Is that legal? I don't have any sympathy for the guy, but Ive never heard of police doing this. It's certainly a creative way of resolving the conflict.
They had one of those super armored trucks (Bearcat) there on location. It even has a little turret on top designed for safely shooting out of. They can withstand multiple .50 rounds to the same location. What's the point of spending millions in purchasing and maintenance on these if you're not going to use them?
I mean why send in anyone? He was trapped. Eventually he would have surrendered, or come out where the police could shoot him. Sending in a bomb seems excessive.
If you have a robot you can send in with things, you have far more options than "send it in with a bomb". Tranquilizer darts? Chemical agents ("knockout gas")? Although the fact that they refer to it as their "bomb robot" suggests it's single purpose, which is idiotic - it's not clear if it's a bomb disposal robot they repurposed or some wacky military-industrial-complex contraption.
Either way, I can't think of any scenario where I'm comfortable with police having bombs.
I don't think shooting him would have been legal either. You only get to shoot a suspect when there's an imminent threat, and it sounds like there wasn't one. (If there was, they wouldn't have had time to send in the robot.)
That's an excellent point, that in order to bring in a robot they more or less pre-meditated executing him in the field and likely means the suspect had not moved to escalate the situation. You don't prep the bomb and then only set it off once the perp has made his choice to hurt someone else.
The perp had told the police that he was going to kill more officers if any came near him. He had already (probably) killed before, so how is it not imminent danger?
You can't just "wait him out" and hope he won't escape.
Why can't you just wait him out? Isn't that the standard procedure when a criminal is holed up with a gun? You secure the scene, surround him so he can't leave, and then wait until he gets tired of hiding. You only go in if the suspect has hostages and it looks like you won't be able to save them otherwise, or possibly if the suspect is going to kill themselves.
He was armed, had shot officers in the immediately recent past and had threatened to do so again in the future. By absolutely every legal definition of imminent threat this person was one. Every active shooter is an imminent threat.
If this goes in front of a judge it will be ruled that he was an imminent threat. There's really 0 question about that.
I say this as someone who feels strongly that lethal force is used far too often, and that there is a massive racial disparity in that use of force.
He (or he + accomplices) already killed 5 people, and injured what, 7 more? And he was still armed. I'm not sure how you could argue that (a) he definitely wouldn't have killed more, and (b) the officers on location should have been certain enough about that fact to make it worth risking more lives.
> An imminent danger is an anticipated danger that is likely to happen, is impending, and is separated by space or time. This impending danger could be one hour, one day, or an unknown time away but is still imminent.
[Imminent Danger is defined here, but Imminent is used in a similar context to Imminent Threat]
> any conditions or practices in any place of employment which are such that a danger exists which could reasonably be expected to cause death or serious physical harm immediately or before the imminence of such danger can be eliminated through the enforcement procedures
> In relation to homicide in self-defense, this term means immediate danger, such as must be Instantly met, such as cannot be guarded against It calling for the assistance of others or the protection of the law.
The shooter had a firearm, had used it, and had communicated an intent to use it again in the near-future. If any police officer had walked into the shooters line of fire it would be reasonable to assume that they would be shot. Thus, it is a _textbook_ definition of imminent threat.
I know that the legal context often uses English words in manners that are very similar to English, but do not share the precise definition. Right now, you are mistakenly using the English definitions in a legal context. You need to use the legal definition. And if you put this in front of a judge they will tell you that this is a clear-cut example of an imminent threat.
They had him surrounded. He was no danger to anyone. It's not like he died in the confusion of a shootout or something. They took their time to plan it, set up the bomb robot and a bomb, slowly drive it up to him and detonate. That's an execution.
Honestly I'm glad the guy is dead, and it's easy to let emotions of this influence opinions. But I'm scared for the precedent this sets. In the future, when a suspect is cornered and would normally try to be talked down by police, they'll just send in a bomb robot and blow him up. Maybe he won't even be armed, but the police don't know that. So he's an "imminent threat" and can legally be executed.
For one, threat level. A cop shooting the suspect has at least the argument of supposed self-defense from imminent harm. They sought him out from a safe place with the sole purpose of his destruction.
But he was an active shooter with a deadly weapon, not surrendering. If it had been a police sniper instead of a robot, that would have been no different and perhaps more familiar and expected?
A police sniper would very likely not be authorized to kill a barricaded shooter who wasn't actively in the process of threatening a civilian or officer. "Imminent threat" is an important standard.
If they had time to rig up an IED to the robot, and drive the sucker in there, use the camera to make sure he didn't have any hostages (they did that right?), and THEN detonate the bomb, it doesn't sound like the threat was all that imminent.
God I hope that's not legal. It seems like if it's not a hostage situation, you wait it out. The police department effectively decided to summarily execute the perpetrator, which is a bit Judge Dred, if we're being honest here.
Not having been in the situation means I'm armchair quarterbacking the situation, but I hope there is a least some legal guidelines one when this is okay coming out of this.
