Is it necessary for cops to use lethal force against a guy with a knife?
- Thread starter JLM
- Start date
Pepper spray, CS gas, Mace as a last resort
Or Captain Morgan disabling the perp with cutting comments....
CS gas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You see I had this situation explained to me by a retired police officer. In the old days, a cop would take on a guy with a knife, or would step up and take a punch in the mouth. That's what cops were expected to do. But now we have police forces filled with Princesses and Primadonna's who file a complaint when someone hurts their feelings. So for all you social engineering geniuses out there who wanted a politically correct force that doesn't swear or rough anyone up, well... We reap what we sow.
I'm certain that at one point, a bus driver was on it.... Probably not too much of a stretch that passengers were as well.
That said, a nutbar that is upset or high enough to face-down multiple cops with guns drawn is probably not the kind of guy that you want to be sitting with in a confined space.... Maybe you can explain this to JLM in language that he might be able to grasp
You made a comment earlier about your knowledge of the dangers of knives as you use them every day; Do you take those knives into public venues every day?
Any thoughts about who drove the bus there?
Maybe an idea of who, other than the driver was on it when buddy got on?
How about how the cops even managed to show-up?.. That was a random discovery on their part?.. Maybe a bunch of cops just happened to walking around together with their guns out just-a-lookin to shoot some poor, innocent dude?
Think about it a minute.
Sounds about right................................Nah, the four cops who tasered Zwiekanski would hardly be working together in Toronto.
Just reading what's been written online, in the news reports and their comments, and reading through some of this thread even, it's very obvious this story is going to move in the exact same direction as all these stories do. Into an 'either' 'or' situation, either the kid was an innocent gunned down by ruthless cops or he was a knife wielding maniac who posed a threat to lives.
How about both or even neither?
This individual was a kid, by my definition. Hell I still call my 21 year old daughter and her 22 year old boyfriend 'kids', not because they are completely innocent and incapable of mature adult behaviour but because they aren't there 100% yet. So this 18 year old, he was a kid. But he was not an innocent, he absolutely displayed some very dangerous behaviour. Whether to himself or to others, no one can know quite yet. I mean, I presume at some point there were other people on this streetcar, a driver at least, who probably vacated when he pulled a knife. But I haven't heard anything specifically about any of that as of yet, so for now what transpired prior to the video is purely speculative. But it still stands to reason that this kid was not just some innocent by-stander shot by a cop. Why was he there? What was he doing? Had he made any threats prior to when the video starts?
So if we look at the police activity, I can't say that the actions seem reasonable in the circumstances either. Nine shots? Really? Particularly when three shots are fired, there is a pause, then six more shots are fired. That seems really off to me, quite excessive given the circumstances. Which has nothing to do with his age, these circumstances, but do have to do with what appears to be a officer with an itchy trigger finger. It does appear that he is the only officer with gun drawn. I wonder why that is, if the assessed situation was one of imminent threat and danger, why did the other officers not have their guns drawn?
These are all questions that need to be answered. But bottom line for me is, he can still be a kid that posed a threat and danger of some sort and yet the lethal force used in this circumstance can still be deemed to be excessive in spite of that threat. It doesn't have to be either/or.
How about both or even neither?
This individual was a kid, by my definition. Hell I still call my 21 year old daughter and her 22 year old boyfriend 'kids', not because they are completely innocent and incapable of mature adult behaviour but because they aren't there 100% yet. So this 18 year old, he was a kid. But he was not an innocent, he absolutely displayed some very dangerous behaviour. Whether to himself or to others, no one can know quite yet. I mean, I presume at some point there were other people on this streetcar, a driver at least, who probably vacated when he pulled a knife. But I haven't heard anything specifically about any of that as of yet, so for now what transpired prior to the video is purely speculative. But it still stands to reason that this kid was not just some innocent by-stander shot by a cop. Why was he there? What was he doing? Had he made any threats prior to when the video starts?
So if we look at the police activity, I can't say that the actions seem reasonable in the circumstances either. Nine shots? Really? Particularly when three shots are fired, there is a pause, then six more shots are fired. That seems really off to me, quite excessive given the circumstances. Which has nothing to do with his age, these circumstances, but do have to do with what appears to be a officer with an itchy trigger finger. It does appear that he is the only officer with gun drawn. I wonder why that is, if the assessed situation was one of imminent threat and danger, why did the other officers not have their guns drawn?
These are all questions that need to be answered. But bottom line for me is, he can still be a kid that posed a threat and danger of some sort and yet the lethal force used in this circumstance can still be deemed to be excessive in spite of that threat. It doesn't have to be either/or.
In my view, this event has everything to do with what happened on that bus prior to the video that caught the final results. Ultimately, someone made that call to the cops that resulted in so many police attending the scene
Assuming otherwise is foolhardy and there is only one poster here that is possibly gullible and naive enough to believe this was about seats getting sliced and not the danger to the other passengers that were aboard let alone to people on the street if the kid had exited the bus before the cops arrived
The other side of this is that the police aren't expected to put their life at risk and approach this guy waving a knife around to find out his problem... The kid was sporting a knife and the no one would really know if that was the only weapon he had on him.
9 shots is way over the top - but all I'm reading here is useless analysis and excuses for this kid from all the arm chair quarterbacks that have no experience with this kind of thing but feel that they have this magical insight into what they would have done (other than sh*t their britches had they actually been there)
For sure, there is a huge piece of this story that is missing. It is impossible to really judge the police reaction when we don't really know what they were reacting to specifically. Having said that though, my understanding is that, unless he was charging at them or it looked like he had a secondary weapon (and honestly I don't think that can be ascertained from that video), he was contained on the empty streetcar. So regardless of what led up to the incident we see on video, I think questions are warranted.
Absolutely, I can accept that.
I think, personally, if not for the fact that one officer (seemingly only one officer) fired 9 times and it doesn't even look as though others had their guns drawn, I'd be more inclined to take the 'side' of the officers. Given that this guy, this kid, was on a public streetcar with a weapon drawn in what looks like the middle of the night. But because it at least looks like the officer may have over reacted, it throws the whole incident into a different light.
In the end, the kid was instructed to do certain things (ie, drop the knife). He made a poor decision as did the police that blazed away in the manner they did.
Ultimately, I have no sympathy for this kid, nor will I accept the myriad of excuses or the 'Why didn't the cops....' scenarios like shooting out his knee caps (one of the more retarded suggestions)
Absolutely, the questions must be asked and possible actions taken against the individual that over reacted, but none of that will negate the reality that this man did what he did... The consequences are entirely a function of his own choices.
So there were still people on the bus, and he was a present threat, not a past one? I'd be happy to explain to JLM why you shoot someone who is a threat, but what you're saying doesn't jive with what we've been told.
Someone having once been a threat, isn't a reason to shoot them. They need to be a threat at the time you kill them.
What happened before the streetcar was stopped, everyone got off and the cops showed up is irrelevant. Good cops can size up the situation as they encounter it, not past history. The cops blew 9 shots into a guy who was in no position to harm anyone. Those are the facts that we know and common sense has to prevail when making such decision. Had the cops arrived while everyone was still on the bus, then there is a slight possibility shooting him may have been justified.
I already know why you shoot someone who is a threat, and that's not what we're dealing with here! -
Great - so why didn't the bus driver go on and have a heart-to-heart with the kid... He was only a past threat, right?
Excuses for the kid? Saying cops didn't need to shoot when the threat had passed, and they could have waited to talk the guy down to arrest him, isn't 'excuses'.
You're being absurd.