EDIT:
Contrast: In Washington State, an investigation about the death in Tacoma a couple months ago was just this mentioned in a news conference by the governor. Due to conflicts of interest the state is currently evaluating who can be assigned to lead a fully independent and unbiased investigation, with new announcements expected in the next few days.
A key fact is that the police shot Taylor after her boyfriend shot at the police, thinking they were intruders. While he was fully entitled to do that, the NYT doesn’t believe in gun rights so that’s a messy fact. To make the victim seem more sympathetic, the narrative under the heading “What Happened in Louisville?” doesn’t mention Taylor‘s boyfriend shooting first. Instead, you need to go down several paragraphs to learn that fact. Which leaves the whole article deeply confused: at first you think police just started shooting for no reason, and then later you learn they shot because they were fired upon. Which of course leaves the reader with little understanding of what police actually did wrong. Were they not supposed to shoot back when Taylor’s boyfriend shot at them? Is that the problem?
Obviously nobody expects the police not to shoot back when fired upon. What the police did wrong, instead, is failing to respect black peoples’ second and fourth amendment rights. This happened in Kentucky, where if you barge into someone’s house in the middle of the night you can expect to get shot. Police barging into people’s homes in the middle of the night unannounced is fundamentally incompatible with what the Constitution and Kentucky law gives homeowners the right to do: shoot at intruders in their home. And as such the practice of serving these no-knock warrants is an infringement of that right. It leads to tragic consequences under predictable circumstances where homeowners are just exercising their rights. And of course, it’s doubtful that officers display the same callousness to the possibility of armed homeowners when it comes to policing white neighborhoods. It’s another one in a long pattern of cases where black people are murdered for daring to exercise their second amendment rights.
- "Police started killing black transgenders now" means "police shot a person who has just killed someone, was suicidal and was pointing a gun at the police"
- "A boy who played in the park was shot by police" means "a boy was pointing an illegally modified replica gun at people in the park".
- "Police randomly shot an unarmed black man who was reading a book" means "a guy who was high and armed tried to pull a gun on a black police officer". (This last bit of fake news caused riots that left 1 dead)
If you don't enrage the readers, then there's really nothing to discuss.
We all agree that people should have the constitutional rights. Most people killed by the police are white. Blacks and whites are killed in equal proportions relative to the number of arrests by race. We all agree that the police makes horrible mistakes sometimes and should be punished.
The media's goal is to make us disagree and hate each other.
I paused reading your comment at "instead you need to go down several" because I wanted to test my current knowledge of this incident: almost nothing, I know, hard to believe, given the claim at the start. (I've been under a lot of stress at work, it's OK, I'm fine, thanks for asking though :) )
So I read the article... Here is the first paragraph under "What happened in Louisville?"
"Shortly after midnight on March 13, Louisville police officers, executing a search warrant, used a battering ram to crash into the apartment of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American emergency room technician. After a brief confrontation, they fired several shots, striking her at least eight times."
OK - so, I feel like I completely understand this is a complicated situation, not one where the cops kicked down the door and started shooting.
1. "After a brief confrontation"
This is an obvious "and cut-to," that is, I know lots of stuff happened here. I would expect a reader who isn't completely engulfed in polarizing furor to think about this for a second like I did.
2. Gunshots after a confrontation
I think this might be contentious, or where this is all loaded up... When I see "a confrontation" followed by "eight gunshots" - I actually do assume there was some reason that a reasonable gun toting police offer might have to fire after a confrontation. To me, this sets a pretty clear context.
Let me add some more that came in later paragraphs that helped crystalize my understanding and leaves me feeling like the article here isn't really as biased as you are reading it as, though, I am not accusing you of being biased, or misreading the article. I can't begin to know all the things that contribute to your thinking, and vice-versa!
3. no-knock warrant
While this all sounded like a completely legal entry, and a normal police procedure, here are my personal "let me add some context to how I interpret this" thoughts.
- If I were a POC (I'm not), multiple plain-clothed white men with guns just stormed into my apartment. This is immediately tense. Imagine how you would react. What's going through your mind as a civilian? Keep in mind, police should be trained to do a no-knock warrant. They should be experienced and cool as a cucumber. I want this in our operators who go into dangerous situations, in fact, I expect it. You can train for danger. There is no excuse for imprecision when you are dealing with life and death, especially if, when doing it, you aren't planning to deal with life or death.
4. Her home was searched not because of an actual crime she committed, but because it was a possible drop-off location for a package involved in a crime.
This feels really weak. Investigate the location then. Stake it out. Find your target and gather more evidence. This sounds rushed, and desperate. Storming an intermediate source of evidence rather than waiting for a better opportunity? Welp, it's not my job so I honestly don't know. I'm not in law enforcement so opinions are like assholes, right?
So in summary?
I think NYT speaks to a reader who is open-minded and understands that context is important, and that these subjects are complex. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit? If someone can walk away from the article with your point of view, I must be, time to think about that.
If anyone broke down my door, I would attack them. If I had a gun, I would shoot them, I wouldn't think twice. I sit here, and have no reason to believe someone should kick in my door unless they mean me harm. Let me grant other people the same right.
I expect police to be professional. The details on how this went down are not professional. It think that is safe to say simply because of the outcome.
The police were executing a warrant for a bad person who was not the person who died. How can we accept that they were in control of the situation, and if we cannot, or we think they couldn't have been, why would we send people into such a situation?
I am very flexible when it comes to granting authorities protections and flexibility in interpreting the law. I actually, for most of my life, have had faith in the system. I can imagine a scenario where I think many objective individuals would agree a no-knock warrant would make sense, so I can agree that they might be useful. I can also agree that ill-equipped people given tools they don't comprehend, or are not thoughtful enough, or well trained enough to use, will ultimately abuse and/or misuse them.
I can attest that in most of the other countries of the world, you can't point a gun at the police and get away with it.
Most importantly, you can't even talk about this case in the media, you can't sue the government, you can't hire a lawyer to fight against the government, your family will be threatened and you surely won't receive a 5 million dollar settlement that all US shootings inevitably end up with.
I do agree that in many cases both sides did something wrong, but in this case I can't imagine how you can find fault there.
Indeed, the victims in this case did nothing wrong, given the information that I have. I would probably shoot at the intruders too in that situation.
I do not disagree that the police was wrong to storm the place, but I think that given the well-known bias of NYT, they are trying to create more rage in the community by creating an impression that the police fired first.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that I don't live in China. But it's pretty embarrassing for the richest and most powerful country in the world (allegedly bearing the mantle of freedom and democracy and Enlightenment values), to have to compare ourselves to totalitarian dictatorships to feel better about ourselves, instead of other democracies, most of whom have yearly counts of deaths by law enforcement in the single digits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
(edit: I said Absolutely not... but I changed it to no, I can see how someone would read what was printed as biased/attempting to push a narrative, I just didn't read it that way, and expect better of people who read the news)
That may be where we differ. It's my belief that our homes are private and safe. That's clearly not true given the existence of no-knock warrants, but as long as the two exist together, I will default to the power dynamic being in the hands of the person in the home, not he intruder, legal, or not. Especially when the intruder is a form of authority that I expect to be thoughtful and accountable.