Wow. This feels incredibly wrong. I know it is just an extension of the militarization of American police, but should they be allowed to issue a death sentence like that? I argue no. Expend the time and resources to non-lethally incarcerate him.
I concur. There seems to be a lack of thinking and willingness to wait things out or backoff. Rather than backoff or retreat the police seem too trigger happy. The Baton Rouge shooting the police didn't want to wait for the suspect so they got aggressive and tried tackling him leading to a scuffle. The MN shooting, if the officer felt threatened he could have slowly backed up to his vehicle until backup arrives and only shoot if/when the suspect actually makes a truly life threatening move. (I know, easier said than done. But we need to de-escalate and disarm regular beat cops [slim chance of that happening now I suppose].)
I don't think that question really needs to be asked. We already have a perfectly good answer: lethal force is acceptable when there's an imminent threat to innocent lives.
The problem isn't that we don't know when lethal force is acceptable, the problem is that people keep ignoring the answer.
This case though, with an armed suspect cornered during an active ambush who had been engaging in fire with the police, only a particularly obtuse person (or HN user) would deny the notion of "imminent threat".
The guy was holed up with a rifle and had just been using it to kill people. He was refusing to surrender. Why would the police think that no one was in imminent danger? At any moment he could have started firing at police again. And granted it was unlikely they would be hit before killing him, but should they have to take that risk? Most people would answer no, the police shouldn't have to take that risk.
If they had time for a bomb, why didn't they have time for tear gas though? I agree that something needed to be done, but the first answer shouldn't always be the lethal option
Tear gas would just force a reaction, likely with the assailant leaving the gas and shooting at the police. He would have been killed in returning gunfire but also may have managed to shoot more people. The outcome would have been the same and was decided by his failure to surrender.
This repurposing of a defensive, life saving robot into a lethal weapon also offends me deeply. If corporations had an ounce of human conscience the manufacturer would terminate their contacts with this department immediately.
What's the difference between sending in a robot or a SWAT team? Also, they could just repurpose an RC vehicle with similar results. And why not ask gun mfgs to stop selling guns to criminals as well as police? What separates a robot from a firearm in this case?
Intent. Police officers with firearms are only supposed to fire them to end immediate danger to themselves or others. Sending in a robot with a bomb is much more of an execution.
Right, but, if we take the police assessment of the situation (which does not change whether robot or swat) it was one which merited neutralization as the suspect, according to police, threatened to take out more (officers). So SWAt or robot would be either right or wrong, but right or wrong does not change because of the different agent.
But SWAT doesn't go in with the intent to kill (supposedly). They go in with intent to arrest or neutralize which may require killing, but could be shooting until the threat is neutralized and then calling medical help. A bomb has only one mode.
North Dakota recently passed a law allowing police officers to weaponize UAVs with stun guns and less-lethal rounds. Maybe in the future we'll see them strap some C4 to the drone to take out suspects.
Edited to say UAV specifically, since I hate the term "drone" since they're nearly never autonomous, and to clarify I meant the flying type.
Obviously a slow ground robot with C4 is a little disturbing, but having UAVs with C4 is a whole new level of concerning. Are we going to start seeing targeted bombings when the driver of a traffic stop is being uncooperative?
"The driver reached for his glove box and wasn't responding to police commands, so we launched a hellfire missile to help ensure officer safety"
(turns out driver was deaf and getting his insurance papers)
Wow that entire situation is unbelievably fucked up. How have I not heard of this before? Police dropped dynamite on a house which results in 65 other houses catching fire, killing 11 innocents, while firefighters were ordered not to do anything. And of course no criminal charges for anyone involved.
In some specialized contexts, non-civilians only include members of the military. An example of such a context would be some of the treaties that govern international armed conflicts.
Outside of those specialized contexts, the ordinary dictionary definition applies.
From the Oxford New American Dictionary:
civilian |səˈvilyən|
noun
a person not in the armed services or the police force.
From Merriam-Webster:
2 a : one not on active duty in the armed services
or not on a police or firefighting force
It's not a matter of context. You're referring to the slang usage. Some programmers also call non-technical people "civilians" too. It's a way to refer to "other" people than those of your group. Irregardless of how common it is with cops, it's still inaccurate.
It makes just as much logical and legal sense to refer to programmers as non-civilians as it does to refer to civil law enforcement as non-civilians.
> It's not a matter of context. You're referring to the slang usage. Some programmers also call non-technical people "civilians" too. It's a way to refer to "other" people than those of your group.
That's not the slang usage. That is the informal usage. And that is not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to the formal usage of the term civilian, which according to numerous dictionaries [1] means someone not a member of a military or police force.
Is it your contention that these major dictionaries all got it wrong?
[1] Oxford, Cambridge, Merriam-Webster, Random House
Name a single way that municipal police in the U.S. are not civilians. Is there any any legal or technical basis for referring to police as anything other than civilians?
