I think every situation is different. I also believe the police, in general, have been given more slack than they should for quite some time. The issue is how to deal with this. I do not envy cops. I have a nephew who is a cop, and I worry about him all the time.
One of the more recent cases was an individual who was resisting
arrest. He grabbed, and fired a taser. As I understand it, most
tasers are one-and-done. IOW, once the taser has been fired, the
only "weapon" characteristics it has are as a thrown projectile.
That individual was running away, and was shot in the back. Was
that justified? I would have a hard time accepting that as a
justified homicide. But that is only one example.
With the proliferation of cameras everywhere, this sort of thing is going to come up more and more.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
I am largely ignorant of the issues faced in world of law enforcement.And perhaps this is a broader philosophical question with no clear answers.A guy, alone at night, in a city, near the location of a reported armed robbery is confronted by cops, takes off running.He drops what appears to be a gun, picks it up and keeps running, should he be shot?I understand that he may take a hostage or start shooting or whatever. He may turn the gun on the cops.I remember old cop and robber movies when I was a kid where the cop would yell “stop or I’ll shoot”.We had the above situation happen here in Utah a while back. Cops were found to have done no wrong.People are understandably upset.A few years ago, a young man playing with a sword was stopped by cops, he took off running with the sword and they shot and killed him.I presume the same justifications apply.I wonder how often someone with a weapon does harm after evading the cops.I wonder how other countries confront the same problem.If a human gets scared and runs due to uncontrolled fear, should they be shot?I was only truly scared once in my life. Was in a bank robbery.I understand that your rational thinking goes out the window a bit when you are really scared.
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