For what it's worth, I might be intentionally ignorant to bias - I read fox news periodically just so I can understand the language used by different views than my own. I am often critical of liberal news sources. I generally agree that news sources, not just the NYT, are involved in low-effort journalism, and a deep lack of critical thinking and introspection. I think this helps me cut through the obvious bullshit, so that when it goes into my memory, it is with less bias than intended maybe? I'm not bias free though.
In this article though, I'm not feeling it, but I will sincerely give it another read with what you mentioned, and try to come back and comment.
1. They should have known a legal gun owner was present. What would anyone expect a gun-owner to do when their home is broken into? Hasn't Charlton Heston said something about all this?
2. They should have been trained and prepared to execute their warrant under these conditions with a plan for mitigating loss of life, especially since the suspects in the crime were already arrested, and none were thought to be present at the address. None of the people at the address were suspected of criminal activity, and no drugs, or criminal paraphernalia were found. The stakes of the raid were not justified in my opinion - but I of course, do not have all the facts, but I feel like I have enough to make these statements.
I absolutely will not accept "who shot first" that's absurd.
The onus is on the enforcement to manage damage, not a citizen who doesn't even know its coming. The intelletualizing of this is ridiculous, its a common sense issue.
Personally I would be questioning the need for a no knock warrant on a house that "might" have been a drug drop.
One thing I don't get, is how three officers managed to miss the guy shooting at them.
>It’s a Constitutional (and undoubtedly contractual) requirement. Police officers are employed pursuant to a contract. A contractual benefit is considered a property interest that cannot be taken away without “due process.” Hence police officers remain employed (and getting paid) until an investigation establishes they actually did something wrong. Private employers don’t need to provide due process so this doesn’t apply.
probably deleted because it's wrong; deleted before i could submit my response:
>It’s a Constitutional (and undoubtedly contractual) requirement.
you're wrong
> “Property interests, of course, are not created by the Constitution. Rather, they are created and their dimensions are defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law—rules or understandings that secure certain benefits and that support claims of entitlement to those benefits.”
so it's a matter of “legitimate entitlements”. in fact "legislature may elect not to confer a property interest in federal employment" and moreover in Bishop v. Wood SC accepted a lower court's opinion that police are employed at will even if discharge is conditional on due process.
all this and more at https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/...
People saying it doesn't make it true. The only argument you've made is quibbling about the order in which the facts are introduced. I see 7 subheadings in the story. The details of who shot when follows the second one. But not putting it first is evidence of an agenda? Come on.
How about: they should be held responsible for the preventable death of this woman in a situation they directly and deliberately created? Is that not the problem?
I don't think anyone is demanding a first degree murder conviction here. They didn't walk in with the intent to kill her. But they sure as shit did kill her, and it's all their fault that it happened. Sounds like open and shut manslaughter to me.
I feel very strongly, that at midnight, if a door is broken down, into the home of someone who legally owns a gun, it is my expectation that the owner of that gun shoots first and asks questions later.
To be clear: shooting first and asking questions later is stupid. I hope people think more than that, but in a moment of panic, chaos, surprise, and fear, I would do the same.
In this power dynamic, where an organized, state sponsored force is forcibly entering the private home of a citizen unannounced, and plainclothed (though let me admit, I doubt I'd be able to spot a uniform in those circumstances), I do expect the state sponsored force to be trained, experienced, and to be acting in good faith.
I do not read that this situation was acted out in good faith. The fact that there was someone inside with a gun, that the gun was fired, and that happened between a door being kicked in, and any other communication is meaningless to me.
Everything that happened before that is meaningful.
1. All criminals in case already arrested
2. no criminals present at location of raid
3. no (to my knowledge) plan/knowledge/prep for armed people at the location, despite that information seemingly being available (legal gun owner, clear association, I mean, we can assume the police can make that association, since they were able to do so with the ex-boyfriend who was already under investigation? Am I being facetious? Maybe.)
This should have never happened, and what happened after the door was knocked down is not what needs to be reviewed, focus on the top of the funnel: cops executing no-knock warrants on non-violent locations where no criminals are known to be present and also where a known associate of the homeowner is a legal gun owner. Don't kick that door down at midnight in a surprise raid. It's sloppy, and not work I accept.
If they were trying to bust a drug smuggling ring, it sounds like maybe there was parallel construction afoot. In other words, they may have been acting according to a supply of information beyond that which would ever be presented to the public, and could not be used to support a prosecution.
Reading between the lines, there's a hint that her role as an EMT put her in contact with pharmaceuticals that could be siphoned from channels of legal medical authority, as she was an insider. That, as an insider, she may have been a sacrifice by illegal operators, or that parallel construction would be the only way to parry criminals that could have access to insider tip offs that allow them to perpetually dodge getting caught.
This raises the spectre whereby, maybe there's more than one layer of misdirection, so where do you draw the line? How would you know whether the murder itself wasn't an internal turf war among rival corrupt operators using the aegis of authority?
If she was a medical operator, acting as a relay runner from an official position of trust, for a smuggling ring, we'll never know.
But the one other angle that bothers me is: maybe they were digital patsies. If the police used digital/mobile device sources of intel to determine that these were crooked operators, would they know or care if these were just regular people who had their devices targeted for squatting in caches and slack space, and remote relay/exit operations? Would it be believable that a sophisticated matador practice could be employed as warning canary devices, so the real operators could throw a kill switch, if their canary croaks?
Hard to say...
The police would use a no-knock warrant if they were corrupt. Or if they thought they had the real target. But they could be made to believe a false target is authentic. I don't think we have dirty cops operating a no-knock death squad. Which means they probably believed they were taking down a legitimate suspect.
That only leaves open 2 possibilities by my count: She and her associates had compromised devices and were being used as canaries by real criminals, or they were the criminals.
The one probable vindicator is if knocking her link from the chain of smuggling relays should have an outwardly observable effect on some unknown portion of the black market. If a drought is induced, could it be that her death disrupted the distribution of drugs? Probably not a crime punishable by death, but this would point to a rational reason to have been seeking her arrest.
Meanwhile, there's probably enough noise introduced by pandemic lockdowns, and the notoriety of the press and media attention, that these other circumstances could play an outsized role in causing a drought in black market drug availability on their own.