If not, then of course the word is being misused. Dictionaries simply update their definitions to reflect common usage, however wrong.
Why? The guy was directly responsible, either solely or in a group, for intentionally assassinating uniformed police during a crowded event and vocally claimed to plant bombs and kill more police. There is no greater justification for police to immediately terminate a life, whether that justification is legal or due to exigence.
If this is what it took to end the suspect's life, thereby preventing further harm, then so be it and congratulations.
> If this is what it took to end the suspect's life, thereby preventing further harm
Your reasoning is based on a premise that hasn't been established: that killing the suspect was necessary to prevent further harm. It seems like most of the discussion here is questioning that point: if the suspect had been located and surrounded, was there a credible threat of further harm? If there was time to repurpose the bomb-dispoal bot, were there not also non-lethal ways to apprehend the suspect?
> Your reasoning is based on a premise that hasn't been established
The intention to commit further harm is evident from statements by the accused and the vile nature of the crimes. Given the potential for harm, that the negotiations failed, and threats of explosives this was the safest course of action. Whether or not the suspect was surrounded has little bearing on if the threat was reduced or increased.
> If there was time to repurpose the bomb-dispoal bot, were there not also non-lethal ways to apprehend the suspect?
That is a flawed argument in that it guesses a quantity of time to modify a robot and time to neutralize an armed suspect are equivalent. It is also flawed in that it presumes there is a choice to be made. Another flaw is that doesn't account for the fact that the robot might already have been modified earlier in case negotiations failed, and if so then the robot is already modified and immediately ready while the suspect isn't.
Did they really think that was a credible threat, or that blowing him up would stop the bombs from going off? In his position, if he could remotely detonate the bombs, he probably already would have, between the time he said he was going to and when they sent in the IED. If he could not, it didn't matter, he wasn't going to get the opportunity to leave. If they were on a literal dead man switch, killing him would cause them to go off.
More importantly, it is NOT the jurisdiction of the police to pass judgement and penalties on the suspect. Deadly force is only legal when the officer reasonably believes that the suspect poses a significant, imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm to the officer or others. Note that the threat is a future threat, irrespective of whether harm was caused in the past.
But I suspect that your reasoning becomes clouded when it's your friends and coworkers who have been shot. Giving the accused a lawyer and a chance to defend himself in court is his right, but that's hard to do when you've seen someone you love die.
That is a huge guess. After 10 officers are shot I doubt the SWAT team was in a guessing mood.
> he wasn't going to get the opportunity to leave.
This is perhaps the most commonly fallacy I have read in this thread. Immobility does not immediately equivocate to either a reduction or increase in potential threat. The guys on the ground have to make that determination based upon the evidence available in the moment. After 10 officers were shot I am sure the suspect vocalizing additional threats likely didn't help the SWAT team believe the risk was diminishing.
How is their mood at all relevant? They are professionals whose job is to be on the right side of the line that divides appropriate use of force from inappropriate use of force.
Asking anything less than that from them is basically discarding the idea that we live in a civilized society.
In situations like this mood is extremely relevant. Its what separates the disciplined professional from people who whine and second guess things.
What many people don't understand is that a wrong decision is better than no decision at all. The world isn't going to wait for you to call an assembly and have a cordial discussion about how to delicately make a possibly-suicidal suspect feel happy. It sure as hell isn't going to wait for to conduct an online survey to discover what makes people less sad. People are dying. The suspect is threatening to have explosives and claims to want to kill more people. The first order of business is to eliminate the threat. This is an active shooter incident. Once negotiations failed the only right decision is how to terminate the suspect. This is operational doctrine.
Stalling and feeling it out is a horribly bad decision to make and indicates a lack of professionalism for active shooter scenarios.
You misread "mood". "In a guessing mood" is another way of saying "Willing to take time to consider all options."
Operational doctrine here suggests that, with active shooter, you prioritize removing the shooter once negotiations have failed. The "probably would have" the poster is referencing is a what-if they didn't have time for.
> What many people don't understand is that a wrong decision is better than no decision at all.
100% wrong. That reasoning justifies all decisions.
This is what's wrong with our institutional thinking these days.
> This is an active shooter incident.
This stopped being an active shooter situation when they pinned him down without hostages.
> he suspect is threatening to have explosives and claims to want to kill more people. The first order of business is to eliminate the threat.
Fatally wrong again. Eliminating the threat would involve eliminating the bombs, not just the gun.
If they truly believed there were bombs they'd have had more motive to question the shooter, not less, because a single missed bomb could sit for days until triggered inadvertently.
>thereby preventing further harm
The original creation of the police was to create a deterrent, not to apprehend criminals. Prevention rather than cure.
When the police take a life we lose the ability to understand the detail of why that deterrent failed. The deterrent is more important that the cure.
Whilst the police have suspects, they don't have this one and everyone's motivations are slightly different. The death of this individual also creates a martyr for others on a similar path.
In my humble opinion they should have used a stun or smoke grenade.
