming and being ready to pull the trigger to kill him if he makes the wrong move, and go from there.
I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.
Another incident from the link that shows you don't know what can happen: https://www.odmp.org/officer/22733-police-officer-douglas-scott-barney-ii
So we are in fact pretending that the only two options are "kill" and "don't draw your weapon and get killed"?
So your two examples now are a guy who was actively resisting arrest, and a guy who drew his weapon and killed a cop who wasn't expecting a confrontation.
And this counters the "we have one officer who was de-escalating a situation, let the two other officers draw their weapons and aim and be ready to pull the trigger" how?
Again, I'm saying that killing him "just because" and ignoring the progress cop #1 was making is just as stupid as not doing anything to anticipate a situation that could escalate. But there are options available besides "kill him", mainly having other officers who arrived take a defensive position while drawn their weapon and aiming them ready to pull that trigger if needed.
If you think your only response available is lethal force, you shouldn't be a cop.
If you think you can't apply 6lb of pressure with your finger in the time it takes someone to raise their weapon, aim, and fire, then you shouldn't be a cop.
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Post by: Relapse
Ouze wrote:Relapse wrote:I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.
It kind of sounds like you're arguing for cops to shoot everyone they encounter, since they can't react before someone could potentially draw and fire.
Obviously there needs to be a middle ground there. Police are supposed to protect and serve, and while there is some danger of being shot on the job, ultimately you're not in a war zone. If you want a job without risk, be a librarian or a technical writer.
What I am advocating is not automatically saying a cop is at fault for shooting someone in a situation where someone has a drawn gun. This is especially true when we are only getting part of the story. Maybe one of the other officers interpreted a twitch as a move to aim the gun and thought it was time to shoot.
Automatically Appended Next Post: d-usa wrote:Relapse wrote:Spetulhu wrote:Relapse wrote:I'm pretty sure procedure for this kind of situation is to get as many officers on the scene as possible as opposed to leaving someone on their own.
But shouldn't any latecomers be under the command of the first officer on the scene? If he's already working on it the others shouldn't interfere unless he says so.
It depends on what they thought they saw, I imagine. Best thing that could happen in this link is if someone who is a cop could pitch in on what the training is for this kind of thing.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
d-usa wrote:I can give you links of legal gun owners killing cops. Should we kill them?
The one link you posted is a guy who resisted arrest, who then got tazered, and who continued to resist arrest and killed a cop.
This relates to the guy who was talking to the cop while holding a gun how?
If the first cop would have killed him as soon as he noticed he was armed it would be a story. The fact that he was able to continue a peaceful interaction with him makes the action of the other cops wrong. Let him continue to talk and engage, provide him with backup by aiming and being ready to pull the trigger to kill him if he makes the wrong move, and go from there.
I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.
Another incident from the link that shows you don't know what can happen: https://www.odmp.org/officer/22733-police-officer-douglas-scott-barney-ii
So we are in fact pretending that the only two options are "kill" and "don't draw your weapon and get killed"?
So your two examples now are a guy who was actively resisting arrest, and a guy who drew his weapon and killed a cop who wasn't expecting a confrontation.
And this counters the "we have one officer who was de-escalating a situation, let the two other officers draw their weapons and aim and be ready to pull the trigger" how?
Again, I'm saying that killing him "just because" and ignoring the progress cop #1 was making is just as stupid as not doing anything to anticipate a situation that could escalate. But there are options available besides "kill him", mainly having other officers who arrived take a defensive position while drawn their weapon and aiming them ready to pull that trigger if needed.
If you think your only response available is lethal force, you shouldn't be a cop.
If you think you can't apply 6lb of pressure with your finger in the time it takes someone to raise their weapon, aim, and fire, then you shouldn't be a cop.
You are ignoring the link where a cop tried to talk down an armed suspect and was killed for his miscalculation. I respect you a lot, D, but if you are going to not even bother reading the links I am spoon feeding you from the main link, we have nothing to talk about.
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Post by: Ouze
Relapse wrote:What I am advocating is not automatically saying a cop is at fault for shooting someone in a situation where someone has a drawn gun.
I don't think many people do that. Most people side with cops even in far more ambiguous situations then "guy had a gun in his hand". Look at how many threads on here are full of people defending cops who have shot unarmed people, if not the low statistics of cops being indicted for bad shoots (let along convicted).
I think there is generally a very strong presumption of a righteous shoot when the suspect had a gun in their hand. I'm a pretty harsh critic of modern policing, which has often embraced a bunker mentality like an occupying force in hostile territory. Even from that mindset I don't think you have to point a weapon to open the door to lethal force.
In an ideal world, I'd like to think the 2 cops who showed up would have seen that the first cop was peacefully de-escalating the situation and had taken up supportive cover, ready to shoot if needed - the only life at risk would have been the cop who was OK with that situation. That's some pretty omniscient after-the-fact quarterbacking though. If you arrive on a scene and there is a guy clearly holding a gun, it's an uphill battle to convince me that it wasn't a righteous shoot.
Still nuts that the first cop got fired though.
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Post by: tneva82
Relapse wrote: d-usa wrote:Some of the cop killers were legal gun owners, best way cops could protect themselves is to kill anyone that says "I am licensed to carry and I am carrying". They can pull that gun out and kill pretty quickly.
It's also very easily to quickly escalate from compliance at a traffic stop to running over and killing the cop, so it's better to kill people in their cars after they pull over.
I don't really care about how quickly something can escalate, if he's not a threat right now you don't kill him. It doesn't matter one bit how much of a threat he can be 5 seconds later, you don't kill people based on the potential for a threat. If someone can't live with that they need to go switch to a profession with more certainty, because you can't be a cop if you think you need to kill because someone might be a threat later.
If you read the links provided, you will see how quickly a situation can escalate, making the decision to shoot someone with a drawn gun more understandable.
Funny how in other countries police don't get shot all the time then despite them following "shoot only when absolutely needed". Simply having gun doesn't lead to being shot immediately but by your logic it should get shot fast. Funny thing is rate isn't higher than in USA even relative to population sizes...
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Post by: Prestor Jon
Relapse wrote: Ouze wrote:Relapse wrote:I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.
It kind of sounds like you're arguing for cops to shoot everyone they encounter, since they can't react before someone could potentially draw and fire.
Obviously there needs to be a middle ground there. Police are supposed to protect and serve, and while there is some danger of being shot on the job, ultimately you're not in a war zone. If you want a job without risk, be a librarian or a technical writer.
What I am advocating is not automatically saying a cop is at fault for shooting someone in a situation where someone has a drawn gun. This is especially true when we are only getting part of the story. Maybe one of the other officers interpreted a twitch as a move to aim the gun and thought it was time to shoot.
An armed person standing on their own property isn't illegal. Refusing to drop a pistol you're holding and pointing in a safe direction fast enough to satisfy a police officer shouldn't be a capital offense warranting a summary execution. I have had numerous conversations over the years with dozens of armed people that were strangers to me, as long as the guns are pointed in a safe direction it's not a big deal. Giving police officers leeway to kill somebody based solely on the possibility of him/her presenting a threat to officer safety in the near future that has yet to manifest is insane. It tramples on our liberty and the concept of innocent until proven guilty while treating citizens as hostile combatants prior to them presenting a clear immediate threat. No citizen is allowed to shoot an armed person simply because they're armed and therefore present a possible future threat and neither should any cops. In the OP situation the first cop on the scene didn't feel threatened and felt he had the situation in hand therefore there was no reason for the backup cops to shoot a man simply for being armed. If somebody points a gun at a cop or any other person that person should expect to get shot, I don't have a problem with a lethal response to a lethal threat but nobody deserves to be killed just because he/she didn't drop a gun pointed in a safe direction fast enough. That's just fear biting.
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Post by: Relapse
Prestor Jon wrote:Relapse wrote: Ouze wrote:Relapse wrote:I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.
It kind of sounds like you're arguing for cops to shoot everyone they encounter, since they can't react before someone could potentially draw and fire.
Obviously there needs to be a middle ground there. Police are supposed to protect and serve, and while there is some danger of being shot on the job, ultimately you're not in a war zone. If you want a job without risk, be a librarian or a technical writer.
What I am advocating is not automatically saying a cop is at fault for shooting someone in a situation where someone has a drawn gun. This is especially true when we are only getting part of the story. Maybe one of the other officers interpreted a twitch as a move to aim the gun and thought it was time to shoot.