Furthermore, in some cases, drug gangs are so powerful that one cannot discount the idea that any such gang that might operate canaries might also retain muckraking journalists with bribes, who might even work for payment in access to drugs. At that level of paranoia, you have to believe this may even be full spectrum warfare, involving very powerful transnational entities, and that this is akin to covert warfare.
There is a danger in this tabula rasa sort of thinking. If we think only of imaginary scenarios and "in theory this is how it works", we're likely to ignore the very real consequences of this awful practice. Ms Taylor isn't the first person to die in this situation (innocent person killed entirely due to police incompetence); neither is she the thousandth. Lots of police die from no-knocks gone awry as well. There is no reason for any of this. If police know where the suspect is located, they may collect her or him at any time. When the suspect is a regular person with a regular job, why not make an arrest when she or he leaves the house to go to work in the morning? How about arresting the suspect at work, with no opportunity to hide evidence or resist?
The "nightmare scenario" that cynical police spin for credulous judges is that drugs might be flushed down a toilet. But drug prohibition is itself cynical and evil. Prohibition has only ever harmed American society. As we collectively wake from our long nightmare of drug enforcement, we must do away with all the insidious menaces that it has inspired. Our police will not be replaced overnight with "responsible" authoritarians, so we must not "imagine" we can safely allow them the tools of authoritarian tyranny, on the off chance that they might not be used in the way they have always been used. You write as if it's only because of "unprofessional" actions that Ms Taylor was killed. In fact, "unprofessionalism" is why we are blaming the police, but people like Ms Taylor are killed in no-knock raids even when every action is performed in adequately "professional" fashion. Occasionally no one dies senselessly, but these raids are always dangerous and unnecessary. That is a practical truth, which overrides "objective" theory.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/03/no-knock-...
I hope folks read your comment and follow the link, it's worth the read.
We rail against twitter or Facebook when they push politics and don’t act like a nonpartisan medium of transmission, but we’ve allowed our news to become exactly that.
It seems like a lot, but then consider that only 5% of people killed by police in the US were unarmed. The other 95% were armed, and most of those cases seem to be actual criminals rather than ordinary people like Breonna Taylor's boyfriend.
I'm with you on the American police being quite distinct from other police forces, and there's a lot of criticism to be made about them - like failure to keep proper statistics about police killings - but I think it's also fair to consider the circumstances that they work in.
As for your first point, many of the things can be true at the same time: US puts too many people into jails, there is too much crime in the US, and there are ways to obtain justice that are not available in most other countries (mass media, social media, courts).
The problem is that said investigations always seem to drag their feet, never going further than the paid leave, and never seem to actually get to the things that are meant to be a punishment (firing, arrest, etc).
[0] https://www.boston25news.com/news/trending/charges-dropped-a...
You have an extraordinarily large amount of faith in the average reader. I have 2k FB friends that would absolutely love to prove you wrong.
I'm not sure to which countries you are referring.
But in many countries around the world this problem is greatly reduced, if not eliminated only because these countries also have strict gun laws that stop this happening.
A group of people breaks into someone's house at midnight with weapons and it's not a story that someone defended themselves, at all. Bringing it up is a distraction - and this entire HN thread is a perfect example of that.
If the guy hadn't shot, or had shot second, or if Taylor hadn't been killed at all, it wouldn't make what they did justifiable. The fact that their absolute negligence led to a situation where a woman died is just what makes this that much more important to focus on.
It is not moved to another section "for a snappier piece" as you put it in another comment. It is simply not important information, it is not relevant, it does not change the judgment, it does not change that the police are responsible for her death.
According to your link, the US leads the world in prison population, period.
To
Breonna's boyfriend fearing for his safety fired several shots at the plain-clothed men who had just broken into his home. These police officers returned fired, striking Breonna at least eight times.
When most people read "Kenneth got into a brief confrontation with John. John then fired four rounds at Kenneth." they will assume brief confrontation means "shouting and cursing match" or "physical altercation" not "fired a gun at".
This comment, and a number of other comments from both sides in this thread proves that it is possible to have a good discussion on hot topics, and I live that as I feel I have now understood a lot more not only about what happened but also how it could happen.
edit: changed "can we get" to "could we have" to make it clear that this is not a feature request but an idea.
edit2: why I care is because so many of the most important discussions that come up get flagged down because they tend to be usalvagable. My hope was that this idea or something similar could help. I should also note that I don't think it would be easy to pull off as it would lead to accusations about favoritism etc.
A reduced version of this question would be: if Hitler/Xi/Kim were to publish an opinion piece in NYT, should they reject it or should they publish it?
"The city has since released Walker's 911 call — but only after an attorney for Taylor's family gave it to news media hours earlier."
That 911 call can be heard here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/28/breonn...
Because one of these is very easy to fix and would 100% mean Taylor would still be alive. The other would be super difficult to fix and who knows if it would have saved her life.
It was a piece calling for the government to murder protesters which the editor solicited and published without reading. Nor was any context or commentary provided indicating such.
(edit) You can also see, now, after the backlash, NYT agrees that it probably shouldn't have been published.
Based on that review, we have concluded that the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protes...
Either the amount shouldn't matter or you shouldn't be able to flush it all at once (also, as if "plumbing forensics" didn't exist)
Your home, your legally owned gun, your panic and chaos, you shoot. I would do the same, I would not be surprised that others did the same.
Expectation of professionalism, and de-escalation is on the regulated authority with power and accountability. If they were well trained, and made a calculated risk for an important case, they may be justified. From all that I can find, it seems clear to me that the police acted unprofessionally, and anything past that is not really a factor until that unprofessional behavior is addressed.
Basically it boils down to:
* it was a fairly dangerous opinion with fabrications that weren’t vetted by the editorial team
* it was disrespectful and dangerous to the safety of their employees of color. The safety of people should not be a partisan issue
* it compromised the reporting abilities of other arms of the NYT
Also, this is so obvious, to so many parts of the political spectrum that pretending to not understand it is "telling on yourself" in modern parlance.
Thank you brave soldier. I appreciate your comment. I don’t care about HN karma, even if I do, but your comment is meaningful to me above an upvote.
I’m a “new” manager, and I am a terrible communicator (and/or I have impostor syndrome). I’ve been trying desperately to improve how I communicate personally and professionally.
This thread is maybe a perverse exercise in that, so your comment is great feedback. Thanks. Hang in there.
Commend, if accepted by mods, should result in a visual difference in the display of the post somehow opposite of how flags works: pin to top, really small star or something. Maybe a list of exceptionally good answers in the users the profile.
I was once "caught" for doing something correctly that all teenagers tend to fail on (technical, trivial thing) and ten years later since then I realized I had always got it right after that day when someone told me that they appreciated it.
I don't know if this is a good idea, but I wanted to mention it.