You used the correct word ... suspect. I am not a lawyer but the police murdered this man. Regardless of what he did, the police are supposed to uphold the law, where was the law? There was no imminent danger?
I am so sorry that the presumed innocent lives were lost in Dallas. Those police certainly were not acting out at the time they were killed. I grieve for their families loss. However, I remember one other time that c4 was used. Again it was used after a cop was killed and against black people. That c4 was dropped on the organization Move, here in Philadelphia. That c4 Killed men, women and children when the cops dropped it on the move house. It looked like a war zone. The media keeps saying "no presidence".
That bothers because everyone should know how that young disturbed black man died. It was a horrible death. His parents are probably lucky to get even a little part of him to bury (a tooth). He did a horrible thing, but just as the officers families, his family didn't do that horrible thing. Now it's the David Brown show but the Dallas police chief can talk and twist and try to make us say "poor,poor" him till the cows come home but he will not be able to talk away the guilt of murdering that young man like that. They say he got justice, but, whose. I am pretty sure we have not seen those buildings in that area that they killed that young man because we would be appalled at the sight of distruction. That the tax payers will have to pay for to rebuild I have little doubt.
To me, their action in bombing that black man solidifies my belief that far far too many police believe they are above the law. They become judge and jury at will. Don't make them mad, now. Find the difference between Dallas not finding a less extreme means of dealing with that situation and police, policing the neighborhoods not finding a less extreme means of dealing with interactions with people of color...I just see people dead, dead, dead as a result.
I mourn the death of all innocents in this. BLACK LIVES MATTER (for whoever doesn't get it) ALSO.
Then again, if you're using it indoors or in a stadium or whatever, you don't want to injure other people if your AA misses the drone. Nets are more reasonable and safer for bystanders. Oh, and lighter.
According to the story at the NY Times, during negotiations the suspect had said he wanted to kill white people, particularly police, that the end was near, and that he had bombs throughout the garage and surrounding area.
That last part is particularly weird to me: if they thought he could be telling the truth, wouldn't they want to keep him alive in case they could get him to talk about those bombs?
He would likely be someone who could tell them a lot of useful information about the bombs, such as where they are and how they are triggered. That would be very useful to help figure out what areas to evacuate and how to disarm the bombs.
On the other hand, depending on where they are and how they are triggered, it could be that he is able to trigger them himself and is just waiting to try to get as many police surrounding him as possible before he suicides and takes them with him.
So whether it is best from a safety standpoint to just keep him surrounded and wait it out hoping he surrenders, or it is better to take him out (and do so in a way that would not give him time to do something like trigger a bomb) really would depend on what can be figured out about those bombs and his state of mind when they are talking to him.
Until there is an investigation, and publication of transcripts or recordings of the conversations between him and the negotiators, I don't think those not involved have enough information to figure out the situation.
I'm particularly curious about how much planning was behind the attack on the police and who the attackers were. In particular, was it (1) a spur of the moment thing, or (2) something that was planned, but the planning only started a couple days ago, or (3) something planned long ago and they were just waiting for a good opportunity to act, which the protests yesterday provided?
If this catches on I am sure we'll see a shift in language from calling them "bomb disposal robots" to "threat disposal robots", or "danger mitigation robots", or something similar.
The chilling bit is that this was a death sentence for a suspect of non-imminent threat, which opens a pretty big can of worms. (What if it was the wrong guy? What if there was a hostage near him? etc)
It's not clear at all that he posed a non-imminent threat. He had a weapon, had just been using it to kill people, and at any moment could have started trying to kill people again. The cops shouldn't have to risk their lives in this situation.
The language in the police department's announcement that I heard on the radio was really curious. I can't find a transcript so I'm going by memory, but it was something like, "The suspect was deceased by a robot carrying a bomb." It was really passive and euphemistic language. I thought it was weird that they couldn't just say straght-up "our officers killed him." I'd have no problem with that statement if the killing was justified, but they seemed to want to soften it as much as possible.
If it seems oddly excessive, this might be the point. Cops are always "enthusiastic" in their response to cop-killers. I think they intentionally sought out a way to end the standoff with a little extra extravagance. An IRL sharks with frikin lasers moment.
The entire thing, from the shooting of the unarmed man by police to this end seems to be one long chain of ridiculous over-reactions. I sense a theme.
Remember that rogue cop a few years back that killed a few other cops and tried to flee the country?
In their efforts to find them, eight cops open fired on a truck with two women inside. Over 100 rounds fired, and the women thankfully survived despite multiple gunshot wounds. And of course millions of dollars were awarded to those women and none of the officers were fired as a result.
And remember how that situation ended? The cop killer holed up in a cabin in the woods by himself surrounded by hundreds of cops. They decided to burn the place down with the cop killer in it.
Only a few cops are actively over-aggressive and hot headed, but that nearly every other cop stands by as they let the suspect burn alive (or over a hundred rounds fired at a truck without any probable cause) says all that needs to be said.
