The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[Berkut]

She shot someone.

She used a tool whose entire purpose is the killing of another human being, and killed another human being.

She run a red light and hit someone with her car (which, I bet, could also result in a manslaughter charge). She pulled out a gun, aimed it at someone, and shot them.

If that is second degree manslaughter, I am not sure what is...

This was not "killing someone by accident". How is pulling out a gun, aiming it at someone, and pulling the trigger simply an accident?

Yes, yes I do think that is reckless. I do not think it is a brainfart - I don't think she did something that surprise, surprise! who could have thought that would go so badly!

Obviously she did not realize it was a gun she was pointing, so the consequence of her pulling a trigger was indeed a surprise to her (as evidenced by the cameras).  If you legitimately think you're pointing one thing and are in fact pointing another, that's a brainfart.  Not all brainfarts are excusable, obviously; surgeon cutting off the wrong leg is also a brainfart, but one that is not forced by extreme time pressure of the event.  In this case, a very dangerous situation developed in a matter of seconds.

But surely there is some responsibility for a trained police officer around knowing what it is they are in fact pointing at someone else.

I don't think she intended to kill anyone, that seems pretty clear to me.

But I also think it seems kind of clear there was some kind of pretty gross negligence at least akin to the surgeon cutting off the wrong leg.

And I can't see how a police officer pulling out their gun, aiming it at someone, and then pulling the trigger directly resulting in their death in a circumstance under which that person was not at all a deadly threat can be just kind of written off as an "Oops! Sorry!".

On the other hand, I also think a good chunk of civilian shootings that civilians seem to get away with on what looks like to me pretty bullshit reasons should result in jail time as well.

[DGuller]

I don't think the situation can be classified as "not at all a deadly threat".  Someone driving away in a vehicle with police officers partially inside can indeed be a deadly threat.  She didn't choose to use a deadly force against it, but I think it's still relevant, because it shows that it was a situation that required an immediate instinctive response.  She didn't have time to pull out a checklist, go through all the items, and ensure that the right weapon was in her hand.

Should her training have been enough to avoid making that mistake?  Of course, but it turns out it wasn't enough, or the training is not perfect enough to get the human performance down to absolute zero error level.  A mistake did happen, and as far as I'm aware of the facts, Kim Potter did not intentionally disregard her training, it just didn't kick in properly on a level that was entirely automatic. 

I'll ask again, what purpose is served by putting that person in prison?  Thousands of people die every year on the roads because another person fucked up; the guilty parties generally don't go to prison unless it can be demonstrated that they acted in ways that showed contempt for the risks they inflicted on other parties.

[Sheilbh]

I just don't think it's a wildly high bar - if police have both - that officers know where their gun is and where their taser is and the difference between them. It's not asking to do a full risk assessment before pulling her weapon but knowing which is the one that's lethal.

It's why I wonder if there is an objective standard at play so it's not about what she thought at that time but about whether her conduct was at the level of a reasonable officer in the same situation.

Edit: It's also why I think the Baldwin situation is different - what would a reasonable person do in that situation. I don't know all the details but from my understanding it seems like they would expect that to not be a loaded weapon.

[Berkut]

THe purpose, if we want to go that route, is

1. To emphasize the care and thoughtfulness that needs to go into any decision to use force, and
2. Close the door to the next cop blowing some guy away and then trotting out the "Ooops! I thought I was just shining my flashlight at him!" defense.

I have family who are police officers. Believe me, I get that there has to be some kind of acknowledgement that they are engage in a job where simple accidents happen, and those accidents could have deadly results.

I am just really damn hesitant to say that killing someone with your gun is ever something that can be excused by not knowing it was your gun. That just seems really....well, grossly negligent.

[Berkut]

I just don't think it's a wildly high bar - if police have both - that officers know where their gun is and where their taser is and the difference between them. It's not asking to do a full risk assessment before pulling her weapon but knowing which is the one that's lethal.

It's why I wonder if there is an objective standard at play so it's not about what she thought at that time but about whether her conduct was at the level of a reasonable officer in the same situation.

Given that there is not really a routine problem of cops killing people on accident when they think they are using some other tool then their pistol, there is a reasonable argument to be made that apparently this isn't actually a significant problem.