An armed person standing on their own property isn't illegal. Refusing to drop a pistol you're holding and pointing in a safe direction fast enough to satisfy a police officer shouldn't be a capital offense warranting a summary execution. I have had numerous conversations over the years with dozens of armed people that were strangers to me, as long as the guns are pointed in a safe direction it's not a big deal. Giving police officers leeway to kill somebody based solely on the possibility of him/her presenting a threat to officer safety in the near future that has yet to manifest is insane. It tramples on our liberty and the concept of innocent until proven guilty while treating citizens as hostile combatants prior to them presenting a clear immediate threat. No citizen is allowed to shoot an armed person simply because they're armed and therefore present a possible future threat and neither should any cops. In the OP situation the first cop on the scene didn't feel threatened and felt he had the situation in hand therefore there was no reason for the backup cops to shoot a man simply for being armed. If somebody points a gun at a cop or any other person that person should expect to get shot, I don't have a problem with a lethal response to a lethal threat but nobody deserves to be killed just because he/she didn't drop a gun pointed in a safe direction fast enough. That's just fear biting.
These conversations you say you had with armed strangers, what was their nature? Was it a dangerous situation and what capacity were you acting in? I can say I've had conversations with armed strangers also, such as when I would be out hunting, at a shooting range or during military exercises. I can say from experience none of these compare to a situation with an agitated person holding a gun who could possibly shoot me in the next second.
Something we need to also realize is that we don't know what the other officers saw happening. I said it earlier, one of them might have misread a twitch as a point where the gun was being aimed.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ouze wrote:Relapse wrote:What I am advocating is not automatically saying a cop is at fault for shooting someone in a situation where someone has a drawn gun.
I don't think many people do that. Most people side with cops even in far more ambiguous situations then "guy had a gun in his hand". Look at how many threads on here are full of people defending cops who have shot unarmed people, if not the low statistics of cops being indicted for bad shoots (let along convicted).
I think there is generally a very strong presumption of a righteous shoot when the suspect had a gun in their hand. I'm a pretty harsh critic of modern policing, which has often embraced a bunker mentality like an occupying force in hostile territory. Even from that mindset I don't think you have to point a weapon to open the door to lethal force.
In an ideal world, I'd like to think the 2 cops who showed up would have seen that the first cop was peacefully de-escalating the situation and had taken up supportive cover, ready to shoot if needed - the only life at risk would have been the cop who was OK with that situation. That's some pretty omniscient after-the-fact quarterbacking though. If you arrive on a scene and there is a guy clearly holding a gun, it's an uphill battle to convince me that it wasn't a righteous shoot.
Still nuts that the first cop got fired though.
What would be interesting is to get the stories of the other two officers. Did they see a situation that was palming down, or a twitchy, agitated person who made a sudden move that was interpreted as threatening? Was there a policy for such situations to protect fellow officers that was violated?
These are things I would like to see answered in an article that isn't as obviously biased as the one in the OP.
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Post by: Dreadwinter
It doesn't matter what their nature was. What you are saying is that anybody with a gun talking to police can expect to be executed for having a gun. Something that all 2nd amendment lovers should be horrified by.
These situations are all different, even the one you linked about the cop trying to talked down the armed man. The people are different, the situations are different, the environment is different. Treating them all the same is absolutely ridiculous. The people living in the area that these cops operate should be frightened, because this means that the cops are always going to shoot first.
86099
Post by: Prestor Jon
Relapse wrote:Prestor Jon wrote:Relapse wrote: Ouze wrote:Relapse wrote:I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.
It kind of sounds like you're arguing for cops to shoot everyone they encounter, since they can't react before someone could potentially draw and fire.
Obviously there needs to be a middle ground there. Police are supposed to protect and serve, and while there is some danger of being shot on the job, ultimately you're not in a war zone. If you want a job without risk, be a librarian or a technical writer.
What I am advocating is not automatically saying a cop is at fault for shooting someone in a situation where someone has a drawn gun. This is especially true when we are only getting part of the story. Maybe one of the other officers interpreted a twitch as a move to aim the gun and thought it was time to shoot.
An armed person standing on their own property isn't illegal. Refusing to drop a pistol you're holding and pointing in a safe direction fast enough to satisfy a police officer shouldn't be a capital offense warranting a summary execution. I have had numerous conversations over the years with dozens of armed people that were strangers to me, as long as the guns are pointed in a safe direction it's not a big deal. Giving police officers leeway to kill somebody based solely on the possibility of him/her presenting a threat to officer safety in the near future that has yet to manifest is insane. It tramples on our liberty and the concept of innocent until proven guilty while treating citizens as hostile combatants prior to them presenting a clear immediate threat. No citizen is allowed to shoot an armed person simply because they're armed and therefore present a possible future threat and neither should any cops. In the OP situation the first cop on the scene didn't feel threatened and felt he had the situation in hand therefore there was no reason for the backup cops to shoot a man simply for being armed. If somebody points a gun at a cop or any other person that person should expect to get shot, I don't have a problem with a lethal response to a lethal threat but nobody deserves to be killed just because he/she didn't drop a gun pointed in a safe direction fast enough. That's just fear biting.
These conversations you say you had with armed strangers, what was their nature? Was it a dangerous situation and what capacity were you acting in? I can say I've had conversations with armed strangers also, such as when I would be out hunting, at a shooting range or during military exercises. I can say from experience none of these compare to a situation with an agitated person holding a gun who could possibly shoot me in the next second.
Something we need to also realize is that we don't know what the other officers saw happening. I said it earlier, one of them might have misread a twitch as a point where the gun was being aimed.
The situations were hunting, range trips, training classes, gun stores and social occasions, which are all the same type of locations wherein people have been shot (sometimes lethally). Again, there is a huge difference between being armed and being an immediate threat. Being armed makes you a potential threat but until that potential is realized pre-emptive action isn't warranted or lawful for citizens and exemptions shouldn't be made for cops either. Killing people is a last resort not a pre-emptive measure used because the person might be armed or is armed and might pose an immediate threat at some future time. We've decided as a society that we're all innocent until proven guilty, we all get the benefit of the doubt and as such we shouldn't make police policy that treats the exception as the rule.
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Post by: Easy E
Those two stories Relapse provided are the fuel for how we train cops to react, so their first instinct is to think that everyone is about to draw and fire at them. They take those few instances and tell every cop that this could happen to you at any moment so always be ready to escalate first.
I honestly don't blame cops for then going out and shooting people because they are doing exactly what we are training them to do.
I put the fault at the feet of the training we offer to our police force. That is a systematic problem and not an individual problem. There is no point blaming the cops for doing what we are training them to do.
Instead, we need more State and Federal guidelines for what training cops get, and try to de-emphasize the "Bulletproof Mind" approach and instead use a De-escalation approach. Departments that adopt it can then be awarded with different federal assistance dollars than those who choose to use their own guidelines.
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Post by: Relapse
Dreadwinter wrote:It doesn't matter what their nature was. What you are saying is that anybody with a gun talking to police can expect to be executed for having a gun. Something that all 2nd amendment lovers should be horrified by.
These situations are all different, even the one you linked about the cop trying to talked down the armed man. The people are different, the situations are different, the environment is different. Treating them all the same is absolutely ridiculous. The people living in the area that these cops operate should be frightened, because this means that the cops are always going to shoot first.
Exactly my point with the links. Some people here are acting like it's a cookie cutter treatment that an an armed and potentially dangerous individual should be reasoned with on the basis of a heavily biased news story. As the link I posted shows in it's various stories about officer murders, there are times reasoning is not an option and police end up dead. It's boils down to an in the moment interpretation of what is going on.
Obviously the circumstances matter,but we don't have any real source we can trust on what was happening here. The author of the article obviously has an axe to grind and slanted the reporting against the police.
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Post by: A Town Called Malus
The first response to seeing someone with a gun should not be to shoot them, unless they are in the process of shooting at people, in which case a shooting may be justified.
Also, how have they slanted the reporting against the police when the article is written in support of a police officer?
12313
Post by: Ouze
 A Town Called Malus wrote:The first response to seeing someone with a gun should not be to shoot them, unless they are in the process of shooting at people, in which case a shooting may be justified.
See, I feel like this goes too far in the other direction. I don't think it's reasonable to require police to actually be under fire before using lethal force. I'm not sure exactly where the needle should be there, but it's slightly before that.
Prestor made a good point that having a gun out on your own property isn't illegal (although brandishing is, but that's an escape into semantics). While I said previously that I think a gun in the hand is within the envelope for lawful, reasonable lethal force, I will definite concede that context can really, really sway things here and it's not at all black and white. When I say "I don't think you need to wait for the gun to be pointed at you", I'm meaning, like, a guy screams "I'm going to kill you pigs" and pulls a gun, not "cops stop a guy in the woods holding a hunting rifle and shoot him on sight because he had a deer gun".