The reports so far is that talks had broken down and the suspect threatened officers. At that point they could have waited longer, which could have lead to either more fruitful talks or a stalemate. At that point they could send in a SWAT or a robot to take the guy out. Both result in a dead suspect. One could result in injury or more to officers, if suspect had other weapons explosives and wasn't going to surrender. The other you send in the robot to take the suspect out.
The only difference is that one you have people with triggers, the other you have a remote person with a button. The result is the same.
When we begin using robotic fighters in wars, the same question will arise. And we'll make the same decision. We'll send the robots instead of human soldiers to minimize danger to our people, rather than give equal footing to the person or people not us.
I must say, I didn't expect this to happen so soon, but on the other hand, it was a practical decision --with lots of open questions, as well as precedence.
I predict a lot of unwarranted attention will be devoted to the fact that a "robot" (i.e. The robots are killing us!) was used, even though it was remote controlled and functionally not much different than if officers had lobbed an explosive grenade at the suspect. To me, it's more interesting that lethal force was used in a non-hostage situation -- did the suspect threaten to detonate his own bombs (which would make this more like a hostage situation)? Though I suppose concern over the use of robots is warranted...in the same way that drones have allowed for the conduct of a proxy war...would police have gone for the lethal option if it required officers to be put in harm's way?
I wonder how they made the robot blow people up, it doesn't seem like there are any factory made "Turn your expensive toy into sucidie bomber" kit. Jurry-rigging on the scene using moving parts to pull a pin of a grenade? Or did they use a last resort "let's blow it up when we clear the premises" kind of defusal kit? Or did they already had a custom kit with directional explosives?
There's a brief mention in the article of non-lethal measures being used in previous cases. I wonder if maybe they tried to do the same here, but it went wrong. For example, maybe the explosive was only intended to incapacitate, but was accidentally too powerful, or the suspect was too close, or some other factor caused it to be lethal instead.
Like everyone else I don't have any details on this beyond what's been reported. But I for one think this -may- have been a great decision to end the standoff without risking the lives of any more officers.
For those that are saying "there was no imminent threat", that is incorrect. One relevant data point, see the 2009 standoff in Oakland, where 2 SWAT officers died when they moved in on a cornered suspect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_shootings_of_Oakland_poli...).
This seems to me like a good application of technology in this extremely rare type of situation.
The SWAT team had to move in on that suspect because the police felt the suspect was a threat to the lives of other people in the building, so they couldn't wait him out. That doesn't seem to have been the case here, since the suspect was in a parking garage.
I agree. While using a lethal robot is scary, it is really no different than giving a police sniper the okay for a shot. Except in this case there was no possibility of a sniper shot.
This individual was likely well trained. He fires and maneuvers. He has a good stance and chooses targets. He is clearly an accurate shot. He is aggressive and circles his target. He is calm under fire. [1]
His skill level is damn scary and likely superior to many of the police he was up against. Makes me think of the Special Ops guys I worked with in Iraq. If he escaped somehow from the garage, he could have killed could more.
While this robot technique is a bit scary, if I was responsible for stopping him, I would probably have done the same thing. No way you can charge in to stop him. Not only is he well armed, he may have a bomb. You don’t rush entrenched people with assault rifles, it’s not Call of Duty. You use grenades, explosives, air-strikes, etc.
Perhaps a non-lethal option could be developed. This would be ideal. But this robot bomb may have been improvised on the spot by the police to deal with this incident. Without a non-lethal robot to shoot a tranquilizer, release gas, or stun the suspect, I see no other way to stop him.
The point is that the police could have waited. They proactively murdered this man for no reason at that point in the situation. If this individual was white, Hispanic or even Muslim... they would have waited.
They could have waited for him to escape through the ventilation systems and kill more people? They could have waited for him to detonate the entire building and bring it down on everybody’s head, with more police inside and media watching? Either are possibilities they could have waited for and everyone would be second guessing those scenarios just like people are second guessing this one now. I don’t like the idea of robot bombs killing people, but when someone is shooting at police and not negotiating, I do support them taking out the threat and wouldn’t call it murder. Self-defense or defending innocents are probably better terms. And your statement that they would have waited if he was a different race is ridiculous. So you know better what would have happened than the african american chief of the Dallas police? You’re not helping the situation in this country by making these uninformed statements.
There is a point when you present such a threat to public safety that a military solution is required. Hardened criminals who are obviously on a murder spree have given up their right to due process. If he had peacefully surrendered he would have had a trial and his due process (and hopefully hanged for his crimes).
With all his talk about planting bombs, I'm sure they suspected that he was wearing a bomb vest to detonate when police moved in. I'm not sure how else they could have handled it.
I watched the press conference, it was heavily implied that the man was threatening them with IEDs. Who's to say that they weren't sure if he had an explosive vest on? Listen I'm all for due process and bringing people in alive, but I am not for putting the lives of law enforcement in danger unless it's for the greater good.
