Like that guy who self immolated and the cop that showed up just a pointed a gun at him until he burned to death?
To be fair… That really looked like the cop was having a traumatic event. He froze, he wasn’t being malicious.
Sounds like he shouldn’t have a gun if he can freeze like that. If he’s trained to pull out a gun when he panics, we need someone new to do the training. If that’s just a thing people do in stressful situations, then no one should have guns.
Pulling a gun is a standard trained response to threats with severe bodily harm. Panic would be firing because of a percieved threat, see the acorn incident.
It seems dumb to look at that response from our perspective but a human being was burning to death before his eyes. Those are images, sounds, feeling (heat) and smells that will be with him for the rest of his life. The cop did nothing wrong because even in that moment there was so little to do.
He was trained to be a cop, not a firefighter so the training he fell back on was police training. People out here talking like most of them wouldn’t be a shocked bystander too.
If someone is desperate enough to light themselves on fire, they could possibly also manage to be able to run and grab bystanders.
Unfortunately they need to keep the public safe since you just don’t know what the person will do. If they started running at someone you would be thankful hey had the shot lined up.
You wanna know a great way to stop a burning man from setting other people on fire? A fire extinguisher
Too bad they aren’t readily accessible. All emergency vehicles should have them, but I imagine a lot of agencies skirt that requirement.
Also, depending on the accelerant, it likely wouldn’t put them out, so you always need to be prepared for plan B.
Sorry, reality sucks.
are fire extinguishers not legally required in all cars in the US? that’s dumb.
They’re not, but I’d wager they are required in 90+% of US police cars.
I’m not saying it’s not a good thing to have, but where do you live where it’s legally required? Cause I’ve never heard of that.
It’s mandatory in roughly half of Europe.
What half? Not in Northern Europe, that’s for sure.
Cars, no, buildings, yes.
How often do you set your car on fire?
Um, how often do you set your building on fire?
Not enough, quite frankly.
It only takes once.
People who do this are scum. They massively prolong extreme agony for somebody for the sake of virtue signalling. They cause harm
If a person deliberately sets themselves on fire, they are fairly committed to hurting only them and no one else. Ever burn yourself? You know that blinding feeling and instant, involuntary reaction to get away from the thing burning you? Imagine that all over your body, the sensation of “get the fuck away” coming from everywhere. You aren’t going to have clear minded murder as your next agenda. It’s going to be either get water or die.
Pointing a gun at a person who is trying to die is stupid and shows the only way the gun weilder can understand is to use their fear and threaten something that is clearly not threatening. If you believe that someone who wants to die and is trying to do it to themselves, is a threat, you’re part of the problem.
the sensation of “get the fuck away” coming from everywhere. You aren’t going to have clear minded murder as your next agenda
Yeah get the fuck away, so you run, likely toward bystanders, or someone who could help. Who you would get accelerant on and injure or kill with you by mistake.
Why did you bring murder up? I never said nor implied that at all. People seek help when they are in danger, they aren’t thinking straight as you said, they aren’t going to realize they would hurt someone seeking help for being you know, on fucking fire. Every situation is unique, obviously you don’t raise a gun at someone on a bridge. But someone on fire who very likely will spook. Yeah, sorry it’s the right call I those cases.
You also don’t know all the details at the time, it’s great to be able to say what you say in hind sight with the information coming after. At that time no one know the persons intent, so yeah, you don’t know they didn’t have murder on their mind either. Until after….
He kept pointing the gun after Bushnell collapsed on the ground.
You know what’s fucked up? What the jumper was threatening (suicide) was a crime. What the police did was not (not in practice, anyway.)
Sure, it’s technically a crime for them to shoot the guy, but one of them saw he was reaching for a gun. The police are protected so thoroughly by our broken justice system, that it would be largely an uphill battle to argue they deserve consequences for killing a “criminal”.
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Did it work?
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When the only tool you know how to use is a hammer… Everything becomes a nail.
Speaking of hammers: https://youtu.be/s7FOj2_VKvk?si=keVo2-rW7-IyLH4U
From the 80’s when people could still pretend it was satire.
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This is exactly why I’m joining law enforcement. I hate stupid cops. So I plan on taking a spot that could have been given to a dumbass. Understandably, this is probably devicive, but it’s the best answer I could come up with.