If you enter private property forcibly, you should expect to be shot at. If you shoot back while having forcibly gained illegal entry to private property, you've committed a crime. It seems fairly open and shut to me. The only hold up is police and court system corruption along with a healthy dose of good old fashioned racism. Again, just my opinion.
I've been here for over ten years in some form or another so it is no surprise by now :-)
In fact while I really like HN I sometimes have to laugh at the voting patterns here.
E.g. Last week I think I got a bunch of downvotes for describing my first hand experience with something that everyone was suddenly an expert on :-)
> I’m a “new” manager, and I am a terrible communicator. I’ve been trying desperately to improve how I communicate personally and professionally.
Not a manager, but I also struggle with this. Also I would be happy if more people communicated as well as you!
> Hang in there.
Thanks! You too!
Originally circumstances were rare - 3,000 no-knock raids in 1981, increasing 50,000 in 2015. That's ridiculous.
Well, I do. We had a case in Germany a few years back where the police served some kind of no-knock warrant, the guy (a Hells Angel) thought they were from a rival gang, shouted at them and then shot at them. A Policeman died, the guy dropped his gun immediately after police identified themselves. The Case made the news later because the guy got acquitted of all charges regarding the killing [1] but that's only secondarily relevant here.
For me the main take-away from this should be that there's a difference between shooting back at night against a home invasion and shooting at the police. Just because the police see a situation where someone shoots back in a home invasion-scenario does in no way mean they can expect an intention to shoot at cops. Shooting back at invaders is legal, and the police should not react until they have ruled that out.
[1] I suspect that's a german source, sorry. http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/0,1518,795678,00.html#
...but the parent comment is saying the confrontation itself involved gunshots?
After being shot at, the police fired eight shots
I might add I know nothing about this case other than what I’ve read in this comment thread.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/business/new-york-times-o...
The editor in question also resigned.
Not saying it justifies the original publication, but I appreciate the way it was handled.
Newspapers fairly regularly print opinion pieces that run contrary to the normal bias of the paper, but they usually refrain from printing ones which advocate violence directed towards the readers (and employees) of the paper.
I also understood it that it is not the fact the police responded in kind that is criticised, instead they question the viability of these no-knock raids in general.
Maybe the order could have been better, but I don't see a real problem here.
Their shots apparently hit the apartment above. With a breaching entry and an unknown target, random positioning in the horizontal plane may be expected but in the vertical plane it is definitely not. That suggests that they were holstered when they kicked in the door. Further, the gunner shot once and hit while the "police" shot many times and only managed to hit his girlfriend which suggests that they were much more panicked than someone that was asleep 1 minute before the encounter started.
what does the evidence look like when the police decided to rob you?
Probably correct for what I know. But that doesn't means that all results here are valid.
The concentration of intelligence is obvious, but that doesn't mean I don't see sloppy reading and weird logic all the time.
Intelligent people also have biases, also read too fast and doesn't catch the nuances, also become hot headed etc etc.
The answer is: both should be addressed.
The officers should be thoroughly investigated for this incident by an independent third party. If the facts support it they should be charged with the most advanced crime that the facts support (e.g. manslaughter).
Simultaneously, we should immediately discontinue and abandon no-knock warrants. If they're not abandoned entirely we should radically alter the burden of proof required to obtain one from probable cause to clear and convincing evidence.
Are they filed under penalty of perjury?
I know proving intent instead of incompetence here would be hard, but I'd like someone to at least look into that, as well as the killing itself.
It seems interesting that a community whose members overwhelmingly work in logical domains, also struggles being consistently logical on an aggregate basis.
And not just that, the abstract topic itself is...rather touchy.
Might there be something interesting to learn here?
- People in plain clothes
- Knock down a door to an apartment
- In a country where people legally own guns
- In a country where "If they (robbers/burglars) come for me, they will get shot" is a thing
how is it an impossible standard to expect that someone will shoot at them for essentially being burglars?
The only situation where I understand a no-knock warrant is like when the police is actually targeting someone's computer and don't want to go through all the hustle of cracking the password.
For someone outside the US this is such a crazy statement.
I do.
They should temporarily cover to safety, understand the situation, announce themselves and attempt to de-escalate.
Only if gunfire persist after that, it's reasonable to use deadly force. That's the LAST thing they should do (because in fact, mistakes at that point will be final, with mortal consequences)
America has more than just a few home invasions and murders. If someone is trying to break into your home, especially at night, there's a high chance that that person is not only willing to maim or kill you, but planning to do so. America has around 1 million home invasions per year and help isn't always nearby. Waiting can easily result in the victim being killed.
The man who shot at police here was worried that someone would end up killing him or his girlfriend. Unfortunately, he was right.
Oh please. It's mostly just another tech forum.
Then I expect police to take the strategy of simply retreating and getting to safety.
Obviously that’s associated with a higher risk for the police but to my mind that is a risk police have to accept if they want to be able to execute search warrants like that. It comes with the territory.
The other alternative is to not execute search warrants in that way.
> Those excuses are built on a revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters. A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants.
And nowhere in the op-ed did he call for murdering or killing anyone.
How about: If you do something that could be met with justified self defense and you encounter that self defense your first instinct as police should be to retreat and clarify the situation?
Why is it reasonable to have the first instinct to shoot back?
It would be funny if people on HN programmed computers in the same way they talk outside of shop conversations.
Theres that video from two days ago of that (white) union chief screaming and spitting about "how deserve more respect and we are tearing them down" and it was accompanied by an array of tweets that said "He gets treated like a black guy for 2 weeks and he has a mental breakdown." I think this story even in it's detail loose state is an appropriate weapon to even the fight.
Most cops don't need guns. Almost no normal civilians need guns. The entire developed world that's not the USA gets by just fine without the 'right' to own a semi-automatic machine gun.
You say this so casually, like the 95% of people killed deserve to be dead? Most other developed countries had problems with guns, and have dealt with it by restricting them, not by making the police militarised and just shooting more 'bad guys'
How many countries in the world do you imagine don't have courts, social media or mass media? Or even lack any of the above?
How is that an impossible standard? Holding your fire and retreating is certainly an option. It carries more risk, but if you're going to dress in plain clothes and serve a no-knock warrant, that's a risk you must accept up-front.
The existence of no-knock warrants is also to blame, of course; banning them entirely would likely have prevented this.
Note: Where I live, most young men, and some young women, have assault rifles at home. Cops still don't kill people. (might savoir-vivre have something to do with this juxtaposition?)
(speaking of refactoring tech debt, the Duke of Wellington was one of the signatories to an international treaty which may have helped inspire the "Monroe Doctrine". [flagged] discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23359754 )
So yes, with a practical understanding of how American police train and operate, this outcome is completely expected.
Killing is what the military does.
Trump has declared that the protests are lead by terrorist "Antifa".
The police were already gassing, shooting and brutalizing protesters.