Finally finding like minds. I felt sick when heard how the two hour standoff in a parking garage with one person who police did not have a clear shot so neither did the suspect...wtf? The chief said they gave him 2 options, really? There are only two?
The Dallas police keep emphasizing it is the first time they used a robot to kill someone in order to avoid talking about the elephant in the room. I accept that it may be the first time they used a robot as a delivery vehicle of the C4 (highly explosive bomb material). I do not appreciate, however, them not admitting to the previous bombing of the organization known as "Move", here in Philadelphia. They dropped the C4 bomb from the air. Dallas and Philly would make it two times, that I know about. I suspect that before they allow that area where they killed that black man in Dallas to be seen by the public , they will have all kinds of construction crews in to clean up the destruction for the cover-up.
I suspect the news media and law enforcement agencies and the like are complaicent in the cover-up, possibly for
peace sake. I don't feel peace can be accomplished with half truths, though. I do not know of C4 even being used on the terrorists in the United States! A robot, a helicopter...no matter how it was delivered, C4 was only used 2 times and it was used on black men, black women, and black children. Here in Philadelphia you could smell the houses burning for miles.
I really do appreciate ethical police. I mourn the loss of all innocent parties. I hope everyone makes it home to their loved ones. However, I hope we can soon be done with this David Brown show. He is not special. I don't think anyone who could authorize a kill by the use of C4, outside of a war zone, no matter how it is delivered, is not special at all... or brave;
(Nor was the shooter special or brave.) Speaking of "poor poor" David Brown, I will say this about any job that deals with the public, everybody is not suited for every job. If some police feel the job they signed up for puts too many demands on them within the community they serve for a mere 44,000 or so a year, perhaps that is not the fit for that person and they should quit as soon as possible. Many other people have left better jobs for less.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 146 ms ] threadIEDs: rather less so.
This is the Dallas police department, they have equipment capable of dealing with this situation -- to include armored cars and ballistic shields.
I hope the legal process is explored in this case.
Either way, I can't think of any scenario where I'm comfortable with police having bombs.
You can't just "wait him out" and hope he won't escape.
If this goes in front of a judge it will be ruled that he was an imminent threat. There's really 0 question about that.
I say this as someone who feels strongly that lethal force is used far too often, and that there is a massive racial disparity in that use of force.
Active: producing or involving movement; being in physical motion.
These terms only refer to the present and future, not the past. They do not apply to the cornered suspect.
He (or he + accomplices) already killed 5 people, and injured what, 7 more? And he was still armed. I'm not sure how you could argue that (a) he definitely wouldn't have killed more, and (b) the officers on location should have been certain enough about that fact to make it worth risking more lives.
http://recoverymodel.com/id14.html
> An imminent danger is an anticipated danger that is likely to happen, is impending, and is separated by space or time. This impending danger could be one hour, one day, or an unknown time away but is still imminent.
https://www.osha.gov/as/opa/worker/danger.html
[Imminent Danger is defined here, but Imminent is used in a similar context to Imminent Threat] > any conditions or practices in any place of employment which are such that a danger exists which could reasonably be expected to cause death or serious physical harm immediately or before the imminence of such danger can be eliminated through the enforcement procedures
http://thelawdictionary.org/imminent-danger/
> In relation to homicide in self-defense, this term means immediate danger, such as must be Instantly met, such as cannot be guarded against It calling for the assistance of others or the protection of the law.
The shooter had a firearm, had used it, and had communicated an intent to use it again in the near-future. If any police officer had walked into the shooters line of fire it would be reasonable to assume that they would be shot. Thus, it is a _textbook_ definition of imminent threat.
I know that the legal context often uses English words in manners that are very similar to English, but do not share the precise definition. Right now, you are mistakenly using the English definitions in a legal context. You need to use the legal definition. And if you put this in front of a judge they will tell you that this is a clear-cut example of an imminent threat.
Honestly I'm glad the guy is dead, and it's easy to let emotions of this influence opinions. But I'm scared for the precedent this sets. In the future, when a suspect is cornered and would normally try to be talked down by police, they'll just send in a bomb robot and blow him up. Maybe he won't even be armed, but the police don't know that. So he's an "imminent threat" and can legally be executed.
If they had time to rig up an IED to the robot, and drive the sucker in there, use the camera to make sure he didn't have any hostages (they did that right?), and THEN detonate the bomb, it doesn't sound like the threat was all that imminent.
The FBI definition is "an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area".
He was cornered in a parking garage, not active.
Not having been in the situation means I'm armchair quarterbacking the situation, but I hope there is a least some legal guidelines one when this is okay coming out of this.
I concur. There seems to be a lack of thinking and willingness to wait things out or backoff. Rather than backoff or retreat the police seem too trigger happy. The Baton Rouge shooting the police didn't want to wait for the suspect so they got aggressive and tried tackling him leading to a scuffle. The MN shooting, if the officer felt threatened he could have slowly backed up to his vehicle until backup arrives and only shoot if/when the suspect actually makes a truly life threatening move. (I know, easier said than done. But we need to de-escalate and disarm regular beat cops [slim chance of that happening now I suppose].)
