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1312 incidents of [Police Brutality] and counting
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Butler, while I've undoubtedly read as many or more posts of yours over the years, I remember nothing of them. I have no lasting impression of you. Your enmity is as one-sided as it is unfounded.
It would have been fairly appropriate to make an apples-to-apples comparison of time lost via imprisonment after the conversation's focus on the length of Potter's sentence, but I didn't do that. I considered both lifespan and freedom from incarceration. Assuming even half the accusations against him were valid, Wright's lifestyle was inordinately careless and violent. People who repeatedly commit crimes with guns and consistently resist arrest tend not to live very long, much less live long outside of incarceration. Did I pull that specific number out of my ass? Yes, of course. No answer to AZ's question could be arrived at by any other means. Your distaste and misunderstanding notwithstanding, I think it's entirely fair to give a straight answer to a rhetorical question in a way that highlights the flawed assumption behind it.
Isn't the "No Angel" rhetorical device, which I never said, (interestingly Wright's own aunt Kelly Bryant went further in describing him as "far from an angel" though she still loved him "no matter what he did wrong") generally applied to people who got into some minor hooliganism as a way to say that they deserved their fate? Because neither of those things apply here. Daunte Wright had pending legal and civil cases related to two separate firearms offenses at the time of his death and another two have been filed against his estate since he died. Between multiple cases of alleged armed robbery and one of allegedly shooting a 16 year old boy in the head, permanently disabling him, I should think he's outside of the territory where "no angel" is an unfair descriptor. Even so, Daunte Wright didn't deserve to die. This is my own personal article of faith that I should have spelled out earlier, but I guess I'm doing so now. Nobody, but nobody, deserves to die. Everybody deserves all the good things in life. In an ideal world, we would all have full lives and every opportunity to be our best selves even after we make bad decisions. Sadly, that's not possible. Further, it's not particularly relevant to use-of-force policy. What people "deserve" is not and should not be a significant determining factor when it comes to police use-of-force. What amount of force police are justified in using should be almost entirely predicated on how necessary that force is to prevent harm. Unintentional use of deadly force, as in the Kim Potter case: unacceptable. Intentional use of deadly force: if it's the only reliable way to stop a bad actor (or perhaps even a non bad actor) from immediately or in the predictably near future causing others GBH/death, of course it should be permitted.
In the very first paragraph I wrote in this thread, I listed the factors relevant to why Potter would arguably have been justified in intentionally shooting Wright. I didn't put in a single thing that wasn't immediately relevant to the cops' assessment of how much danger Wright posed to others and how to handle him. All of it and the subsequent claims I made came from articles on news sites. I'm not going to go hard on linking sources until someone requests I do so, but I want it to be clear that I did some actual reading and said nothing negative about his character that wasn't directly applicable to the practical reasons cops should/shouldn't shoot. I didn't get into any of the other stuff until I answered AZ's question, and for no other purpose than answering AZ's question. Your accusation of me doing a "No Angel" thing is hogwash. I'll note that posters prior to my interjection were omitting any of the circumstances around the shooting and even referring to Wright as an "innocent," which is downright misleading.
By the way, I have a hard time taking your accusation of racism seriously. I had the impression it's a generally held belief on these forums (including by me) that everybody is inescapably, unconsciously racist to some degree. When I judge people, I try to do so on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. If that's not good enough for you, bite me. The bad faith thing is hazily defined and conveniently not falsifiable so all I'm going to say to that is "no."
"I didn't do that, so let me just include one in a parenthesis in the same sentence where I deny doing it" is next level, well done.
The accusation isn't leveled against people accused of any specific crime. It's leveled against people who died at the hands of police in situations that in no way justify it to suggest that this was actually justice and not tragedy, while ignoring that society has intentionally removed police from the actual service of justice by two degrees for exactly this reason.
And let's be clear, she's not getting off easy because of some type of criminal justice reform to reign in long sentences. She's getting off easy because she's white and she's a cop.
Someone having an outstanding warrant does not mean that police should be given leniency when they kill an unarmed person. Someone having a criminal record does not mean that they deserve to be beaten and murdered and those who beat and murdered them be allowed to go unpunished. So very often, there is no way that the police officers could be aware of, in the moment, the history of an individual when they abuse them and shoot them. But - and let me be very clear on this - it should not matter even if they were.
One's civil rights do not cease to apply when convicted of a felony. No, don't play any cute sematical games with me about "Uh but they lose the right to vote," etc. You know goddamn well what rights I'm talking about. The right to a fair and speedy trial. The right to an attorney. The right to not be shot in the street, in your car, in your own goddamn home, and for those who do shoot you to be held accountable for it.
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Again, the fact you can't or refuse to see the obvious is entirely on you. I recommend doing some introspection about why you present yourself as a racist goose on these forums.
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I still don't understand how it's possible for anyone to buy that she thought she had the taser in her hand until she pulled the trigger. It beggars belief.
That being said the holster draw is different and the weapon looks very different. But adrenaline is a hell of a drug. And how a person responds depends on how they were innoculated against stress. If they were never innoculated against stress their response will be unpredictable.
It's been a while and I don't want to rehash, but don't you holster it on a different side of your body? And don't the sights look totally different? And isn't the weight dramatically different?
I can empathize here, but at the same time "improbably incompetent" and "cop" seem to go hand-in-hand.
Especially when a suspect is menacingly running away unarmed.
Well, once you tase the guy you meant to shoot, it's easy enough to shoot them with the real gun.
It's a bit harder to hide the other way around.
Be careful here. "Has a gun in their possession" is not a legitimate reason to kill someone. Police should be trying to de-escalate, not make things more deadly.
"Someone died" is a failure
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Perp explicitly defines the person being murder as guilty of a crime or moral wrongdoing.
maybe, don't adopt cop jargon intended to vilify anyone they a have a confrontation with when generally talking about people who have not even formally been accused of a crime.
Hmm. That's an interesting thought experiment. Possession of a gun can't justify lethal force because that would be a violation of the second amendment? Sadly, this isn't a world in which this makes the various hacks heads explode.
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I was not putting forward any such thought experiment. I was stating that BIPOC do not de facto enjoy the same Second Amendment rights as white people do.
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Yes, I'm aware. I'm just saying it raises the question on the legal side.
I'm also aware that the only answer the courts would ever give is "totally okay, because we say so".
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I've been saying for years now that Americans do not, in practice, have a right to bear arms as the presence of a gun is routinely used by cops as justification for lethal force.
If a cop can legally execute anyone that is armed, then no, no one in that jurisdiction has a right to bear arms, no matter how many examples of people bearing guns you can bring forth.
The police manage to take armed white men into custody alive just fine, even after engaging in shootouts with them.
Their choice of who to deploy summary lethal force against is not equally given.
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Which is of course itself a violation of the constitution, but they've never let that stop them (and certain hacks on SCOTUS are perfectly fine with it).
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Rittenhouse case makes explicit that possession of a firearm doesn't inherently imply a threat. Not that it would matter, "I saw a gun so I fired" is perfectly fine for a cop. Hell, Philando Castile proves that they can shoot you because they goddamn fucking hear about a gun nearby.
Trials don't set legal precedent.
What does?
Finding by judges, and particularly those on appeals courts.
But that formal capital P precedent.
The general habit of juries, judges and prosecutors taking a light hand when it comes to white, male cops isn't Legal Precedence, it's systemic racism.
That is old school travel and expense account scam. It’s nice to see the classics making a come back. Per diem mostly killed that one off.