I don't know what other conclusion to draw about what "overwhelming force" and "dominating" would mean in this context besides murdering people.
Here in Seattle, it wasn't the rioters and looters who were attacked by police, it was mostly peaceful, non-violent protesters.
One might even imagine that the two are deliberately conflated.
> disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers
Do you have the link?
I don't know how to find the number of arrests, but in Australia there were 4 people killed by law enforcement in 2016/17 and in the US there were 1,536 killed (2019). Australia has a population of 24M, the US 329M, (so 13 times the population). At the same per-population rate as Australia, the US would kill 52 people, and at double the per-population rate it would be 104.
It would seem astonishing that the arrest rates somehow converts to the US only killing twice as many people!
The job of the justice system, and the police, is to keep non criminal people safe, all of them, even if it means not being able to catch a few criminals here and there. It's obviously not the case in the US though, just looking at wrongly convicted people gives you a good idea of what the US system is about [0]. This kind of shit should never ever happen, it's the very basis of any serious justice system.
Also, this is exactly why countries like France have laws preventing police interventions between 9pm and 6am (it obviously has exceptions, but even then they need a special authorisation). You don't storm people houses in the middle of the night and start shooting when the confused people you just woke up start panicking... seems like common sense to me
As far as I can tell you're legally allowed to own a gun and use it to defend yourself against intruders, you can't use this as a valid argument in that case. The only shocking thing here are the police tactics, not the fact that this dude defended himself.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_miscarriage_of_justice...
This is often part of the "rules of engagement" that military personnel are expected to follow; not only because they're expected not to shoot civilians, but also peacekeeping situations where firing on the wrong forces could cause WW3, as well as the very basic check that the target isn't wearing the same uniform as you and shooting in your direction by mistake.
It's not clear whether the police were firing at the gun-holder here and missed, or whether they were firing blindly through a door, wall, or into a dark area; that is also criminally irresponsible.
So I think that makes around 125-130 unarmed people killed by police. [1] says that there were 1,134 people killed that year by police.
125/1134 = 11%
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/31/the-counted-...
The bar to become a member is low, and while comments are scrutinized and can be flagged, votes aren't.
And let me be honest: even I vote for or against topics that I wouldn't write for or against.
I think this is often observed in elections as well were people will give a secret vote to something they agree with even if they aren't ready to face their families about it.
FTR: I think the system tries to mitigate this to some degree. I don't think all votes are created equal here.
> Might there be something interesting to learn here?
Absolutely :-)
And yet they managed to not return fire all day, until they decided to literally invade an apartment.
They did publish a chunk of Mein Kampf back in 1941, only adding a single small paragraph of context.
So, zero regard for the safety of anyone.
Just, wow.
If my convenience store stickup goes sideways and the clerk gets shot I'm responsible. Cops should be held to the same standards as normal people.
We should also get rid of no-knocks but that's just whacking a particular mole. The root cause of the problems America has been having with police is that normal people do not get the same treatment under the law that police do.
I'm not sure if shooting someone in "self defense" who is legally shooting at you is illegal under US law, it's an interesting thought though.
They are not capable of solving anything without authority, force and violence. Just stacked with military equipment and tools to escalate anything until a "suspect" breaks - mentally or physically.
It is not unheard of for drug task forces to augment their official income by robbing drug dealers. I wanna say one of the major cities in CA had a task force that got into trouble for this as did IIRC Newark and Baltimore (pretty sure it was them but not 100%). It's definitely A Thing(TM). There was at least one story of a particularity systemic case that hit HN.
That's very hard to answer because the cops have censored or lied about most of the report, as well as making claims about knocking and introducing themselves -- holding a no-knock warrant -- which is apparently disputed by witnesses.
But then again I don't think it's very helpful to try to identify the one and only Bad Guy™.
The poor police were just following orders.
You mean you. I actually do. Without situational awareness the police should hold their fire lest innocent people be murdered. It isn't all that hard to understand, really.
Can you actually believe them though? What if the intruder does what the shooter in Canada did and impersonates the police?
But they're trained very badly at that. They're trained to escalate, which endangers everybody, including themselves.
It could mean that you do a show of force so strong that the opposing side gives up. In this case he was probably referring to putting so many policemen/national guard out there that they could disperse and detain all of the looters and rioters. This would likely prevent further looting and rioting as people would see that they would likely get caught.
When police creates situation in which the other person has no reason to think they are police, where that person can reasonably think it would be legal to shoot, yes I do. That whole situation was created by police and they had time to prepare. So yes, I expect them not to shoot randomly.
It is not reasonable to expect less from police then we expect from civilians.
So any troublemakers would think twice about trying to hit an area to sew chaos (looting, rioting, setting property on fire, etc.)
When you boil it all down, this is the answer. The main reasoning behind no knock warrants is to prevent evidence destruction. The harm of a drug dealer flushing some drugs down the toilet versus potentially killing innocent people isn't even in the same ball park. And really, how many flushes can some get in the 15-30 seconds that it takes for cops to rush into the house?
Sometimes the argument is that no knocks are for armed and violent suspects but even then it's not clear a no-knock raid makes it any safer for anybody. Police could just as easily wait until someone leaves the house in the morning and execute the arrest with far less risk.
Seems like no-knock raids should be outright banned for local law enforcement at the least.
The thing about the whole argument of, 'we only advocate cracking down on rioters and looters' is how is someone supposed to get that distinction right in the fog of a chaotic situation? Arrest people and have them face trial. Advocating violent and potentially lethal crackdowns on people in situations like this is what brutal autocracies do.
In this case, they were supposedly looking for a person. They would have surrounded the place. It's not like he could have vanished into thin air between the time they knocked and then had to force their way in. No-knock raids should never be used for arrest warrants anyway! It's insane to think that supposedly responsible, intelligent representatives in our government have led us to the legal situation under which this occurred in the first place.
The narrative is mostly blank because the media probably couldn’t get the full narrative as it’s an ongoing investigation and thus not subject to open records. It looks like they only got the public narrative [1] which simply states “PIU Investigation” and are pretending to be shocked. In any case, you would expect most details to be contained in supplements or the case file, not the initial incident report narrative.
The forced entry checkbox and injuries only have meaning in the context of an offense and “Death Investigation” isn’t a reportable offense or incident, it’s just a placeholder. When they have a finding (justifiable or criminal homicide) then they’ll either complete a supplement or generate a new incident which will need to have certain flags and drop-down options set correctly for reporting.
That any of this is being used as some sort of evidence of a cover-up is ridiculous.
[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/465105285/Breonna-Taylor-Inc...
We can have all the guns and take all the precautions but these kind of incidents will continue to happen. The only way is to hire better people to the police force and more importantly train them better. Above all, have proper social support.