I guess this also destroys evidence?
Reading the article it's clear the man was committing a crime. He was however not immediately threatening anyone was refusing to cooperate.
I think a question we should continue asking is at what point does Lethal force become acceptable?
The problem isn't that we don't know when lethal force is acceptable, the problem is that people keep ignoring the answer.
This is way too subjective.
This case though, with an armed suspect cornered during an active ambush who had been engaging in fire with the police, only a particularly obtuse person (or HN user) would deny the notion of "imminent threat".
That's exactly what happened here.
Obviously a slow ground robot with C4 is a little disturbing, but having UAVs with C4 is a whole new level of concerning. Are we going to start seeing targeted bombings when the driver of a traffic stop is being uncooperative?
"The driver reached for his glove box and wasn't responding to police commands, so we launched a hellfire missile to help ensure officer safety"
(turns out driver was deaf and getting his insurance papers)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#1985_bombing
> Five officers were killed and seven others were injured, as well as two civilians.
Even NBC is referring to non-police as "civilians" here which really drives the point home.
In some specialized contexts, non-civilians only include members of the military. An example of such a context would be some of the treaties that govern international armed conflicts.
Outside of those specialized contexts, the ordinary dictionary definition applies.
From the Oxford New American Dictionary:
From Merriam-Webster:It makes just as much logical and legal sense to refer to programmers as non-civilians as it does to refer to civil law enforcement as non-civilians.
That's not the slang usage. That is the informal usage. And that is not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to the formal usage of the term civilian, which according to numerous dictionaries [1] means someone not a member of a military or police force.
Is it your contention that these major dictionaries all got it wrong?
[1] Oxford, Cambridge, Merriam-Webster, Random House
If not, then of course the word is being misused. Dictionaries simply update their definitions to reflect common usage, however wrong.
If this is what it took to end the suspect's life, thereby preventing further harm, then so be it and congratulations.
Your reasoning is based on a premise that hasn't been established: that killing the suspect was necessary to prevent further harm. It seems like most of the discussion here is questioning that point: if the suspect had been located and surrounded, was there a credible threat of further harm? If there was time to repurpose the bomb-dispoal bot, were there not also non-lethal ways to apprehend the suspect?
The intention to commit further harm is evident from statements by the accused and the vile nature of the crimes. Given the potential for harm, that the negotiations failed, and threats of explosives this was the safest course of action. Whether or not the suspect was surrounded has little bearing on if the threat was reduced or increased.
> If there was time to repurpose the bomb-dispoal bot, were there not also non-lethal ways to apprehend the suspect?
That is a flawed argument in that it guesses a quantity of time to modify a robot and time to neutralize an armed suspect are equivalent. It is also flawed in that it presumes there is a choice to be made. Another flaw is that doesn't account for the fact that the robot might already have been modified earlier in case negotiations failed, and if so then the robot is already modified and immediately ready while the suspect isn't.
More importantly, it is NOT the jurisdiction of the police to pass judgement and penalties on the suspect. Deadly force is only legal when the officer reasonably believes that the suspect poses a significant, imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm to the officer or others. Note that the threat is a future threat, irrespective of whether harm was caused in the past.
But I suspect that your reasoning becomes clouded when it's your friends and coworkers who have been shot. Giving the accused a lawyer and a chance to defend himself in court is his right, but that's hard to do when you've seen someone you love die.
That is a huge guess. After 10 officers are shot I doubt the SWAT team was in a guessing mood.
> he wasn't going to get the opportunity to leave.
This is perhaps the most commonly fallacy I have read in this thread. Immobility does not immediately equivocate to either a reduction or increase in potential threat. The guys on the ground have to make that determination based upon the evidence available in the moment. After 10 officers were shot I am sure the suspect vocalizing additional threats likely didn't help the SWAT team believe the risk was diminishing.
Asking anything less than that from them is basically discarding the idea that we live in a civilized society.
What many people don't understand is that a wrong decision is better than no decision at all. The world isn't going to wait for you to call an assembly and have a cordial discussion about how to delicately make a possibly-suicidal suspect feel happy. It sure as hell isn't going to wait for to conduct an online survey to discover what makes people less sad. People are dying. The suspect is threatening to have explosives and claims to want to kill more people. The first order of business is to eliminate the threat. This is an active shooter incident. Once negotiations failed the only right decision is how to terminate the suspect. This is operational doctrine.
Stalling and feeling it out is a horribly bad decision to make and indicates a lack of professionalism for active shooter scenarios.
My claim is that it should not.
Operational doctrine here suggests that, with active shooter, you prioritize removing the shooter once negotiations have failed. The "probably would have" the poster is referencing is a what-if they didn't have time for.
... to save hostages, of which there weren't any.
Except if he'd had planted bombs on a deadman switch, which would have been triggered by taking him out.
