So much for accepting responsibility.

Six cops shot. One cop killed in a raid. It didn't have to be. From Ogden, Utah:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...n_4138252.html

That logic is kind of flawed. The distance bewteen the shooter (cop) and the target (crazy guy) does not factor in to the time line of a use-of-force decision. Whether the guy was 5 feet or 50 yards away, most bullets travel faster than the speed of sound, so the ranges in question will not factor into reaction time. If they thought it was appropriate to shoot, the distance would not affect the timing of their trigger pull.

Even with their guns already drawn, if they had waited to see what came out of his pocket and it had been a gun, there would likely have already been a bullet coming their way by the time they had a chance to pull their triggers.

I'm notmaking a judgment as to whether I think the officers' actions were proper or not. I don't know enough about the situation to have an opinion on the matter. Just pointing out some slippery-slope holes in the logic being used.

As a side observation; I believe that the side of the debate that wants to vilify the cops in this situation are going (or already have gone) to the predictable argument that the suspect was a mentally unstable, misunderstood, wholly-innocent victim. While many of the elements of this story that will be argued as facts are still unknowns, this man openly admitted that he was attempting to jump in front of a car in order to kill himself. In my book, that puts him squarely in the POS category, regardless of what might be wrong in his brain. There are plenty of bridges and tall buildings in that city. There is no excuse for trying to off yourself by splattering your brains all over the windshield of some innocent comuter - perhaps with a child int he car.

You make it sound like someone who is suicidal is worrying about proper procedures for doing so. Maybe he thought that jumping into oncoming traffic posed less risk to children than falling on them from 20 floors up. Or maybe.... he wasnt really thinking rationally at all.

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"Nothing so needs reforming as other peoples habits." Mark Twain

I don't know that I intended to make any statement about approved procedures for comitting suicide.

Rather, my point was that whether you are drunk, high, bat-crap crazy, or completely sound-minded, if you do something that puts innocents around you at risk, then you are not innocent yourself.

My larger point was that these situations have a tendancy to devolve into emotional debates rather than rational ones. Many will want to vilify the police and, after the facts pan out, maybe they are at some fault here, but there are arguments being made (and more bound to crawl into the discussion) that the cops shouldn't have shot until later in the event, or should have used less-lethal force first etc. Those arguments sound good in a forum, but lose their water in the real world.

For example:
Granted, less-lethal force is preferable when applicable, with "when applicable" being a key point of this statement. One argument made here was that the officers should have went to the taser first. Another argument was that the distance between the officers and the suspect was long enough that they had time to wait to see what he brought out of his pocket.

Remove the emaotional drivers from those two arguments, and they actually cancel each other out. Increased distance between shooter and target does not delay the timing of a use-of-force decision - bullets travel too fast to delay a decision because of an extra couple feet. Too, the effective range of most less-lethal weapons are extremely limited, especially electric ones. The net result is that there are scenarios where the target is too distant to apply less-lethal force, but still in the proximity where force has to be applied immediately - limiting the options to lethal force.

I wasn't there but I can almost guarantee that the shots were fired before the officers got within range of their tasers, and the taser was deployed because the officers continued to close distance as the engagement played out.

The officers tried to stop someone who was trying to hurt themselves, and stood a realistic chance of harming others in the process. The real tragedy of the situation is that the officers accidentally hit people who weren't involved with creating the dangerous situation. In that light, I can kind of see the city's position. Who put that chain of events into motion?

Yes this is what it sounds like to me. A citizen is trying to hurt himself to death. We must not have such nonsense.... he might damage the chevy that he jumps in front of so lets shoot him! Great plan if you want to save someone from harming themselves. How much harm did the mans actions actually cause? How much harm did the police's actions cause? Who started this chain of events? probably the guys boss who laid him off. Or track it back to a bum economy, therefor like every thing else.... it was Bush's fault!

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"Nothing so needs reforming as other peoples habits." Mark Twain

That is actually the kind of specious argument I was talking about.
It sure sounds logical to argue that he was only trying to hurt himself. And then you can marginalize the other side of the argument with the "he might hurt the car so shoot him" remark, but that is not the point, nor would any logical person make that argument.

If he was standing on a bridge about to jump to death, and no one is below it to get hurt, they OBVIOUSLY would not have shot at him. If he was standing there with his head in a trash compactor, they OBVIOUSLY would not have shot at him. The fact is, he was standing in traffic and trying to get (innocent) people to crash into him. People are often injured in car accidents. Hitting a person with your car would be similarly dangerous to hitting a deer. This person was putting bystanders in very legitimate danger. Not to mention the potential emotional impact of having to pick someone's brain matter out of your grill while you explain to your 6 year old why someone might want to end their own life.

In a situation where a suicidal person is selfishly putting others at risk, it is no longer about trying to stop them from harming themselves. At that point, it is all about stopping their behavior before they have a chance to hurt someone else. The cops' efforts to do so were executed poorly this time.