If the police had not been there at all, or had been issued a standard warrant, the the "who shot first" issue is not a question that needs to be asked.
I suspect you're missing something here or not communicating what you're trying to say very well -- military personnel aren't going to sit around and do nothing if they're being shot at, they're going to return fire, call for artillery on the source of the shooting, call for aircraft support to bomb the source of the shooting, call for a QRF team to help them destroy the source of the shooting, etc.
Even "peacekeeping" forces are going to return fire if fired upon.
While as a life-long military person I don't agree with his conclusions, you are mischaracterizing his article and I strongly suspect haven't read it.
> You may say the average person doesn't interpret that phrase that way
Given that he used that phrase in a Tweet, and not in a military order, it's reasonable to assume he was speaking to "the average person" and using that phrase accordingly. And given that he has actually said that he was using the phrase colloquially, you're interpreting his words contrary to what he's clearly said.
And given that he enlisted in 2005, and not in 1905, is it even reasonable to assume that he knew about this ancient meaning of the phrase? Does the military still use this phrase?
Yes? I mean, no, they're not the only bad guy. There are other problems to address too and other ways to solve the abstract problem. But abstract solutions aren't the same thing as "justice", and these officers made the decision to engage in violence that killed an innocent woman. That's culpability, period.
Look: the whole reason we put guns into the hands of special people is that we trust them to keep us safe. And that trust should come with responsibility when they don't. The officer's judgement needs to be applied in circumstances like this, they aren't robots. If they felt, like you do, that the warrant was impossibly unsafe to serve, they should not have served the warrant. That's what the trust we place in them is supposed to be for.
And they didn't. Clearly they were wrong about the safety, but they thought it was safe, because they did it. And Breonna died. And that lapse in judgement needs to be addressed with justice.
People actually killing protesters always, without fail, claim to be trying to stop "rioters and looters". This is not a phrase to be taken at face value, ever.
If this is standard in Louisville and there are no safeguards in their reporting software, stringent incident reporting software ought to be added to the list of reforms we ask of them.
I know I'll get downvoted, but I see the conflation of "everyday" and "every day" everywhere and it's driving me bonkers.
ETA: Note, they are pronounced differently. "Everyday" has a single primary stress on the first syllable. "Every day" has two primary stresses, one on the first syllable and one on the last.
Absolutely true, but you seem to expect them to care about that fact. Recent evidence shows that their selection & training eliminates caring about such issues.
Obviously, this drastically needs to be changed.
Same thing happens in pretty much any large gathering of people: "I only signed off on blah, nobody told me foo and bar would happen". "We only did foo because someone signed off on blah, we had approval it's not our fault". And round and round we go pointing fingers at each other rather than improving the world for anyone.
Having the British Army fire on and kill civilians in Northern Ireland was extremely controversial. Several incidents resulted in murder trials. Some of this is still going on. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-49721166
> Even "peacekeeping" forces are going to return fire if fired upon.
My point is that there have been lots of places in the 20th century where troops have been specifically ordered not to do that without senior authorisation, because of the potential political impact of an escalation.
Or at the very least carefully identify who they are going to be shooting at, and provide a warning, rather than firing blindly into residential buildings.
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul...
"I know that I just kicked down your door in the dead of night guns draw to gain the element of surprise because I anticipated or wanted an altercation but now that I know you have a gun and are actively trying to kill me, I'd like to ask you to calm down."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dzieka%C5%84ski_Taser...
0: https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/prosecutors-drop-attempted-mur...
This IS how they work. The police kick down your door, sometimes lob in a few stun grenades, then charge in like they're Rambo. Violence is a feature, not a bug, of this system.
The reason no-knocks are used in drug cases is, ostensibly, to prevent destruction of evidence. But, police have come to rely on them (along with armored SWAT teams) for damn near ALL warrants, not just know violent drug offenders.
It's high time we banned no-knocks. It's high time we introduced a higher bar to arrest-via-home-invasion. It's high time we held judges accountable for signing warrants. And, probably biggest of all, high time to end the war on drugs as it currently exists.
There was no punishment for the killing of the LEO.
The only conspiracy is that people want those who are not typically victims of these injustices to be inclusive in their thinking about who deserves life and who should make that determination.
It's not "the narrative", it's the incident report.
I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that you are correct that they aren't obligated to release the incident report. But they did release the incident report, presumably as a pretense of transparency and/or good will. The fact that it is basically blank shows that the pretense is just that, a pretense.
> In any case, you would expect most details to be contained in supplements or the case file, not the initial incident report narrative.
I would expect the incident report to report the incident. This isn't confusing.
Your argument here is basically, "Oh don't worry, that's just the report with the lies--the report with the truth exists somewhere, you'll get to see it eventually!" But that's no less damning: why is there a report with lies on it, and why is the report with the lies on it the only one the public gets to see?
If you're arguing that not reporting the incident in the incident report, or not having transparency, are police norms, I won't disagree with you there, but that's a huge problem.
I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about this as I'm a former service member who is generally kind of paranoid of people breaking into my safe spaces. In the Marine Corps, there's pretty much two tactical options we are trained to choose from when taking fire: either immediately assault the enemy with fire and maneuver, or break contact and find cover.
An immediate assault should only be used if you know the relative size of the enemy, you're rules of engagement support an assault, and there's no hard cover available. Immediately returning fire increases the likelihood of getting your people killed, but retains the initiative, which is great if the enemy force is likely to advance on your position. There is no benefit of doing this if the enemy is just going to sit behind cover taking pot shots; better to draw them out and gain the cover advantage.
All of that is to say that the police had NONE of those qualifications. There is literally no reason not to pull back. By returning fire, they put themselves in MORE danger, and for no reason. That is the reaction that untrained animals take, not a disciplined unit.
Now, you too are making things up. This is where “fake news” charges come from.
Here’s what it actually said:
Those excuses are built on a revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters. A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants.
But the rioting has nothing to do with George Floyd, whose bereaved relatives have condemned violence. On the contrary, nihilist criminals are simply out for loot and the thrill of destruction, with cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes.
These rioters, if not subdued, not only will destroy the livelihoods of law-abiding citizens but will also take more innocent lives.
Sounds reasonable to me. This also proved correct. And I agree with the article.
You seem to be attempting to put forth a narrative that the boyfriend somehow made a mistake. Probably in some misguided attempt to support the police in this incident. But you're not helping the cause of LEO's right now. You're actually doing enormous harm to it. When you make mistakes you admit it, you hold people accountable, and then you fix the issues that lead to the mistake. That inspires confidence. The response of you and the Louisville PD and court system inspires not only lack of trust and lack of confidence, but also widespread animosity.
Militaries are also trained for peacekeeping missions. It’s not all about trigger happy gun toters.
If it’s an all out rebellion that’s different. I don’t see a ruby ridge or Waco incident coming, but maybe you do.