I mean, absent this shooting, if you said "Hey Shelf, we have a system where in only 1 in a million cases of a officer attempting to tase someone, they will accidently shoot them instead" you would probably say "Oh, well, that sounds pretty reasonable then!".

Of course, if this is the 1 in a millionth case, it looks pretty fucking horrific.

[Sheilbh]

Given that there is not really a routine problem of cops killing people on accident when they think they are using some other tool then their pistol, there is a reasonable argument to be made that apparently this isn't actually a significant problem.

I mean, absent this shooting, if you said "Hey Shelf, we have a system where in only 1 in a million cases of a officer attempting to tase someone, they will accidently shoot them instead" you would probably say "Oh, well, that sounds pretty reasonable then!".

Of course, if this is the 1 in a millionth case, it looks pretty fucking horrific.

Yeah which is why I'm inclined to think it makes sense that this results in a conviction. It wasn't deliberate but, given that this doesn't seem to be a problem for police in general, I'm surely the conclusion is it's reckless or, as you say, very negligent.

[Eddie Teach]

You forget, Baldwin is also a celebrity.

I don't think that has anything to do with it, actually.

Perhaps not, but it would come into play if there was a case worth prosecuting.

[DGuller]

I just don't think it's a wildly high bar - if police have both - that officers know where their gun is and where their taser is and the difference between them. It's not asking to do a full risk assessment before pulling her weapon but knowing which is the one that's lethal.

  I think flippantly dismissing the effect of being in a highly stressful situation just makes the person appear uninterested in really understanding the situation.  Thankfully I've probably not been in situations that cops are in regularly, but I've been in enough situations that have been stressful enough for my level of preparation to know better than to mock people who find themselves in such predicaments.  Are you really under impression that Kim Potter was generally unaware that the black gun delivered a bigger ouch than the yellow gun?

When people press the wrong pedal in a car, they don't do it because they don't know that the one on the right makes you go faster and the one on the left makes you go slower.  They do it because a stressful situation knocks them out of a mental rhythm, and sometimes various mental biases such as confirmation bias can make you fuck up before you have a chance to regain your bearings.  Training helps by developing better instincts that you will inevitably fall back on when the shit hits the fan, but obviously it didn't in this case.

[DGuller]

Given that there is not really a routine problem of cops killing people on accident when they think they are using some other tool then their pistol, there is a reasonable argument to be made that apparently this isn't actually a significant problem.

I mean, absent this shooting, if you said "Hey Shelf, we have a system where in only 1 in a million cases of a officer attempting to tase someone, they will accidently shoot them instead" you would probably say "Oh, well, that sounds pretty reasonable then!".

Of course, if this is the 1 in a millionth case, it looks pretty fucking horrific.

Yeah which is why I'm inclined to think it makes sense that this results in a conviction. It wasn't deliberate but, given that this doesn't seem to be a problem for police in general, I'm surely the conclusion is it's reckless or, as you say, very negligent.

Just because something doesn't happen often doesn't mean that something was done differently when it did happen.  It just means that all the Swiss cheese holes lined up that time.

[Sheilbh]

  I think flippantly dismissing the effect of being in a highly stressful situation just makes the person appear uninterested in really understanding the situation.  Thankfully I've probably not been in situations that cops are in regularly, but I've been in enough situations that have been stressful enough for my level of preparation to know better than to mock people who find themselves in such predicaments.  Are you really under impression that Kim Potter was generally unaware that the black gun delivered a bigger ouch than the yellow gun?

When people press the wrong pedal in a car, they don't do it because they don't know that the one on the right makes you go faster and the one on the left makes you go slower.  They do it because a stressful situation knocks them out of a mental rhythm, and sometimes various mental biases such as confirmation bias can make you fuck up before you have a chance to regain your bearings.  Training helps by developing better instincts that you will inevitably fall back on when the shit hits the fan, but obviously it didn't in this case.

Because it didn't is why it seems to reckless or negligent. The standard we expect for a police officer is higher than for you and me because they are trained but also because we give them weapons that can kill. In the same way as that the standard for a surgeon is different - again training, but also they're allowed to operate on people.