They're lucky he was lying. Not smart, not skilled, lucky.
They killed him because they were mad and didn't care about the consequences (unfound bombs) to civilians.
100% wrong. That reasoning justifies all decisions.
This is what's wrong with our institutional thinking these days.
> This is an active shooter incident.
This stopped being an active shooter situation when they pinned him down without hostages.
> he suspect is threatening to have explosives and claims to want to kill more people. The first order of business is to eliminate the threat.
Fatally wrong again. Eliminating the threat would involve eliminating the bombs, not just the gun.
If they truly believed there were bombs they'd have had more motive to question the shooter, not less, because a single missed bomb could sit for days until triggered inadvertently.
They said he was wanted; he wasn't one of the shooters; they're yet to apologise or delete the tweet.
When the police take a life we lose the ability to understand the detail of why that deterrent failed. The deterrent is more important that the cure.
Whilst the police have suspects, they don't have this one and everyone's motivations are slightly different. The death of this individual also creates a martyr for others on a similar path.
In my humble opinion they should have used a stun or smoke grenade.
It's amazing that it's happened first not by the military in a war situation, but by domestic police forces against it's citizenry.
Then again, if you're using it indoors or in a stadium or whatever, you don't want to injure other people if your AA misses the drone. Nets are more reasonable and safer for bystanders. Oh, and lighter.
I would not make that assumption. The military does not publicly disclose a majority of its tactics.
On the other hand, depending on where they are and how they are triggered, it could be that he is able to trigger them himself and is just waiting to try to get as many police surrounding him as possible before he suicides and takes them with him.
So whether it is best from a safety standpoint to just keep him surrounded and wait it out hoping he surrenders, or it is better to take him out (and do so in a way that would not give him time to do something like trigger a bomb) really would depend on what can be figured out about those bombs and his state of mind when they are talking to him.
Until there is an investigation, and publication of transcripts or recordings of the conversations between him and the negotiators, I don't think those not involved have enough information to figure out the situation.
I'm particularly curious about how much planning was behind the attack on the police and who the attackers were. In particular, was it (1) a spur of the moment thing, or (2) something that was planned, but the planning only started a couple days ago, or (3) something planned long ago and they were just waiting for a good opportunity to act, which the protests yesterday provided?
The chilling bit is that this was a death sentence for a suspect of non-imminent threat, which opens a pretty big can of worms. (What if it was the wrong guy? What if there was a hostage near him? etc)
The entire thing, from the shooting of the unarmed man by police to this end seems to be one long chain of ridiculous over-reactions. I sense a theme.
In their efforts to find them, eight cops open fired on a truck with two women inside. Over 100 rounds fired, and the women thankfully survived despite multiple gunshot wounds. And of course millions of dollars were awarded to those women and none of the officers were fired as a result.
And remember how that situation ended? The cop killer holed up in a cabin in the woods by himself surrounded by hundreds of cops. They decided to burn the place down with the cop killer in it.
Only a few cops are actively over-aggressive and hot headed, but that nearly every other cop stands by as they let the suspect burn alive (or over a hundred rounds fired at a truck without any probable cause) says all that needs to be said.
The only difference is that one you have people with triggers, the other you have a remote person with a button. The result is the same.
When we begin using robotic fighters in wars, the same question will arise. And we'll make the same decision. We'll send the robots instead of human soldiers to minimize danger to our people, rather than give equal footing to the person or people not us.
I must say, I didn't expect this to happen so soon, but on the other hand, it was a practical decision --with lots of open questions, as well as precedence.
The robot in question, incase anyone cares about the robot; https://www.qinetiq-na.com/products/unmanned-systems/dragon-...
For those that are saying "there was no imminent threat", that is incorrect. One relevant data point, see the 2009 standoff in Oakland, where 2 SWAT officers died when they moved in on a cornered suspect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_shootings_of_Oakland_poli...).
This seems to me like a good application of technology in this extremely rare type of situation.
This individual was likely well trained. He fires and maneuvers. He has a good stance and chooses targets. He is clearly an accurate shot. He is aggressive and circles his target. He is calm under fire. [1]
His skill level is damn scary and likely superior to many of the police he was up against. Makes me think of the Special Ops guys I worked with in Iraq. If he escaped somehow from the garage, he could have killed could more.
While this robot technique is a bit scary, if I was responsible for stopping him, I would probably have done the same thing. No way you can charge in to stop him. Not only is he well armed, he may have a bomb. You don’t rush entrenched people with assault rifles, it’s not Call of Duty. You use grenades, explosives, air-strikes, etc.
Perhaps a non-lethal option could be developed. This would be ideal. But this robot bomb may have been improvised on the spot by the police to deal with this incident. Without a non-lethal robot to shoot a tranquilizer, release gas, or stun the suspect, I see no other way to stop him.
[1] https://streamable.com/pgpb
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-34529611 http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/t...
I'm guessing this situation needs a bunch of new procedures and definitions now.