<<<If I were making changes in police procedure based on this situation, I can only think of two conspicuous areas. One might be some more training on recognizing a gun. You ought to see a gun before you shout "gun." There must be ways to do simulator training on that. >>>
Do you know about the existence of "wallet guns"? They are covered in police training. So are guns disguised as other objects. Wallet guns will be included in your simulator training course on "recognizing a gun," I assume.
"Wallet-guns" didn't enter into this case, however, because no one knew a wallet was what Diallo was pulling out of his pocket until they removed it from his hand. It was dark in the vestibule into which Diallo had backed when ordered to halt.
Do you really think "simulator training" isn't given in the police academy?
Only one of them saw it and thought it was a gun. The other three believed his warning shout. And then when the officer fell, their belief that the shout was correct was confirmed.
Yes, it is a tragic mistake.
Based on what emerged at the trial, the jury, including the four blacks on it, and I (influenced by the jury), think the tragedy is not lessened by ruining the lives of those cops.
<<<..then they [the cops] are consciously choosing to risk the public reaction they get. >>>
Yeah, their tough luck. Silly boys, they should have become brain surgeons or attorneys, where a tragic mistake doesn't ruin your life, not to mention your family's. Jeez, i'm glad i'm not a cop.
I'm wondering if you think it would be a good idea for all immigrants, in fact all Americans, to be taught, since clearly they don't now know, and aren't considered to hold any responsibility in such tragic cases, what the proper protocol is when police officers tell you to halt, and to show them your hands? Would it be, do you think, a good idea for everyone so ignorant of these procedures not already to know them to be instructed, explicitly, that if you ignore police orders and stick you hand in your pocket in a dark place and pull out something in a way that could be mistaken for pulling a gun you might get shot? Do you think those who choose to stick their hands in their pockets instead of complying with the officers' orders in such circumstances, are, to borrow your strikingly detached words, "consciously choosing to risk the [law enforcement] reaction they get"?
Do you think that Diallo's behavior in this situation suggests it would be appropriate to blacken his name and memory? Or do these tragic errors on the part of Diallo and the cops suggest only that it is a good idea to blacken the reputations of, and ruin the lives of, the cops?
Or at least to be cavalier about the fact that this is what is being widely done and political correctness keeps most decent people from seeing the injustice of this.
It is PC to just automatically hate cops and un-PC ever to defend them.
You are intellectually bold, Karen. I suspect a number of people who are reading this agree with me, but that few will say so. People don't want to appear racist, or even to appear sympathetic to the situation cops face in the urban ghettos where bricks are thrown from the roofs at firefighters who enter the neighborhoods to save people from burning buildings.
So they stand by and watch as four poor devils doing their best, the jury felt, to follow the protocols they had been taught, kill a fifth poor devil who didn't know what you are supposed to do in such a situation (I have an idea: they should teach the cops to read minds), have their reputations, careers, lives ruined by cavalier, sanctimonious, and utterly knee jerk, PC attacks.
New York has one of the best records in the country where shootings by urban cops is concerned.
Do you think that that cop should be prevented, however high his score on the qualifying exam, from becoming a firefighter?
Do you think they should be held in contempt forever? |