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Post by: Kanluwen
Really hope the ACLU comes in on this officer's side.
Fething despicable.
221
Post by: Frazzled
 Kanluwen wrote:Really hope the ACLU comes in on this officer's side.
Fething despicable.
While I agree I don't see what action they could bring, other than moral.
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Post by: Kanluwen
Frazzled wrote: Kanluwen wrote:Really hope the ACLU comes in on this officer's side.
Fething despicable.
While I agree I don't see what action they could bring, other than moral.
Wrongful termination? Accusations of slander?
Unless there is an element of this that we have not seen(i.e. if the two Barney fething Fifes had the gun in question pointed at them when they rolled up), everything about the way this was handled violates the standards that many police departments put forth for their officers.
The officers arriving after the initial point of contact in a situation like this? They're generally told to stay back if an officer is engaging the suspect. The goal is to keep the suspect contained and calm, not exacerbate the situation.
The officers arriving after? They're generally told to listen to the initial responding officer in regards to what they want the responding officers to do.
This officer should be held up as an example of policing at its finest, not thrown out because two fething yahoos decided to John McClane it up. Those are the two who should be out on their asses.
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Post by: Ouze
This guy was on his probationary period in an at-will state. There is no action to be brought here outside of public pressure.
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Post by: Kanluwen
Ouze wrote:This guy was on his probationary period in an at-will state. There is no action to be brought here outside of public pressure.
More's the fething pity.
Still despicable. Burn West Virginia to the fething ground.
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Post by: curran12
And this is what happens to the good cops. They get butted out by the thugs. And the department protects the thugs.
I do my best to respect and trust police, but seriously, at this point that feels like half insanity to do that at this point.
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Post by: Frazzled
Wrongful termination? Accusations of slander?
It appears to have been during his probation period in a right to work state. I don't think that would fly. Wouldn't stop them from trying though but thats not usually their bag. Unless there is an element of this that we have not seen(i.e. if the two Barney fething Fifes had the gun in question pointed at them when they rolled up), everything about the way this was handled violates the standards that many police departments put forth for their officers.
Well clearly only have a bit of the story, but I am not disagreeing with you. This officer should be held up as an example of policing at its finest, not thrown out because two fething yahoos decided to John McClane it up. Those are the two who should be out on their asses.
Again we only have a tiny bit of the story. I'd like to hear more. But based only on the admittedly lopsided hit piece of the article, I'd agree with you. Still despicable. Burn West Virginia to the fething ground.
Thats not especially helpful.
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Post by: Dwarfmorf101
Still despicable. Burn West Virginia to the fething ground.
We all want to. but for other reasons.
EDIT: wow i suck at quote.
221
Post by: Frazzled
Still despicable. Burn West Virginia to the fething ground.
We all want to. but for other reasons. EDIT: wow i suck at quote.
Remember, those old boys can shoot, and would probably invite you to try it. 
2548
Post by: jmurph
Ouze wrote:Yeah, it's very unclear to me why the first cop was peacefully de-escalating the situation, the second 2 cops show up, shoot him, and he's the bad guy. They were free to take cover, hell even draw and target the guy from cover while the first cop did his thing. Ultimately the only life that needed to be at risk was the first cops, and he clearly was OK with that risk. It's kind of amazing to me that he got fired for that.
He's the bad guy because he had assessed the situation and used non lethal force and then two officers come in and shoot the guy, thus opening a pretty clear excessive force/wrongful death claim. This is all about covering liability, not sound law enforcement. Hopefully the local voters will have something to say about this.
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Post by: Frazzled
 jmurph wrote: Ouze wrote:Yeah, it's very unclear to me why the first cop was peacefully de-escalating the situation, the second 2 cops show up, shoot him, and he's the bad guy. They were free to take cover, hell even draw and target the guy from cover while the first cop did his thing. Ultimately the only life that needed to be at risk was the first cops, and he clearly was OK with that risk. It's kind of amazing to me that he got fired for that.
He's the bad guy because he had assessed the situation and used non lethal force and then two officers come in and shoot the guy, thus opening a pretty clear excessive force/wrongful death claim. This is all about covering liability, not sound law enforcement. Hopefully the local voters will have something to say about this.
That is an excellent theory for what is occurring. 
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Post by: Relapse
Ouze wrote: A Town Called Malus wrote:The first response to seeing someone with a gun should not be to shoot them, unless they are in the process of shooting at people, in which case a shooting may be justified.
See, I feel like this goes too far in the other direction. I don't think it's reasonable to require police to actually be under fire before using lethal force. I'm not sure exactly where the needle should be there, but it's slightly before that.
Prestor made a good point that having a gun out on your own property isn't illegal (although brandishing is, but that's an escape into semantics). While I said previously that I think a gun in the hand is within the envelope for lawful, reasonable lethal force, I will definite concede that context can really, really sway things here and it's not at all black and white. When I say "I don't think you need to wait for the gun to be pointed at you", I'm meaning, like, a guy screams "I'm going to kill you pigs" and pulls a gun, not "cops stop a guy in the woods holding a hunting rifle and shoot him on sight because he had a deer gun".
That is my stance right there in a nutshell. Something else to consider that isn't brought up is the records of the other two officers. Are they hotheads or new, or people that use lethal force as a habit? Are they stand out officers who perhaps have seen situations like this end badly for fellow officers?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kanluwen wrote: Ouze wrote:This guy was on his probationary period in an at-will state. There is no action to be brought here outside of public pressure.
More's the fething pity.
Still despicable. Burn West Virginia to the fething ground.
Destroy West Virginia and everyone in it because of the justified or unjustified actions of two policemen? What a trail of carnage you would leave as a cop.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
A Town Called Malus wrote:The first response to seeing someone with a gun should not be to shoot them, unless they are in the process of shooting at people, in which case a shooting may be justified.
Also, how have they slanted the reporting against the police when the article is written in support of a police officer?
Here are some excerpts from the OP, pretty clearly indicating the bias of the reporter. A couple of other incidents with the terminated cop were mentioned, but not described or elaborated on.
West Virginia cop fired for not killing a man with an unloaded gun
By Radley Balko
September 12 at 5:23 PM
"We’ve tracked countless cases here where cops were able to keep their jobs after killing unarmed people, killing people after responding to the wrong house, killing people and then lying about it . . . the list goes on.
Give the Weirton, W.Va., police chief some credit. He’s come up with a new spin on the the same problem. He just fired a cop for not killing someone"
"What Mader did upon arriving at the scene is a hell of a lot braver course of action than simply opening fire when the suspect doesn’t immediately disarm. What Mader did is in fact exactly what we want cops to do when someone is in crisis. It’s also precisely what law enforcement officers say they do on a daily basis — put themselves at risk in order to save lives. Mader should have been given a medal. Unfortunately, two more cops then showed up, and quickly shot Williams dead. "
"I hope he’s given the same second chance that corrupt, trigger-happy cops are given. My hunch is that he’ll be driving trucks."
A quick study of Radely Balko shows that he has an interesting history: http://shameproject.com/profile/radley-balko/
This is the guy that wrote the story getting people here all heated up.
100848
Post by: tneva82
Relapse wrote: Dreadwinter wrote:It doesn't matter what their nature was. What you are saying is that anybody with a gun talking to police can expect to be executed for having a gun. Something that all 2nd amendment lovers should be horrified by.
These situations are all different, even the one you linked about the cop trying to talked down the armed man. The people are different, the situations are different, the environment is different. Treating them all the same is absolutely ridiculous. The people living in the area that these cops operate should be frightened, because this means that the cops are always going to shoot first.
Exactly my point with the links. Some people here are acting like it's a cookie cutter treatment that an an armed and potentially dangerous individual should be reasoned with on the basis of a heavily biased news story. As the link I posted shows in it's various stories about officer murders, there are times reasoning is not an option and police end up dead. It's boils down to an in the moment interpretation of what is going on.
Obviously the circumstances matter,but we don't have any real source we can trust on what was happening here. The author of the article obviously has an axe to grind and slanted the reporting against the police.
But why it's so exclusive to USA that police are shoot first ask later? If not shooting right away leads to police killings so often why in other countries where police aren't shooting so trigger happy they get killed lot less frequently than in USA even when factoring in population size?
Just a thought but maybe it is related to how police shoot first ask second...When you know you are going to get shot anyway might just as well try to shoot first yourself.
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Post by: Frazzled
tneva82 wrote:Relapse wrote: Dreadwinter wrote:It doesn't matter what their nature was. What you are saying is that anybody with a gun talking to police can expect to be executed for having a gun. Something that all 2nd amendment lovers should be horrified by. These situations are all different, even the one you linked about the cop trying to talked down the armed man. The people are different, the situations are different, the environment is different. Treating them all the same is absolutely ridiculous. The people living in the area that these cops operate should be frightened, because this means that the cops are always going to shoot first.