I wonder how much this is due to sheer volume of warrants and policing actions?
It’s also not uncommon practice for initial report narratives to be somewhat anemic when the follow-up investigation is immediate. Homicides being a perfect example where, in many agencies, all the useful details beyond “found dead guy” are in the murder book (i.e. case notes) outside of RMS.
Also that's still "only" 25% that are unarmed.
As it is on most any other site. And depending on who signs up and participates on which each site, you end up with some sort of an average intelligence level per site. HN's I suspect would be rather close to the top.
> and while comments are scrutinized and can be flagged, votes aren't.
Indeed they aren't, which is my point.
> I think this is often observed in elections as well were people will give a secret vote to something they agree with even if they aren't ready to face their families about it.
And one might expect the same to occur here, but does it, and to what degree? Is there more, less, or identical diversity of cultural/political beliefs in the general public, or on HN? Based on many years reading comments (particularly dimmed-due-to-downvotes ones, and responses to them) here, I have a feeling that there is less diversity of thought here.
Knowing such things with high levels of accuracy would require a form of omniscience, but that doesn't mean that nothing can be gleaned from user behavior on HN, or any sit for that matter.
>> Might there be something interesting to learn here?
> Absolutely :-)
What sorts of things do you think we could learn if one had access to the HN voting data?
WP published various parts of the trove they deemed newsworthy, and ultimately won and accepted a Pulitzer for this.
Then the editorial board signed and published a statement that said some of what was released from the trove actually wasn't newsworthy and were reasonable and legal defense programs. The editorial board recommended that because of this Snowden should be charged. In the editorial itself they acknowledge that the illegal behavior that was discovered can't be used as a defense in court.
The WP was offered and accepted the responsibility to parse this trove and publish only what is newsworthy. They messed up and published a couple documents that weren't newsworthy. They never publish any kind of apology or correction for it, instead they indict their own source, and recommend he be charged for that!
There's an unprecedented level of malice and incompetence displayed here. Look at the revolt in the NYT newsroom about the Cotton op-ed, and compare to literally not a word said in opposition to the WP editorial (which was written and signed by the editorial board, unlike the Cotton op-ed). The WP is rotten throughout, and shouldn't be held in even the slightest regard as a newspaper when they use their position to destroy the protection of sources that journalists fought for so long to preserve.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/edward-snowden-doesn...
But my understanding is that leading up to the death of Taylor no laws were broken.
No argument here; either release useful information or don’t.
> Your argument here is basically, "Oh don't worry, that's just the report with the lies--the report with the truth exists somewhere, you'll get to see it eventually!"
Forced Entry doesn’t mean what people think it means and is probably correct on the report. As for selecting ‘None’ for injuries on the victim of a homicide, it sounds like the program that prints the report did that on its own (obviously needs to be fixed as computers shouldn’t be adding words to official reports). I don’t think it’s fair to call these things “lies” or use them as the basis for conspiracy theories as others here have.
> If you're arguing that not reporting the incident in the incident report, or not having transparency, are police norms, I won't disagree with you there, but that's a huge problem.
I would argue that restricting public access to complete police reports related to active investigations is both a norm and serves a legitimate state interest (protects the integrity of investigations). I would also argue that once the case is indicted/closed, it should be made available to the public for inspection.
I generally believe the NYT has a better newsroom than Wapo.
It does constitute an opinion, but an incorrect one. Taking over a police station and a city hall in Seattle, for example, is pretty impressive - and it strikes violence at the heart of perceived violence.
No, Antifa is not a club or an organization. There is no membership. And there is no bouncer at the protests to make sure everyone is on the same page or of the same opinion - it is flat out inevitable that some people will be of poor opinion and behavior.
The Right's framing of the relatively small amount of violence is indicative of a police state. The reaction by police unions in the face of calls for punishing abusive cops is indicative of the violent arm of the state protecting its own absolute authority over the people.
Technically, police officers are the ones applying for the no-knock warrants which get other police officers shot. And police officers are the ones who pushed for more use of no-knock (something like 10x increase from 30 years ago) because they think it improves their safety (more likely it just allows them to prosecute warrants faster than waiting for the door and risking the suspect destroying evidence before opening the door).
There is nothing impossible about banning no-knock warrants so this situation can't happen.
In Kentucky, KRS 507.040 defines "Manslaughter in the second degree" (https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id...).
This is defined as:
> A person is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree when he wantonly causes the death of another person...
A "wanton" state of mind in KY is defined in KRS 501.020 (https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id...
> A person acts wantonly with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense when he is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the result will occur or that the circumstance exists. The risk must be of such nature and degree that disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation. A person who creates such a risk but is unaware thereof solely by reason of voluntary intoxication also acts wantonly with respect thereto.
Now, this quickly gets fact specific, but if the following acts are true:
- LMPD breached the house suddenly, and loudly
- LMPD breached the house late at night
- LMPD officers were wearing plain-clothes
- LMPD officers did not announce themselves (disputed)
I personally would find that the officers acted wantonly in a manner that would predictably created a serious risk of injury or death to themselves or bystanders. As such, given the statute and those 4 facts I would be willing to vote to convince on second-degree manslaughter in this case.
I'll note, again, that this is fact specific. The officers specifically claim to have loudly announced themselves. Walker and neighbors dispute that fact.
But the court signed off on the warrant that law enforcement wanted. As I see it it's still the police holding the bag here.
Some "amusing" notes (and by "amusing" I mean "horrifying" and/or "the entirety of the LMPD should be fired and prohibited from ever working for a law enforcement agency again"):
- "Forced Entry: N" (today I learned breaking down a door and shooting people is somehow not "forced entry")
- "Bias Motivation: None (No Bias)" (cough cough bullshit cough cough)
- "Public Narrative: PIU Investigation" (wow, real descriptive there)
Can't really comment on much else given that it's entirely devoid of information.
Legally speaking, they are generally not responsible for creating the situation that led to their violation of Taylor's rights. The court has broad latitude to ignore events prior to any violation of rights, instead relying on whether the police felt at risk in that specific moment.
or, you know, not give every idiot cop a gun.
Original: Louisville police release the Breonna Taylor incident report. It's nearly blank
HN: Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report
I agree. But I still don't see how, if I ask you to let me commit a crime, and you say yes, that makes you more culpable than me. The word for that is "accessory", and it's by definition a lesser crime.
I mean, there weren't any criminals here at all, but let's pretend they were dealing out of the apartment, as the reporting has suggested was the impetus. How many escaped drug dealers are worth one Breonna Taylor?
How many escaped drug dealers are worth one Breonna Taylor, depends completely on how violet the drug dealer is. Non-violent drug dealers, there isn't a number. But as the drug dealer gets more violent it requires fewer.