The problem with always being a conformist is that when you try to change the system from within, it’s not you who changes the system; it’s the system that will eventually change you.
This is a legitimate problem - there are educated people that view the position negatively but also wouldn’t join. So the spots stay open for more uneducated people. Some departments are now requiring degrees and new recruits are put through some degree program before starting but that’s only in some major cities… so yeah people are gonna discourage you but keep your head up and keep that attitude, identify the idiots as early as possible (they will make themselves known quick). That’s what I did - I left my cushy engineering desk job, took a crazy paycut and put on the badge… and I talked a women off the top of a parking garage on my second month (didn’t draw my gun or anything 😲🙄)
didn’t draw my gun or anything
Pfft. And you call yourself a cop. The shame!
Yeah you might want to look up Christopher Dorner. When he didn’t want to go along with the rest of the force, they hunted and killed him. You have to either conform with the gang or be expelled.
EDIT: Christopher, not Michael. I think I was confusing his name with a Klingon.
You mean Christopher Dorner? “Michael Dorner” brings no relevant results on google.
Oops, I corrected it. I must’ve been confusing the name with Michael Dorn.
Good luck. Plan ahead for moral breaching moments. They’re going to have you destroy the stuff of homeless people. They’re going to have you pull people over because they “look suspicious”. They’re going to pressure you to lie to the public in service of police-community relations. And more. You cannot become a full police officer without these things happening because you have to go through a probationary period with an officer in “good standing”.
That period is where they separate the ones willing to conform to the department standard from the ones who will not stray from what they’ve learned in the academy or their own moral standards.
This is why ACAB.
That said, if you want to cross that line, be sure beforehand what you’re willing to do to maybe be the one guy who pushes the officer off of George Floyd. (And by maybe I mean you may never see that on your career, especially if you get marked as “too good” and stashed somewhere useful but harmless to them.)
Fucking don’t, it will make you into that dumbass.
I hope not. But there ain’t any good sense in not trying.
The institution of the police is like an occupying army.
If another country invaded and occupied, would it make any sense at all to join that invading army in an attempt to “be better” and “improve things from within the system”? Or, if you joined that invading army, would you just be a traitorous bastard participating in the subjugation of your own people?
ACAB because it is the job description to be a bastard. ACAB the same way all firemen fight fires; it is the main thing they are employed to do.
There ain’t any good sense in trying… ACAB.
Out of curiosity, how often does something like this actually happen? More specifically: How often does a cop shoot someone who is attempting to commit suicide, who isn’t a threat to anyone else but themself, resulting in their death? Could anyone provide any relevant statistics?
In Canada it happens too often: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/police-wellness-checks-deaths-indigenous-black-1.5622320
The scenario is usually the following:
- A person stops answering their loved one’s calls or makes suicide threats to the loved one
- The loved one calls the cops to ask them to check in on them
- Said person answers the door with the weapon they were planning to end their life with in their hands
- Cops see a weapon, panic and shoot
What I don’t understand is why cops don’t just disengage / retreat from these situations. In most cases it looks like they were proceeding as if the person had to be stopped / apprehended.
This is suicide by cop, OP was asking about situations where the subject is not a threat to anyone. A suicidal person with a gun is a threat as they can turn the weapon around and any time (and they often do).
Except somehow soldiers have more restraint in this situation than cops do. We trained relentlessly on not shooting unless they actually raise the gun up towards you. And talking them down through a language barrier until they could be safely detained or they tried to shoot us.
Cops shooting the literal second they think someone has a gun is unacceptable when I can get 18 year old asvab waivers to understand restraint.
I don’t have statistics but the stories of, “officers responding to a welfare check killed person having mental breakdown” are a fucking drumbeat in the mental health community.
Please don’t call the cops. Call for an ambulance or a mental health team if they have them in your area. Do not tell the operator you feel threatened unless you really are. You’ll get a faster response but it will not be predicated on helping the person, they’re going to attempt to restrain them first and foremost in that case and that’s where an OD of Ketamine, electricity, or lead kills them.
I have an autistic son, and the possibility that he could one day interact with police without my wife or I there is the stuff of nightmares to me.
Elijah McClain
Linden Cameron
Those two come to mind immediately. I’m quite sure there are more.