Exactly my point with the links. Some people here are acting like it's a cookie cutter treatment that an an armed and potentially dangerous individual should be reasoned with on the basis of a heavily biased news story. As the link I posted shows in it's various stories about officer murders, there are times reasoning is not an option and police end up dead. It's boils down to an in the moment interpretation of what is going on. Obviously the circumstances matter,but we don't have any real source we can trust on what was happening here. The author of the article obviously has an axe to grind and slanted the reporting against the police.
But why it's so exclusive to USA that police are shoot first ask later? If not shooting right away leads to police killings so often why in other countries where police aren't shooting so trigger happy they get killed lot less frequently than in USA even when factoring in population size? Just a thought but maybe it is related to how police shoot first ask second...When you know you are going to get shot anyway might just as well try to shoot first yourself.
We do have cartels and heavily armed druggees here. That is one big difference. The cat people are pretty annoying too, but we'll deal with them with the Revolution comes. Its not. In the rest of the Americas its shoot first and then just disappear the body. Or alternatively its arrest and you never see them alive again.
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Post by: tneva82
And there's no criminals and drug users elsewhere in the world? Funny how those keep popping up in news outside USA then...Somebody must inform reporters they are reporting of ghosts!
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Post by: Frazzled
tneva82 wrote:And there's no criminals and drug users elsewhere in the world? Funny how those keep popping up in news outside USA then...Somebody must inform reporters they are reporting of ghosts!
Outside of the Iron triangle I don't think there are many who equal individuals such as EL Chapo and his organization with tens of thousands of members who have access to rockets, submarines, and armored vehicles, no actually.
ok maybe Russia.
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Post by: A Town Called Malus
Frazzled wrote:tneva82 wrote:And there's no criminals and drug users elsewhere in the world? Funny how those keep popping up in news outside USA then...Somebody must inform reporters they are reporting of ghosts!
Outside of the Iron triangle I don't think there are many who equal individuals such as EL Chapo and his organization with tens of thousands of members who have access to rockets, submarines, and armored vehicles, no actually. ok maybe Russia.
And how often are those rockets and armoured vehicles and submarines used to kill US policemen in the USA? I mean, this latest shooting happened in West Virginia. That is around 1,500 miles from the Mexican border. You can't blame everything on having a particularly well armed criminal group in the next country over. Also, from 2006 to 2010, the drug cartels killed ~6000 people in the USA. In 2010 alone there were ~13000 murders total in the USA. The amount of people killed by the cartels is not large enough to justify affecting how the police interact with the general population country-wide.
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Post by: Relapse
tneva82 wrote:And there's no criminals and drug users elsewhere in the world? Funny how those keep popping up in news outside USA then...Somebody must inform reporters they are reporting of ghosts!
You don't have cartels on your doorstep that are knocking off, literally, 60,000 people per year in a Warzone like setting. These are the people coming into the U.S. as well as street gangs that aren't averse to murder.
On the flip side, there are more than a few instances in the police memorial link I posted that talk of murders of police being taken into custody instead of being riddled with bullets.
This man gives a good over view of Mexican Cartels: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VYU25aJpg5o
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Post by: Frazzled
They evidently have them in Northern Virginia. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/ms-13-members-convicted-of-three-northern-virginia-murders/2016/05/09/3d32c668-1609-11e6-9e16-2e5a123aac62_story.html BUT I agree that the training is not focused on "defusing the situation" but on controlling the situation and reacting quickly to a potentially violent threat. You can say what you want but if another individual is waving a pistol, thats justified in any jurisdiction anywhere on the globe (except Liechtenstein of course, as Hernan Desoto once said*: Germany, so far from God, so close to Liechtenstein). *There is no proof Hernan Desoto said that as he died centuries before Germany was formed. but who knows, he was speaking Spanish and what self respecting Blackfoot knows Spanish?
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Post by: Easy E
Ouze wrote:This guy was on his probationary period in an at-will state. There is no action to be brought here outside of public pressure.
Then maybe the problem is At-Will states?
De-rail Achievement: Unlocked
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Post by: Relapse
It is interesting that the author of this heavily biased article is the guy leading most of the posters here around by their noses.
A little profile of Radely Balko for those who might have missed it:
http://shameproject.com/profile/radley-balko/
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Post by: Easy E
Well, we can agree on the problem even if we don't agree on the solutions. 80% of problem solving is getting people to agree there is a problem int he first place.
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Post by: Prestor Jon
What's your point? Every journalist has an agenda, they choose what stories they cover and how they write about them. I wouldn't recommend anyone only reading once source about any newsworthy event. I agree with you that Balko has an axe to grind but that doesn't mean that he doesn't raise important points or draw attention to important stories. It should be disconcerting to people that at a time of consistently decreasing levels of violent crime that we have more SWAT teams and armored vehicles in our police departments than ever.
Here are a bunch of other stories about the same event that weren't written by Balko. Is there some fact or aspect of the events that you think Balko didn't include or manufactured? Balko doesn't even mention that the suicidal man was black, something that BET's article felt was pretty important to mention. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette article states that the suicidal man unloaded the pistol in front of his wife and told her he was going to make the cops kill him and was then waving his pistol around between Mader and the other 2 cops and one of the cops shot him in the back of the head behind his right ear. Balko didn't mention that detail either. The Truth About Guns article includes a quote from Mader that he felt the other officers did the right thing shooting the man because they didn't have the same information and context that Mader had. Balko didn't use that quote.
http://www.bet.com/news/national/2016/09/14/ridiculous--west-virginia-cop-fired-for-not-shooting-black-man-h.html
http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2016/09/11/Weirton-fired-officer-who-did-not-fire-at-man-with-gun/stories/201609090080
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2016/09/johannes-paulsen/west-virginia-cop-fired-not-shooting-suspect/
http://www.complex.com/life/2016/09/white-west-virginia-cop-fired-not-shooting-suicidal-black-man
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Post by: Relapse
The point is, most posters here are working their opinions off a heavily biased article, written by someone they would in all likely hood accuse of being a Breibart clone.
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Post by: Prestor Jon
Relapse wrote:
Do any of those articles also mention the suspect began walking towards the othe officers while waving his gun around? As was mentioned in yet another unlinked report?
Aside from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette article and TheTruthAboutGuns article? No, I don't think so.
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Post by: Relapse
Prestor Jon wrote:Relapse wrote:
Do any of those articles also mention the suspect began walking towards the othe officers while waving his gun around? As was mentioned in yet another unlinked report?
Aside from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette article and TheTruthAboutGuns article? No, I don't think so.
I'll give them a look.
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Post by: Prestor Jon
Relapse wrote:Prestor Jon wrote:Relapse wrote:
Do any of those articles also mention the suspect began walking towards the othe officers while waving his gun around? As was mentioned in yet another unlinked report?
Aside from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette article and TheTruthAboutGuns article? No, I don't think so.
I'll give them a look.
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette article is the one most other articles, including Balko's, are using as their primary source. The Truth About Guns is the most balanced article I found and you'll probably agree with it (you might want to bookmark that site).
Williams shouldn't have pointed a gun at the other cops and he was actively trying to commit suicide by cop so it's not surprising that he was successful and he bears responsibility for his death.
Mader had the situation under control when he was on scene and subsequently lost control over the scene when the other officers arrived and the likelihood of Williams getting shot increased exponentially. The situation worsened when the police presence increased and a man was killed when there had been a decent chance his life could have been saved. That's a policing failure and it shouldn't be swept under the rug and ignored because Williams' pistol created justification for a "good shoot."
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Post by: Relapse
Prestor Jon wrote:Relapse wrote:Prestor Jon wrote:Relapse wrote:
Do any of those articles also mention the suspect began walking towards the othe officers while waving his gun around? As was mentioned in yet another unlinked report?
Aside from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette article and TheTruthAboutGuns article? No, I don't think so.
I'll give them a look.
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette article is the one most other articles, including Balko's, are using as their primary source. The Truth About Guns is the most balanced article I found and you'll probably agree with it (you might want to bookmark that site).
Williams shouldn't have pointed a gun at the other cops and he was actively trying to commit suicide by cop so it's not surprising that he was successful and he bears responsibility for his death.
Mader had the situation under control when he was on scene and subsequently lost control over the scene when the other officers arrived and the likelihood of Williams getting shot increased exponentially. The situation worsened when the police presence increased and a man was killed when there had been a decent chance his life could have been saved. That's a policing failure and it shouldn't be swept under the rug and ignored because Williams' pistol created justification for a "good shoot."
