Should police officers be held responsible for poor judgement when a shooting occours?

I don't know how left-of-center folks think on this issue -- I know that AntiFa is not necessarily representative of their attitude to the police. Probably there will be a lot of overlap and agreement among sensible people.

But I believe a Rightist attitude should be:

1. We have to have the police (and the military). See Thomas Hobbes.

2. They will be made up of human beings, not saints. Original Sin and all that.

3. Like soldiers in combat, they operate in circumstances of which the rest of us, if we have never been there,cannot really conceive.

4. Therefore this must be taken into account, when one of them does something that in retrospect seems to be a serious error of judgement.

5. But that does not mean writing them a blank check. "If men were angels there would be no need for government. If they were governed by angels there would be no need for restrictions on government."

6. There are forces in society which hate the police (and the military) because these institutions stand in the way of the social transformation which these forces want to see carried through. (They don't hate the police/military abstractly -- when in power, they invariably bring in police/military that make ours look like Methodist Sunday School teachers.)

7. Whereas a tactical alliance with these forces may be advisable from time to time, we must be aware that their aims are not ours.

8. The police and miiltary are a hierarchy: when a rank-and-file member of these institutions breaks the rules, we should immediately look to his superior officers. Have they been diligent in training and supervision?

9. The police and military are subject to political pressure. We should always look for outside influences that may be pushing them to carry out a distorted version of their mission. From a rightwing point of view, we should look very closely at the fear-mongering and smears of the like of the ADL and the vile Southern Poverty Law Center, still taken as an authority on 'extremism' by many police departments. We need to wage a campaign to expose these people as malicious liars, who aim to demonize all patriots.

Three pragmatic considerations (for the Right):

1. There is a growing trend, probably aided by the Russians and other provocateurs, to inflame young right-of-center males against the police. See 'the Booglaloo' and similar ridiculous ideas. People who probably couldn't field-strip and clean their scary-looking assault rifles, assuming they actually own one, are talking all tough on the Web, threatening the police, fantasizing about arresting traitors, etc.

Therefore we must undertake an educational campaign within our own ranks to counter this.

2. The patriot movement, especially that part of it associated with defense of the Second Amendment, and doubly-especially that part of it organized into local 'militias', will naturally attract unstable individuals. We must not let our libertarian impulses, nor our natural human sympathy for someone with obvious mental problems, cloud our judgement here. These people must be repelled from our movement and, if it is warranted, we mus pro-actively co operate with Law Enforcement to prevent them from doing harm.
Regardless of the wisdom of official 'Red Flag' laws, we must not hesitate to operate our own.

3. Police atrocities against us -- one has apparently just occurred in Maryland [ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/did-maryland-police-shoot-and-kill-a-sleeping-man/ ]- are an opportunity to educate our own ranks, some of which have backward ideas about the reality of being non-white in America. I'm not talking here of our poltical enemies, outright white supremacists and neo-Nazis, but just about ordinary whites who are not consumed with liberal guilt, who understand the reality of race in the US, but who too quickly assume that every bad encounter between the police and a non-white, is the non-white's fault. It is one thing to begin the analysis of an incident by being aware of the reality of policing in the inner city, and thus to give the benefit of the doubt to the police ... but sometimes there are examples of someone being the victim of the police who would not have been, had they been white. We have to be absolutely clear about our attitude here and be as strongly in solidarity with such a person as we would have been were they white.

 

And how would that solve something like this?

Stillwater, MN – A Minnesota jury on Thursday acquitted a Washington County sheriff’s deputy who was charged in the death of a man who was determined to commit suicide-by-cop.

The incident occurred when law enforcement officers responded to a call about a suicidal arm man in Lake Elmo on April 12, 2018, ABC News reported.

When Washington County sheriff’s deputies arrived on the scene, they found 23-year-old Benjamin Evans kneeling in the middle of an intersection and holding a gun to his own head.

Records showed that Evans had recently moved from St. Louis to Minnesota to be near his girlfriend, ABC News reported.

But then he lost his job as an emergency medical technician and probationary firefighter and his girlfriend broke up with him.

On April 11, 2018, Evans tried to pull things back together and proposed to his girlfriend, ABC News reported.

Witnesses testified that Evans couldn’t handle it when his marriage proposal was declined.

So he put on his dress firefighter uniform and wrote two suicide notes.

Witnesses said that after he was done getting ready, Evans left his house with a gun, ABC News reported.

Dashcam video and audio from bodycams that was played in court showed Evans kneeling in the street has he held a gun to his head with his right hand.
A 40-minute standoff ensued, during which Evans twisted and turned causing the gun’s trajectory to sweep across the deputies as they pleaded with the suicidal man to drop his weapon, ABC News reported.

The video played in court showed Washington County Deputy Joshua Ramirez giving commands for Evans to drop his gun, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

Evans finally did eject the magazine from his weapon and throw the deputy his cell phone, but he refused to put down the gun that still had a round in the chamber.

He told deputies that he didn’t want to hurt them and asked to talk to his girlfriend, but throughout the standoff he continued twisting and turning to look down the street behind him, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

“[Expletive], he does that again,” Washington County Sheriff’s Brian Krook warned in the video, in reference to the suspect twisting in such a way that his weapon was pointed at deputies.

“Ramirez, I’m getting uncomfortable with him turning his head, just so you know,” Deputy Krook said a moment later, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Deputy Ramirez didn’t answer Deputy Krook and instead continued to negotiate with Evans.

A moment later, Deputy Krook fired four rounds at the suspect, ABC News reported.

Evans slumped to the side but he did not let go of his gun, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

Several officers rushed over to the fallen man and ordered him to drop the gun, but Evans appeared to ignore their commands.

“I’m kicking it,” Deputy Krook announced in the video.

That’s when Evans lowered his arm, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Prosecutors said Deputy Krook, who was two-to-three feet away, took steps back and fired his weapon at Evans three more times.

The suspect was hit a total of four times, twice in the chest, once in the side, and once in the leg, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

Deputy Krook was the only law enforcement officer who opened fire.

He testified that he fired his weapon the second time around because when Evans moved his arm, he pointed his gun at the deputies, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

Deputy Krook was charged with second-degree manslaughter in the incident.

State Prosecutor Thomas B. Hatch argued that the deputy had been negligent by not warning Evans that he was about to use deadly force, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

Police officers are not required to issue warnings when there is an immediate threat.

But defense attorneys held that Deputy Krook had been right to fear for his life and argued that the deputy would have been justified in shooting Evans earlier in the standoff than he did.

Deputy Krook testified that he felt terrible about having killed Evans but that he felt he had no choice, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The jury agreed with the defense, and after about seven hours of deliberation, they found Deputy Krook not guilty on March 19, the ABC News reported.

The sheriff’s department said that Deputy Krook, who had been on administrative leave since he was indicted, “is back to full duty and will return when he is ready.”

https://defensemaven.io/bluelivesma...uicide-by-cop-shooting-b56v96IcA0KFgm1Pn8D85A

 

Solve it?

How about comment on it.

Another COP Gets away with Murder

Everyday occurrence.:smh:

 

Not at all, he did his job and was exonerated for doing so.

 

Disgraceful, how could this officer ever have been charged? He should have been given a medal.

 

Tell you what, next time we have some deranged individual with a gun threatening himself and others lets call you and get you to deal with it? That would be utterly hilarious.