I'm not sure that it matters whether she was actually aware of it or not - because obviously if she was she wouldn't do it - but whether it meets the standard you'd expect of an average police officer. In part the lack of other cases like this is exactly why I think manslaughter is probably right.

I don't think being in a stressful situation can be a defence for a police officer because that's the nature of the job. But it doesn't seem wrong to me that we as a society give police weapons and expect them to handle them better in a stressful situation. I think maybe it could be a mitigating factor.

[The Brain]

Does Marsellus Wallace look like a taser? How is it possible to think your gun is a taser?

Also, surely Baldwin is facing charges if in fact he pointed a gun at someone and pulled the trigger without checking if he was firing live rounds or blanks?

[DGuller]

Maybe the sticking point is what is meant by "negligence".  To me negligence requires a conscious thought at some point.  You had to have made a rational decision at some point that was wrong, and that no reasonable person in your situation would make without knowing it was wrong.  That rational decision doesn't have to be at the particular moment of a crime, it could be many years earlier, but it seems to me that it has to figure somewhere.  I may be wrong about it, but to me it seems like it is impossible to be negligent just due to your instinctive training kicking in improperly, it seems to me that you had to have had a hand in your training not being up to scratch in order to be negligent.

[Razgovory]

I have no doubt that prosecutors would be just as merciless with me if I was charged.  If this is unjust then the law should be altered or abolished.  Unjust laws should be done away with rather than finding exceptions for sympathetic defendants.

[Sheilbh]

Maybe the sticking point is what is meant by "negligence".  To me negligence requires a conscious thought at some point.  You had to have made a rational decision at some point that was wrong, and that no reasonable person in your situation would make without knowing it was wrong.  That rational decision doesn't have to be at the particular moment of a crime, it could be many years earlier, but it seems to me that it has to figure somewhere.  I may be wrong about it, but to me it seems like it is impossible to be negligent just due to your instinctive training kicking in improperly, it seems to me that you had to have had a hand in your training not being up to scratch in order to be negligent.

Yeah - it may be different in the US and I have no idea on that. But here I think negligence at least is not about what you've done or any decision youo've made - it's not subjective like that. It's simply whether the mistake you made is something that a reasonable person (in your position - so the standard is higher for a professional doing their job, say) would make. With negligence - and again I don't know the US or criminal law angle on this - but you're judged against someone exercising your role with reasonable care and skill.

And I think that is right. To use the surgeon as an example, if there's someone who accidentally harms their patients on a regular basis, I don't think the fact that they did all their training diligently and are just - for want of a better word - reckless or negligent should be a get out. The issue isn't with them failing to do their training properly, but in what they do in their role.

[grumbler]

She shot someone.

She used a tool whose entire purpose is the killing of another human being, and killed another human being.

She run a red light and hit someone with her car (which, I bet, could also result in a manslaughter charge). She pulled out a gun, aimed it at someone, and shot them.

If that is second degree manslaughter, I am not sure what is...

This was not "killing someone by accident". How is pulling out a gun, aiming it at someone, and pulling the trigger simply an accident?

Yes, yes I do think that is reckless. I do not think it is a brainfart - I don't think she did something that surprise, surprise! who could have thought that would go so badly!

It is an interesting parallel to the shooting on the "Rust" set.  Alec Baldwin shot someone.

He used a tool whose entire purpose is the killing of another human being, and killed another human being.

He pulled out a gun, aimed it at someone, and shot them.

If that is second degree manslaughter, I am not sure what is...

This was not "killing someone by accident". How is pulling out a gun, aiming it at someone, and pulling the trigger simply an accident?

That is a good comparison.

The difference is one of context of course. She was not on a movie set, she was acting as a police officer, which implies I think a certain amount of caution, training, and basic respect for her tools.

But that is an excellent counter point. It is a similar set of circumstances, but the differences are legally compelling.

There's nothing in the law that says that police officers have a lower threshold for manslaughter.  Baldwin was acting as an actor on a set with real guns, which implies I think a certain amount of caution, training, and basic respect for his tools. Also, Baldwin was not in a potentially life-or-death situation where one of his fellow actors was being dragged along by an accelerating car.