As you say, Pittsburgh article is the best. On the other hand, I think it's prudent police procedure to back another officer up in the case of an armed suspect. The shooting was justified, but the question is, what can be learned from this that won't be forgotten when another officer is killed in a similar situation.
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Post by: Ensis Ferrae
Relapse wrote:
The shooting was justified, but the question is, what can be learned from this that won't be forgotten when another officer is killed in a similar situation.
As Prestor Jon points out, officer #1 had situation under control.... officer #s 2 and 3 caused a loss of control, and reintroduced a whole lot into the situation that wasn't there previously.... In my eyes, the shooting was most definitely fething NOT "justified"
What can be learned from this is: pay attention to your fellow officers, if you arrive at a scene late and he/she has it under control, don't feth everything up by trying to be John Fething Wayne!
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Post by: DutchWinsAll
 Henry wrote:So, an ex-marine tried to de-escelate the situation using military and police training and it was two other idiots who slaughtered the person who needed help. I thought part of the problem was the police hiring all these psycho killer butcher-snipers from the army.
How do you know the other officers didn't also serve in the military? Just making it up or do you know something?
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Post by: sebster
 Easy E wrote:I honestly don't blame cops for then going out and shooting people because they are doing exactly what we are training them to do. I put the fault at the feet of the training we offer to our police force. That is a systematic problem and not an individual problem. There is no point blaming the cops for doing what we are training them to do.
Yeah, it is important to remember the history of this. There really was a steady increase in police killed in the line of duty through the 60s and 70s. Police training changed as a result - beat police and community policing was minimised, and instead you had a lot of practices to ensure the safety of officers, such as teaching officers to be more willing to draw and fire their guns. The issue is that killings of police officers peaked in the 70s, and is now lower per capita than it has ever been. But the training and mindset hasn't changed. Here's the graph on this I posted earlier. Automatically Appended Next Post: Thanks for finding and posting that. It's given me pause for thought, and plenty of reasons to believe there might be more to this story. Anyone who's resume starts with Cato and moves to Huffington is inherently suspicious - the only thing those two organisations have is putting agendas ahead of decent journalism. That said, I'll never forgive SHAME for screwing up their acronym. Shame The Hacks Who Abuse Media Ethics is STHWAME. They could have just said Shaming Hacks Abusing Media Ethics and it would have worked. Idiots 
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Post by: Relapse
 Ensis Ferrae wrote:Relapse wrote:
The shooting was justified, but the question is, what can be learned from this that won't be forgotten when another officer is killed in a similar situation.
As Prestor Jon points out, officer #1 had situation under control.... officer #s 2 and 3 caused a loss of control, and reintroduced a whole lot into the situation that wasn't there previously.... In my eyes, the shooting was most definitely fething NOT "justified"
What can be learned from this is: pay attention to your fellow officers, if you arrive at a scene late and he/she has it under control, don't feth everything up by trying to be John Fething Wayne!
According to one of the news links posted by Prestor, even the original officer on the scene said it was a justified shooting. What the article in the OP that has most people here worked up failed to mention is that the suspect began waving his gun around and walking at the other two officers.
Read the bio of the author that I posted and then tell me he is someone you would unquestionably believe.
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Post by: Ensis Ferrae
Relapse wrote:
According to one of the news links posted by Prestor, even the original officer on the scene said it was a justified shooting. What the article in the OP that has most people here worked up failed to mention is that the suspect began waving his gun around and walking at the other two officers.
Read the bio of the author that I posted and then tell me he is someone you would unquestionably believe.
From one of Prestor's sites:
During the exchange between Mader and Williams, two additional Weirton officers arrived on the scene and Williams walked towards them, waving his gun. One of the officers then shot Williams in the back of the head, killing him on site.
The West Virginia State Police opened a month-long investigation to determine whether or not the shooting of Williams was justified. At the end of the investigation, the WV State Police concluded the shooting was appropriate. However, Mader’s supervisors felt that he acted inappropriately when he refused to shoot someone who appeared to pose a life threat.
Eleven days after the shooting, Mader returned to work and had a meeting with Police Chief Rob Alexander. In the meeting, Chief Alexander told him: “We’re putting you on administrative leave and we’re going to do an investigation to see if you are going to be an officer here. You put two other officers in danger.”
If we look at just that information right there... this Chief seems a bit dumb... He didn't put the other officers in danger, because they showed up late and re-escalated things. And the original responding officer, Mader, is not the one who said the shooting was justified... the "blue wall" did.
EDIT: just saw in the Pitt article where he said they were justified.... that was some very odd wording, to say the least.
Beyond that, I will grant you that the original article's author is pretty suspect... But... who honestly knew that fast food was in bed with alcohol and tobacco for lobbyist groups!? I tend to not believe anyone's writing at face value, though that SHAME link definitely gives fairly decent reasons/evidence for why in that guy's case.
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Post by: Herzlos
Frazzled wrote:
You can say what you want but if another individual is waving a pistol, thats justified in any jurisdiction anywhere on the globe.
Just waving a pistol in the presence of the police won't get you shot in most of the 1st or 2nd world, especially when it's a clear suicide-by-cop situation (which curiously, seems to be a US phenomenon). Pointing a gun *at* a cop will get you shot everywhere, but merely holding one and threatening won't.
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Post by: Frazzled
Herzlos wrote: Frazzled wrote: You can say what you want but if another individual is waving a pistol, thats justified in any jurisdiction anywhere on the globe.
Just waving a pistol in the presence of the police won't get you shot in most of the 1st or 2nd world
And you know this how exactly? Please cite some actual statistics else you're just making stuff up. In much of the world the police are military and will shoot you where you stand. Later your family might disappear.
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Post by: tneva82
Frazzled wrote:Herzlos wrote: Frazzled wrote:
You can say what you want but if another individual is waving a pistol, thats justified in any jurisdiction anywhere on the globe.
Just waving a pistol in the presence of the police won't get you shot in most of the 1st or 2nd world
And you know this how exactly? Please cite some actual statistics else you're just making stuff up.
In much of the world the police are military and will shoot you where you stand. Later your family might disappear.
He said 1st and 2nd worlds.
But hey feel free to come to Europe. Will be refreshing experience to be in a country where you don't have to worry about getting shot by police first thing up. Arrested if you do something illegal yes, shot not so much.
As much as it might stun americans in most 1st and 2nd world countries police aren't looking out to shoot people.
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Post by: Frazzled
tneva82 wrote: Frazzled wrote:Herzlos wrote: Frazzled wrote: You can say what you want but if another individual is waving a pistol, thats justified in any jurisdiction anywhere on the globe.
Just waving a pistol in the presence of the police won't get you shot in most of the 1st or 2nd world
And you know this how exactly? Please cite some actual statistics else you're just making stuff up. In much of the world the police are military and will shoot you where you stand. Later your family might disappear.
He said 1st and 2nd worlds. But hey feel free to come to Europe. Will be refreshing experience to be in a country where you don't have to worry about getting shot by police first thing up. Arrested if you do something illegal yes, shot not so much. As much as it might stun americans in most 1st and 2nd world countries police aren't looking out to shoot people.
Evidently Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, and Mother Russia are not included in your definition of Europe. As noted, the US is in the Americas. It is a completely different situation. We may have more shootings but on the positive - in addition to not having to have another country from a completely different continent save us from the Nazis and then the Commies - we have something called Chicago Deep Dish Pizza, and of course TexMex.
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Post by: Relapse
tneva82 wrote: Frazzled wrote:Herzlos wrote: Frazzled wrote:
You can say what you want but if another individual is waving a pistol, thats justified in any jurisdiction anywhere on the globe.
Just waving a pistol in the presence of the police won't get you shot in most of the 1st or 2nd world
And you know this how exactly? Please cite some actual statistics else you're just making stuff up.
In much of the world the police are military and will shoot you where you stand. Later your family might disappear.
He said 1st and 2nd worlds.
But hey feel free to come to Europe. Will be refreshing experience to be in a country where you don't have to worry about getting shot by police first thing up. Arrested if you do something illegal yes, shot not so much.
As much as it might stun americans in most 1st and 2nd world countries police aren't looking out to shoot people.
Please do trouble yourself to read the police memorial page link I posted, which tells of officers trying to talk suspects with a gun down and got killed along with other officers or the news links posted where the first officer(the one who got fired) said it was a justified shooting.
On second thought, don't bother since it's easier for you to have outrage based on the writings of a biased journalist.