So can they shoot jaywalkers dashing thru traffic? With your reasoning the cops should be shooting at a lot more people than the are. Sounds to me they should maybe have a round of training that deals with people that are not model citizens. I would think that dealing with a rowdy drunk would send them into spasms of fear for public safety.

Please look up the meaning of the word specious. Seriously. You need to.

This guy was trying to get someone to crash into him. A jaywalker is just trying to get to the other side of the street. One can be adressed with a citation, and one needs to be stopped RIGHT AWAY.

I'm not, in any way, arguing that how the cops handled the situation is right. I don't know if it was or it was not. I don't know all the facts of the incident. I am merely playing devil's advocate. The entire point of my first point, through to this one, is that emotion and gut feelings have a way of taking over the debate about an issue like this, and your specious arguments just prove what I was saying.

When I say that a guy trying to make someone crash into them presents a threat and needs to be stopped, and you come back with "so you say all jaywalkers should be shot, huh? huh? HUH?", you are using bully-debate tactics. Listen to a progressive debate some time. This tactic is straight out of their playbook.

If someone runs into traffic and causes drivers to swerve or brake it makes absolutely no difference why they are in the street. Why does one get shot and the other get a ticket if they are causing the same problem? If they found that the guy was drunk would that change the need to shoot him?

Now, that is a rational argument.

Intent actually makes all the difference in the world. While there is the potential for the same outcome, intent entirely changes how the situation needs to be dealt with.

A jaywalker presents almost the same level of danger. The difference is that the jaywalker is actually trying not to be hit, and once they get to the other side of the road, they are going to go about their normal business. On the other hand, someone trying to commit suicide by car is trying to be hit, which vastly increases the chances of a crash actually happening, and if the first driver they encounter manages to swerve around them, they will continue trying to get someone to crash into them until they succeed. A drunk/high person can fall on either side of that line. Depending on whether the drug has made them stupid (like the jaywalker), or crazy (like the suicidal guy), their intent has to be weighed and their actions addressed accordingly.

I think a near-perfect analog to this is the way that the paradigm of high-speed chases has changed in recent years. When a suspect is just trying to get away, the cops realize that continuing to chase them creates more danger to bystanders, so they now back off. If the suspect has a hostage or was actively trying to run down pedestrians, then they would continue to pursue them aggressively.

Directly opposite to the way that high-speed chase policy has changed, look at the change in the way that plane high-jackings are now handled. When the supposed intent of the highjackers was to get away, get money, or get attention, the policy was to stay back and wait for an opportunity that presented the least risk to innocents to end the situation. Now that that we know that the highjackers' intent may be MUCH more nefarious, we are prepared to shoot down the plane to mitigate the number of people they can hurt. Our approach to the situation is entirely different, depending on the suspects’ intent.

In this case, once the cops got involved, traffic was interrupted and the danger from crashes was removed, but then the suspect reached into his pocket - doubtlessly after receiving instructions to keep his hands where they could be seen. The cops had every reason to believe that he was moving to 'plan B'. If he was willing to try to cause others to crash their cars into him, they have every reason to believe that he was willing to pull out a gun, shoot someone, and commit suicide-by-cop.

I am rarely black & white on any issue, and I am certainly not one to blindly defend the actions of the police. We live in times where the authorities routinely violate their charge, and we have to be prepared to speak out when they do. For example, there is no excuse for the forced house-to-house searches that were conducted during the chase of the Boston bombers. I believe that everyone involved, including the line cops who were “just following orders” should be prosecuted. Likewise with the officers who participated in the seizure of the Russian baby in CA a few months back. On the other hand, I refuse to let my disgust with specific actions color my thoughts and opinions on everything that the authorities do.

Cops are faced with difficult situations and have to make difficult decisions daily. It is the core of their job description. This was a bad situation all around, and the cops tried to deal with it the best way they could. It just had a tragic outcome and the innocents they were trying to protect ended up being hurt.

I think the out come was tragic.... and so was their method of handling it. There was no need to shoot anyone..... much less the innocent bystanders. Their culprit was suicidal, not homicidal. There was no more reason to fire their weapons at this man than there would have been to shoot a jumper off a high building. He had no intention of harming anyone other than himself.... and didnt. The gestapo on the other hand.....

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"Nothing so needs reforming as other peoples habits." Mark Twain

Well.. there is the argument he could have gone through the windshield of a car and killed someone in the car hitting them.. BUT.. that wasn't why they shot him.. they shot him because he reached for a pocket... That is NO REASON to shoot someone.. If you have your gun drawn already,, you;d be able to wait long enough to see if his hand emerged with a gun... I don't know many people who can fast draw from a pocket..

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Never let your fear decide your fate!
Kein Mitleid für die Mehrheit

Pretty poor argument in city traffic.... which was moving slow enough that he basically was slamming himself into parked cars. If I understood it correctly he was hindering traffic more than anything else.

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"Nothing so needs reforming as other peoples habits." Mark Twain