I'm of the opinion that an *attempted* crime should probably be
punished as a crime. The question is of action, knowledge, and
intent, rather than result.
I'm also of the opinion that people do not have the right to take
reasonably foreseeable risks with other people's lives or property,
and that doing so is reasonable to define as a crime.
A man who fires a gun into a crowd, without the permission of the
people in that crowd, has committed a crime by risking the lives
and well-being of others.
A man who merely waves a gun around has not yet committed a crime,
but the police probably ought to stop him anyway. I don't say he
should be tried, convicted and found guilty of something, but a
police entity of some sort seems to be the most effective means at
society's disposal for defusing the situation.
And that's a distinction that a lot of folks never think about;
there is a lot of ground between "Needs to be stopped before someone
gets hurt" and "Has Committed a Crime."
Sometimes a police officer has more knowledge of the situation than
someone else does; the guy throwing rocks into the water off the cliff
may not know that it's a pearl bed and there are a lot of pearl divers
down there at this time of morning. The police officer who knows that,
needs to stop the guy from throwing rocks. Has the guy committed a
crime? Probably not, but if he's hurt someone he ought to be responsible
to that person or that person's family. But if he goes on throwing rocks
after the police stop him the first time, he has committed a crime and
needs to be charged, tried, and convicted.
It's popular to debate clear, bright lines of law and ethics, but the
fact is that we make the police responsible both for things that are
crimes and for things that are not, and that sometimes the same act
can be a non-crime that just needs to be stopped, or a crime whose
perpetrator requires arrest, depending on the knowledge and intent of
the actor. So, we don't really have clear bright lines that give
themselves to absolutist interpretation.
Bear