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Post by: Herzlos
Whilst there are issues in Russia with people disappearing, they aren't inherent to the police force, and I'm confident than if you wave a gun about in Eastern Europe, Russia or most of Asia you won't be summarily executed. You'll still be arrested, but you won't be shot dead in the street.
I can't say what'd happen in Mexico, Africa or the Middle East though.
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Post by: Mozzyfuzzy
You needed France to help against the redcoats though.
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Post by: Herzlos
Relapse wrote:
Please do trouble yourself to read the police memorial page link I posted, which tells of officers trying to talk suspects with a gun down and got killed along with other officers or the news links posted where the first officer(the one who got fired) said it was a justified shooting.
On second thought, don't bother since it's easier for you to have outrage based on the writings of a biased journalist.
I entirely understand your point, in the US cops can be randomly killed in innocent looking situations. It happens over here from time to time too.
I still don't think that justifies shooting people who aren't yet a threat, restraint or taking precautions is fine though. Execution for future-crime is not OK.
In the case we're talking about here, cop #1 de-escalates the situation, won't help the guy commit suicide, cops #2 & #3 turn up, re-escalate and shoot the guy. How is that OK?
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Post by: Dreadwinter
Herzlos wrote:Relapse wrote:
Please do trouble yourself to read the police memorial page link I posted, which tells of officers trying to talk suspects with a gun down and got killed along with other officers or the news links posted where the first officer(the one who got fired) said it was a justified shooting.
On second thought, don't bother since it's easier for you to have outrage based on the writings of a biased journalist.
I entirely understand your point, in the US cops can be randomly killed in innocent looking situations. It happens over here from time to time too.
I still don't think that justifies shooting people who aren't yet a threat, restraint or taking precautions is fine though. Execution for future-crime is not OK.
In the case we're talking about here, cop #1 de-escalates the situation, won't help the guy commit suicide, cops #2 & #3 turn up, re-escalate and shoot the guy. How is that OK?
Because people can use anything as an excuse to make something alright. This journalist has a bias, so we shouldn't be interested in this. Because we are "outraged." Which we should be, because we have been getting almost constant news about the cops making dumb/bad calls and getting away from it clean. Then we have a guy who made a good call, then he lost his job. We are "outraged" about this, but because the journalist has a bias, it is suddenly the wrong kind of outrage to some people.
Relapse is running a pretty cute character assassination campaign in order to discredit the situation. Some people are taking it.
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Post by: Frazzled
Vive Le France! Vive Le Brandy!
All Europe thanks France. Without France Frazzled would have had to stay in Europe and annoy Europeans in person.  Automatically Appended Next Post: Herzlos wrote:Relapse wrote:
Please do trouble yourself to read the police memorial page link I posted, which tells of officers trying to talk suspects with a gun down and got killed along with other officers or the news links posted where the first officer(the one who got fired) said it was a justified shooting.
On second thought, don't bother since it's easier for you to have outrage based on the writings of a biased journalist.
I entirely understand your point, in the US cops can be randomly killed in innocent looking situations. It happens over here from time to time too.
I still don't think that justifies shooting people who aren't yet a threat, restraint or taking precautions is fine though. Execution for future-crime is not OK.
In the case we're talking about here, cop #1 de-escalates the situation, won't help the guy commit suicide, cops #2 & #3 turn up, re-escalate and shoot the guy. How is that OK?
If they are waiving a pistol in your direction that legally constitutes a threat. How are you not understanding this?
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Post by: djones520
Stop assassinating his character Frazzled.
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Post by: Frazzled
Assassinating Mozzie's character? He's shown no indication he is a cot lover (reminder, cat lovers are really hollow inside). Herzlos? I am not assassinating his character, I cannot understand how that is not understood that someone waiving a pistol at you does not constitute reasonable fear of imminent death or serious harm. Multiple courts, statutes, and formerly British Common Law support my position.
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Post by: Dreadwinter
Like, check your bias, man.
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Post by: Herzlos
Frazzled wrote:
If they are waiving a pistol in your direction that legally constitutes a threat. How are you not understanding this?
Because I'm from a culture where people don't get shot for something like that. Over here, waving a pistol about isn't death worthy. Pointing it at someone is. We might be talking at cross purposes because I said "waving a gun about" and you replied "waving a pistol in your direction".
I'll probably never understand US gun culture, because the country I'm from banned guns after it's first (and only, I think) school shooting, and the populations response was "yeah, good point, we don't really need guns".
Even in this case, we've had no indication that said victim pointed a gun towards anyone, though he may have done in order to trigger suicide-by-cop.
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Post by: Frazzled
Because I'm from a culture where people don't get shot for something like that.
***Horse pucky. Your flag says Ireland. You had combat troops in your country just a short time ago and people waving guns would have been machine gunned or disappeared by Britain's special units.
Over here, waving a pistol about isn't death worthy.
***Again Horse Pucky. Please show where that is actually the case.
Pointing it at someone is. We might be talking at cross purposes because I said "waving a gun about" and you replied "waving a pistol in your direction".
***Read the articles. He was waiving it at the officers when they showed up.
I'll probably never understand US gun culture, because the country I'm from banned guns after it's first
***IRA ring a bell? bombs, rockets, and mortars...oh my...
(and only, I think) school shooting, and the populations response was "yeah, good point, we don't really need guns".
***IRA ring a bell? bombs, rockets, and mortars...oh my...
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Post by: Herzlos
I'm not from Ireland. I'm running via an Irish proxy. I'm from Mainland UK (Scotland).
I can't cite a single case over here where someone was shot just for having a gun in the open. Plenty of people being arrested though. The few UK shootings have either been anti-terror units overstepping, or after long stand-offs.
To be fair, none of the IRA weapons were legal, either.
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Post by: Frazzled
Herzlos wrote:I'm not from Ireland. I'm running via an Irish proxy. I'm from Mainland UK (Scotland).
I can't cite a single case over here where someone was shot just for having a gun in the open. Plenty of people being arrested though. The few UK shootings have either been anti-terror units overstepping, or after long stand-offs.
So you have no actual evidence to support your statement that people pointing weapons don't get shot. Got it.
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Post by: Prestor Jon
The first responding cop, Mader, correctly identified the man with the pistol, Williams, as being a suicidal man with a gun. Since Williams wanted to commit suicide by forcing the cops to shoot him, Mader's refusal to shoot Williams during their conversation with Williams pointing his pistol at the ground, the arrival of the other 2 cops gave Williams an opportunity to confront more cops and try to get them to shoot him. Williams approached/charged those cops waving his pistol and got shot since his aggressive behavior presented an immediate threat to the officers.
What is tragic about this situation is that Mader was doing the right thing when he responded and Williams might have been talked down from his suicide attempt if Mader had more time to deal with the situation in a de-escalating manner.
What's left out of the reports of the incident is how much time elapsed between Mader's arrival on scene and the arrival of the back up cops, whether or not Mader was able to communicate to dispatch or the other cops that Williams was a suicidal man with a gun not a homicidal man with a gun, whether or not Mader had a reasonable opportunity to restrain Wiliams prior to the arrival of the other cops.
Having the scene take a turn for the worse like that didn't have to happen and probably shouldn't have happened but it's unlikely that the public will ever learn all the details of the situation and since it ended in a "good shoot" it's unlikely the DA or PD will see a need to revise any policies or procedures to prevent a similar incident from happening in the future.
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Post by: Herzlos
Frazzled wrote:
So you have no actual evidence to support your statement that people pointing weapons don't get shot. Got it.
Yeah, people not getting shot doesn't make the news over here.
Best statistics I've seen on police shooting is here:
http://www.citizensreportuk.org/reports/killed-by-police-firearms.html
Though it doesn't give any real details. Only 20 civilians shot by police in 11 years though, so there isn't much to go on.
Considering that according to this 2008 article ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6960431.stm), record gun-crime incidents is in the thousands per year, that's a very percentage of incidents that result in a death.
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Post by: Relapse
I thought I was the assassin here. Automatically Appended Next Post:
Better yet, you can check the bias of the man leading you around by your nose and ignore the fact that another article stated the man got shot as he approached the other officers waving his gun around or that the cop who got fired called it a justified shooting.
It's sad the man got shot, but it was his choice to have it happen.
Once again, a little information on the man whose writing has you so heated up
http://shameproject.com/profile/radley-balko/
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Post by: Frazzled
Again I can agree that, given the information available, that the first officer should not have been wacked. That does not however, mean that the second officers were wrong to protect themselves.
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Post by: Iron_Captain
Frazzled wrote:tneva82 wrote: Frazzled wrote:Herzlos wrote: Frazzled wrote: You can say what you want but if another individual is waving a pistol, thats justified in any jurisdiction anywhere on the globe.