I think it's unreasonable to argue that police disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk when a Judge literally signed a piece of paper that said it was a justified risk.
And I don't think doing your job in a way that judges sign off 40,000 times a year is a "gross deviation from the standard of conduct".
If all no knock warrants are conducted that way, then I would indeed say that they are all wanton acts.
I don't care if they were following orders, or had permission from the state. Crime is still crime, and getting your boss to tell you to commit a crime is still a crime. Even if your boss wears blue.
Note also you've shifted the law slightly by saying executing the no-knock warrant how it's typicality done cannot be a gross deviation of standard conduct. Yet that's not what the law says.
The law does not say: "...disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a police officer conducting a no-knock warrant would observe".
It says "...disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation".
So let me ask you this: if you went down to Kentucky, and loudly broke into a house in the middle of the night" do you think it's likely that someone (yourself or the people in the house) could come to harm from this?
I think no-knock warrants are typically conducted by uniformed officers who loudly declare that they are the police, That's a very different fact pattern than what I said would merit manslaughter.
Each of these decisions trades some risk of death and injury for an increased likelihood that the police officers will find drugs.
I don't think this is a good trade-off, I don't think any amount of drugs you can flush down a toilet in a minute is worth the loss of life or violation of individual rights that a no knock warrant entails.
> So let me ask you this: if you went down to Kentucky, and loudly broke into a house in the middle of the night" do you think it's likely that someone (yourself or the people in the house) could come to harm from this?
Likely, no, possible yes.
Breonna's case has the following disadvantages: many Americans are willing to give LEOs benefit of the doubt when there is no video, it's "the word of the police versus a suspected criminal", the police union's hitpiece[1] in the media, and the slow wheels of the legal ("justice") system to investigate the facts which are never fully known in the media within days of an incident.
[1] https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/louisville-police-fop-presiden...
Quit overthinking this.
Police "understand" no-knock warrants because judges approve them and there are no accountability problems.
You and I find it distasteful, but as long as judges keep approving the no-knock warrants at current rates, DAs keep using the evidence gathered from them, and defense attorneys can't get evidence gathered from them dropped from the case, all of the incentives align. Short of a massive cultural change, only a legislative restriction will change this behavior.
They used no knock tactics anyway, including climbing into upstairs windows with assault weapons.
I always thought it was Hollywood's imagination showing plain clothes police officers performing raids. It's shocking to see that this appears to be common police practice.
They do it in other countries though. Equipped with vests, helmets and shields police forces have much more protection against gunshots compared to the shooter. Even if they're shot at, they have still multiple options to resolve the threat without killing the shooter. But that needs extensive training.
Exactly. But you're still evading by hiding behind a TV Crime Drama trope. How many dealers are "violent"? Have you researched that? While there is violence in the drug trade, as there pretty much has to be in any black market, there is almost none at the level of individual sales. Needless to say it's not a good business model to go around killing people in front of your customers.
I mean, the evidence in question (that got this woman killed!) is that a known dealer apparently walked out of the apartment. With a FedEx box. Do we really want to be shooting people for carrying boxes?
The idea of street dealers being dangerous is largely a fiction invented by society. And we're killing innocent people to perpetuate it.
There's books written about this (Outliers?)
I would imagine dealers are 0.1-1% of the population (say .3%) and the FBI says roughly 13% of homicides are gang related which is probably a rough proxy for the number of drug dealer related homicides.
This would put dealers as having a homicide rate approximately 40x the base rate. This seems right to me.
To be fair, have to measure folks in the same socioeconomic class and geography but not in gangs and compare?
I'd argue that it's not likely also, but I would say it is substantial, which is sufficient under the law.
I understand the reasoning provided. I think it wantonly risks death for unjustifiable reasons. They can provide their justifications, but to me (were I sitting on a jury) I would think an objective reasonable person would not agree with them.
It sounds like we're mostly in agreement on their actions creating a circumstance where the death could occur. I think at this point maybe the only difference between us is whether that risk is "justifiable" as described in the statute.
I think it is not and (again, given the specific facts I proposed which would have to be proven at trial) I would find them guilty of manslaughter.
But I guess time will tell if they get charged and convicted.
You and I probably have disagreements about how the current system values a human life relative to their other goals. I have no problem viewing a police department (or many police departments) systematically acting in a wanton manner. That doesn't excuse the individuals that carry out the actions.
For the same reason "I was just following orders" is not a defense. Breaking the law is breaking the law—even if your bosses order it and other people are doing it.
Again, I also do not believe that most PDs carry out no-knock warrants with these facts. I suspect most PDs during a no-knock warrant will still use uniformed police officers and announce themselves as police.
A police office in the US has to assume the perpetrator will be armed with a weapon and that then leads to the 'shoot first ask questions later' approach to policing.
Alternatively, places where guns are not so prevalent means that anxiety is greatly reduced.
As an example the majority of English police (i.e. bobbies) do their patrol work while not carrying a gun.
I don't think "I was just following orders" is a defense against breaking the law. But I think arguing that something is a common practice throughout the U.S. is a defense against the act showing a willful or depraved indifference to human life.
Basically I don't believe in the death penalty. But I also don't think the doctor who administers the lethal injection for the state should be convicted of manslaughter if they happen to kill an innocent person. (I also think the death penalty kills more innocent people per execution, than execution of warrants).
> I suspect most PDs during a no-knock warrant will still use uniformed police officers
Definitely agree here. But plainclothes warrant execution has been become increasingly common over the last decades. The no-knocks, are getting more no-knockier.
This kind of reporting really needs to stop. There’s plenty of room for color in news and it’s used to its full potential.
Wasn’t the FCC fairness doctrine designed to combat this?
In general I do think there are many situations where police should not automatically return fire when fired upon. Not all situations – but many situations.
Also, I’m not obsessed with making all criminal acts impossible or making sure that there are never any loopholes or ways for criminals to get away with something.
First of all, that’s an impossible standard to meet even if you put no limits at all on police action. Crime happens regardless and criminals get away with it. (Which is not intended to be defeatist hyper-cynicism. My intention here is to say that perfection in terms of solving crimes is an impossible standard even if you don’t give a fuck about human rights and dignity. You have to measure differently.)
Second, policing that respects human dignity and reduces overall harm (as opposed to being fixated on this one possibility of some criminal getting away with it) will sometimes lead to criminals getting away with it and that’s a trade-off I’m more than willing to accept.
I would be much more keen on talking about trade-offs, otherwise you always run into the trap of running into a situation where a policy could possibly in some way be abused by criminals and as soon as that happens this policy is automatically no good anymore. That seems like dangerous dead-end thinking to me. You always run into stop signs.
Loopholes are a valid argument against a policy, however they are not the final argument against a policy. Put them on the con-side and keep on thinking about it in terms of trade-offs.