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Originally Posted by nol
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I think he's referring to the "hands up" thing, and I think you know that.
Or maybe there's this idea that where the police shoot and kill an unarmed man, it's automatically a murder, automatically an execution. That's not true. It certainly could be a crime, or entirely justified, or something in between.
In a discussion of these kinds of things on reddit, the top comment was an account of an officer dealing with a use-of-force decision he had to make. The facts are entirely different than the ones in the Missouri case, but I think it does a good job of trying to make the point I've tried to made in this thread - police officers are human beings, not a part of a collective single-brain entity of "the police".
People hear about an incident like this and they immediately conclude it was an "execution", that "the police" hate black people, that "the police" know exactly what happened and just aren't telling us. All of these situations are more complicated than that. Even where there is an actual crime, like in the case of that BART shooting (involuntary manslaughter, ultimately), there can be so many factors at play because critical decisions are being made in seconds by individuals, all flawed, some more flawed than others.
That doesn't excuse crimes of course (all crimes are at some level, about poor judgment). I just think it helps with the context.
The scenario described in that reddit comment is similar to fictional scenarios I've seen utilized in officer training (sometimes with the suspect having a weapon, sometime not). If you run a scenario like that with 100 officers, probably 85 handle it perfectly or with just a few mistakes, 10 get themselves "killed" or in a position to have been killed, and around 5 use a questionable amount of force that would result in at least an investigation. It seems like in real life, there aren't as many mistakes (probably because only some portion of that 100 actually become veteran officers). I've read many, many police reports where officers used much less force than they could have.
But still, there's enough police activity generally in the United States that it's easy to put together a pretty horrifying list of bad or questionable officer conduct. If you are inclined to decide that's how "the police" are, it's easy to. But couldn't you make such a list for any group? Whether it be profession, race, religion, sports fan allegiance? Some of the horrible things will be different depending on the group (I could make a huge list of teachers that molested their students, because teachers have ready access to students, as opposed to firearms and a lawful authority to use some amount of force). You're not going to get a great reaction if you express a belief that teachers are child molesters though.
There's a real parallel about how the two "sides" see each other. The one side think the police are racist, that they somehow know exactly what happened here but they're just not telling us. The other side sees a bunch of people claiming they want justice but are only looting. But there are so many individuals in those groups, so many individuals that disagree with people in their own group. If you're just inclined to dislike a group though, whether it be the police, or black people, you see them as one collective mind doing evil things.
In light of recent and abundant media coverage; what is going on with the shootings of young, unarmed [black] men/ women and what are the departments doing about it from the inside? : AskLEO