Just waving a pistol in the presence of the police won't get you shot in most of the 1st or 2nd world
And you know this how exactly? Please cite some actual statistics else you're just making stuff up. In much of the world the police are military and will shoot you where you stand. Later your family might disappear.
He said 1st and 2nd worlds. But hey feel free to come to Europe. Will be refreshing experience to be in a country where you don't have to worry about getting shot by police first thing up. Arrested if you do something illegal yes, shot not so much. As much as it might stun americans in most 1st and 2nd world countries police aren't looking out to shoot people.
Evidently Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, and Mother Russia are not included in your definition of Europe. As noted, the US is in the Americas. It is a completely different situation. We may have more shootings but on the positive - in addition to not having to have another country from a completely different continent save us from the Nazis and then the Commies - we have something called Chicago Deep Dish Pizza, and of course TexMex.
Actually, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and Russia all see extremely low levels of police violence compared to the US. And besides having less shootings, even more positive - in addition of course to having the courage to do the actual fighting against the Nazis, rather than just wait for the moment victory is certain and then go in to claim all the glory (unless of course you are Italian, then you were the Nazi...) - we have a cuisine unrivalled in its glorious variations, including some of the world's greatest foods like pizza or borsch. Europe hell yeah
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Post by: Frazzled
Ukraine disagrees. The Balkans disagree. Dissenters in Russia disagree. And in addition to having less shootings we also had the courage to do the actual fighting against the Nazis, rather than just wait for the moment victory is certain and then go in to claim all the glory.
Which do you prefer: the IS-3 or the T55 (the replacement for the T34)? I don't know. If I were going off to fight the evil Hitlerites and their Western cohorts in 1959 I'd go with the IS-3. That big old 122mm just says "dosvadonya" to me, and it has heavier armor if I am not mistaken.
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Post by: Iron_Captain
Frazzled wrote:Ukraine disagrees. The Balkans disagree.
Dissenters in Russia disagree.
Ukraine has a civil war going on, and even there they manage to have less police shootings than in the US... That is saying something.
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Post by: Frazzled
Iron_Captain wrote: Frazzled wrote:Ukraine disagrees. The Balkans disagree. Dissenters in Russia disagree.
Ukraine has a civil war going on, and even there they manage to have less police shootings than in the US... That is saying something.
When the police are military and "guerrillas" (speaking Russian) I don't believe you. Also see my edited question to you.
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Post by: Jacksmiles
Frazzled wrote:Again I can agree that, given the information available, that the first officer should not have been wacked. That does not however, mean that the second officers were wrong to protect themselves.
I'm basically in agreement with this. I would add though that I also agree that the second and third cops should have hung back and let Mader continue deescalating the situation, their presence is what allowed the guy to succeed in his suicide by cop plan. Then again, we don't know 100% how it went down, so I'm not judging them for the shoot. I'm just surprised by the firing and the "You put two other officers in danger" statement when they showed up after he did, and put themselves in danger, if they were in danger at all.
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Post by: Dreadwinter
Relapse wrote:
I thought I was the assassin here.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Better yet, you can check the bias of the man leading you around by your nose and ignore the fact that another article stated the man got shot as he approached the other officers waving his gun around or that the cop who got fired called it a justified shooting.
It's sad the man got shot, but it was his choice to have it happen.
Once again, a little information on the man whose writing has you so heated up
http://shameproject.com/profile/radley-balko/
Are you saying that suicide by cop is okay? It probably was a justified shoot in the eyes of the department. That doesn't mean it is a justified shoot in general. Shooting a suicidal person is not okay. Are you saying that the way the mentally ill are treated by cops is something we do not need to discuss, because one guy posted an article with a bias?
Your entire argument is this guy has bias and we aren't seeing the facts. We are, you just don't like how we are interpreting them.
A mentally ill person who was attempting to commit suicide by cop succeeded, despite this cops best efforts. He was let go because of it. That is messed up.
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Post by: Frazzled
Shooting a suicidal person is not okay.
A suicidal person can still harm others. There have been countless examples of that, not including suicide bombers.
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Post by: Dreadwinter
Frazzled wrote:Shooting a suicidal person is not okay.
A suicidal person can still harm others. There have been countless examples of that, not including suicide bombers.
Sure they can, but in this case was he? That is the problem, our police are not trained to deal with these situations. If the first cop had continued having a 1 on 1 conversation, what would have happened. He would not have been shot, not just because the mans gun was not loaded, but also because how is he going to be shot by the cop if he has just shot and killed the cop? The man was clearly posturing in an attempt to get the cops to react. As soon as he said "just shoot me" you know that is what is going on. Sure, cops go out and put their lives on the line every day. That is their job. Just the same as any healthcare worker goes out and puts their life on the line every day of work. Yet, I cannot hit a person attacking me. I am very limited in how I may defend myself, even in a deadly situation. But cops, shoot first then ask questions. Seems kind of silly, right? Both professions are there to help people. Only one is allowed to defend themselves.
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Post by: Relapse
Dreadwinter wrote:Relapse wrote:
I thought I was the assassin here.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Better yet, you can check the bias of the man leading you around by your nose and ignore the fact that another article stated the man got shot as he approached the other officers waving his gun around or that the cop who got fired called it a justified shooting.
It's sad the man got shot, but it was his choice to have it happen.
Once again, a little information on the man whose writing has you so heated up
http://shameproject.com/profile/radley-balko/
Are you saying that suicide by cop is okay? It probably was a justified shoot in the eyes of the department. That doesn't mean it is a justified shoot in general. Shooting a suicidal person is not okay. Are you saying that the way the mentally ill are treated by cops is something we do not need to discuss, because one guy posted an article with a bias?
Your entire argument is this guy has bias and we aren't seeing the facts. We are, you just don't like how we are interpreting them.
A mentally ill person who was attempting to commit suicide by cop succeeded, despite this cops best efforts. He was let go because of it. That is messed up.
I know of a real good incident where the cops beat a mentally ill person to death where the thugs should have been strung up by their heels and it pissed me and any right thinking person off that they got away with it.
This, however is not even in the same league, and as I said earlier, even the fired cop, said it was a justified shooting.
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Post by: Dreadwinter
Relapse wrote: Dreadwinter wrote:Relapse wrote:
I thought I was the assassin here.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Better yet, you can check the bias of the man leading you around by your nose and ignore the fact that another article stated the man got shot as he approached the other officers waving his gun around or that the cop who got fired called it a justified shooting.
It's sad the man got shot, but it was his choice to have it happen.
Once again, a little information on the man whose writing has you so heated up
http://shameproject.com/profile/radley-balko/
Are you saying that suicide by cop is okay? It probably was a justified shoot in the eyes of the department. That doesn't mean it is a justified shoot in general. Shooting a suicidal person is not okay. Are you saying that the way the mentally ill are treated by cops is something we do not need to discuss, because one guy posted an article with a bias?
Your entire argument is this guy has bias and we aren't seeing the facts. We are, you just don't like how we are interpreting them.
A mentally ill person who was attempting to commit suicide by cop succeeded, despite this cops best efforts. He was let go because of it. That is messed up.
I know of a real good incident where the cops beat a mentally ill person to death where the thugs should have been strung up by their heels and it pissed me and any right thinking person off that they got away with it.
This, however is not even in the same league, and as I said earlier, even the fired cop, said it was a justified shooting.
Yes, you keep saying that. But by what standards was this a justified shooting and are those standards maybe a little lower than they should be?
This is the same and it was still not handled correctly, no matter how "justified" the shoot was according to the department.
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Post by: Relapse
I would say in answer to your question is to ask the fired cop who was in the middle of the thing why he said it was justified to shoot the guy approaching the back up while waving a gun.
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Post by: MrMoustaffa
Future War Cultist wrote:@ Frazzled
I would assume that state level police are going to better trained and organised than the county bumpkins.
As for the DEA, things like that are probably why those sorts of agencies should probably leave the actual arrests to the ordinary police. It's why here in the U.K. for example MI5 stick to counter intelligence only and leave the actual investigations and arrests to the special branch of the police.
Could've fooled me, considering my last run in was a state trooper who pulled me over because he thought I was a guy going 85 in a 65, and then when I asked for the dash cam footage to fight the case because I knew it was someone else it conveniently "didn't exist".
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Post by: Future War Cultist
@ MrMoustaffa
The bastard. 
Did you win?
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Post by: skyth
Frazzled wrote:Shooting a suicidal person is not okay.
A suicidal person can still harm others. There have been countless examples of that, not including suicide bombers.
Suicide bombers are not suicidal...any more than the guy who jumps on a grenade to save his comrades...
But still, one way to attempt at suicide I've heard of is driving the wrong way on a freeway. I think that's quite rare though. I believe the vast majority of times a person attempting suicide hurts someone else (which is a rare thing) would be by accident...for instance jumping off a building and landing on someone.
Regardless, not the case in this situation.
On another note-people keep on saying the original cop said it was a good shoot. I'm thinking he would say that regardless...likely wanting to stay in the field of work and all.
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Post by: CptJake
 skyth wrote: Frazzled wrote:Shooting a suicidal person is not okay.
A suicidal person can still harm others. There have been countless examples of that, not including suicide bombers.
Suicide bombers are not suicidal...any more than the guy who jumps on a grenade to save his comrades...
Which is probably why he stated 'not including suicide bombers'.
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Post by: A Town Called Malus
 CptJake wrote: skyth wrote: Frazzled wrote:Shooting a suicidal person is not okay.
A suicidal person can still harm others. There have been countless examples of that, not including suicide bombers.
Suicide bombers are not suicidal...any more than the guy who jumps on a grenade to save his comrades...
Which is probably why he stated 'not including suicide bombers'.
A possible meaning of that sentence, when structured in that way, is that there are countless examples even if we exclude suicide bombers. It is not necessarily saying that suicide bombers are not suicidal.
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Post by: Iron_Captain
Frazzled wrote:
And in addition to having less shootings we also had the courage to do the actual fighting against the Nazis, rather than just wait for the moment victory is certain and then go in to claim all the glory.
Which do you prefer: the IS-3 or the T55 (the replacement for the T34)? I don't know. If I were going off to fight the evil Hitlerites and their Western cohorts in 1959 I'd go with the IS-3. That big old 122mm just says "dosvadonya" to me, and it has heavier armor if I am not mistaken.
T-55 over IS-3 but IS-3 over T-54. Compared to the IS-3, the T-55 may indeed be somewhat less heavily armoured and have a smaller gun, but it makes up for that by having much better rate of fire, accuracy, mobility and reliability. But I'd most like to have a KV-1 or KV-2. I am a huge fan of the KV series of tanks.
Or an Armata. Armata is awesome. It is the most advanced tank in the world, and why settle for anything less when defending the motherland from evil fascists and liberasts?
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Post by: skyth
CptJake wrote: skyth wrote: Frazzled wrote:Shooting a suicidal person is not okay.
A suicidal person can still harm others. There have been countless examples of that, not including suicide bombers.
Suicide bombers are not suicidal...any more than the guy who jumps on a grenade to save his comrades...
Which is probably why he stated 'not including suicide bombers'.
And nice of you to leave out the rest of my statement where I mentioned a couple ways that suicidal people have hurt other people...
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Post by: CptJake
skyth wrote: CptJake wrote: skyth wrote: Frazzled wrote:Shooting a suicidal person is not okay.
A suicidal person can still harm others. There have been countless examples of that, not including suicide bombers.
Suicide bombers are not suicidal...any more than the guy who jumps on a grenade to save his comrades...
Which is probably why he stated 'not including suicide bombers'.
And nice of you to leave out the rest of my statement where I mentioned a couple ways that suicidal people have hurt other people...
Your welcome. When I'm only replying to a portion of a post, and the rest of the post is irrelevant to my point I tend to snip them.
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Post by: Dreadwinter
Relapse wrote:I would say in answer to your question is to ask the fired cop who was in the middle of the thing why he said it was justified to shoot the guy approaching the back up while waving a gun.
That is not an answer, that is a deflection.
Also, for the record, it is very rare that a suicidal person is also homicidal or even interested in hurting others. When it does happen, it is usually a murder/suicide and involves somebody you know well. Not random cops. Case in point, this guy unloaded his gun and his girlfriend said he was talking about suicide, not homicide. This thing where we think suicidal people are also homicidal has to stop, it is one of the reasons that we have such a stigma around mental health.
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Post by: Relapse
Dreadwinter wrote:Relapse wrote:I would say in answer to your question is to ask the fired cop who was in the middle of the thing why he said it was justified to shoot the guy approaching the back up while waving a gun.
That is not an answer, that is a deflection.
Also, for the record, it is very rare that a suicidal person is also homicidal or even interested in hurting others. When it does happen, it is usually a murder/suicide and involves somebody you know well. Not random cops. Case in point, this guy unloaded his gun and his girlfriend said he was talking about suicide, not homicide. This thing where we think suicidal people are also homicidal has to stop, it is one of the reasons that we have such a stigma around mental health.
It's not a deflection. If you think you know more about police work or the situation than the officer at the heart of the story, that's your conceit and there is no more point in talking to you about it.
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Post by: Dreadwinter
Relapse wrote: Dreadwinter wrote:Relapse wrote:I would say in answer to your question is to ask the fired cop who was in the middle of the thing why he said it was justified to shoot the guy approaching the back up while waving a gun.
That is not an answer, that is a deflection.
Also, for the record, it is very rare that a suicidal person is also homicidal or even interested in hurting others. When it does happen, it is usually a murder/suicide and involves somebody you know well. Not random cops. Case in point, this guy unloaded his gun and his girlfriend said he was talking about suicide, not homicide. This thing where we think suicidal people are also homicidal has to stop, it is one of the reasons that we have such a stigma around mental health.
It's not a deflection. If you think you know more about police work or the situation than the officer at the heart of the story, that's your conceit and there is no more point in talking to you about it.
It is a deflection, because I am talking about police and how they handle the mentally ill. You keep trying to deflect back to it being a justified shoot. Okay, by whose standards? That cops? The department? All departments? You don't think there is any room to question the police? Should we take what he has said as the one and only truth?
Are you saying we should trust the cops?
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Post by: Ensis Ferrae
Dreadwinter wrote:
It is a deflection, because I am talking about police and how they handle the mentally ill. You keep trying to deflect back to it being a justified shoot. Okay, by whose standards? That cops? The department? All departments? You don't think there is any room to question the police? Should we take what he has said as the one and only truth?
Are you saying we should trust the cops?
In referring to this exact situation, in one of the articles the first responding officer said basically, "they did right based on the information they had." OK... cool. While he thinks it's a justified shooting based on that, I disagree with him. He had the situation under control until Harry Callahan and John McClain showed up. What I think should have happened, was the first cop should given a one or two word signal to the others that it's all good, to just back off and keep him covered.
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Post by: skyth
Like any cop isn't going to say a shoot was justified, regardless of whether it was or not...
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Post by: djones520
skyth wrote:Like any cop isn't going to say a shoot was justified, regardless of whether it was or not...
So... says something you don't agree with, so it's automatically a cover up.
Look, why even bother with these discussions at this point, when this is the "discussion"?
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Post by: AlmightyWalrus
 djones520 wrote: skyth wrote:Like any cop isn't going to say a shoot was justified, regardless of whether it was or not...
So... says something you don't agree with, so it's automatically a cover up.
Look, why even bother with these discussions at this point, when this is the "discussion"?
As opposed to making an argument to authority to support the "good shoot" side? Come on.
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Post by: Dreadwinter
djones520 wrote: skyth wrote:Like any cop isn't going to say a shoot was justified, regardless of whether it was or not...
So... says something you don't agree with, so it's automatically a cover up.
Look, why even bother with these discussions at this point, when this is the "discussion"?
Sorry we are questioning things. We will all fall back in line. For the motherland!
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Post by: A Town Called Malus
djones520 wrote: skyth wrote:Like any cop isn't going to say a shoot was justified, regardless of whether it was or not...
So... says something you don't agree with, so it's automatically a cover up.
Look, why even bother with these discussions at this point, when this is the "discussion"?
You could alternatively provide an example of when a cop involved in a shooting claimed that it wasn't justified.
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Post by: skyth
djones520 wrote: skyth wrote:Like any cop isn't going to say a shoot was justified, regardless of whether it was or not...
So... says something you don't agree with, so it's automatically a cover up.
There is a thing called the Blue Wall...I'm sure you've heard of it. Cops are not likely to rat out their own...
Look, why even bother with these discussions at this point, when this is the "discussion"?
Now this is what we call A-grade hypocrisy...The entire purpose of claiming that the cop that was there first said it was a good shoot was to shut down the conversation. Pointing out that he may not be unbiased continues the discussion.
I do think you doth protest too much...
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Post by: Dreadwinter
Well, so much for having a discussion. I guess since the officer decided this is a good shoot, it is case closed. Thanks justice system! /s
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Post by: Frazzled
Oh yea. Its designed ton show how fast someone can get ton you. Also known as the Tueller drill. Do it a few times and you will have a real understanding of how much danger you can be in just with someone walking up asking for a light or directions or something. Its a real driver for whats called "point shooting" as well.
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