I think you would find yourself far more at home in a right wing dictatorship than a free country.
It is a fact of life that sometimes good people do unreasonable things, sometimes people get drunk and get in fights they would never be in if sober, sometimes they get angry as hell about something and are temporarily unable to respond to reason.
If they threaten the life of others in that state then the police are justified in using violence to restrain them, however if they pose no threat to others then the police should be the ones exercising restraint and should not put the culprit in greater danger by their actions.
In this case the threat seems to have been to property and there does not appear to be any reason for the police to believe their safety was in danger, certainly there is no reason for them to believe their lives were in danger from an unarmed 65lb girl.
To extrapolate, should the police be allowed to shoot someone merely for refusing to stop for them if they are otherwise driving safely? No the only time police can open fire on or ram a car is when the actions of the driver are threatening the lives of others.
If the police feel the lives of officers or civilians are in danger then I can accept them using potentially lethal or even lethal force.
They risked a 13 year old kids life for screaming at them and kicking their car, that is a definite over reaction.
I expect the police to risk personal injury to protect innocents from harm. The girl was innocent, under the law she is innocent until proven guilty, we are none of us totally innocent, they used potentially lethal force on someone who posed no threat to life and only a minimal threat of injury to others.
As a radical libertarian, I wouldn't be much at home in any kind of dictatorship, and no one I've ever met or read values freedom more than I. Freedom - which I define as freedom from coercion - includes the right to protect oneself and one's property, and to use any means necessary (including lethal retaliation) to do it.
The girl was in no way innocent; she simply hadn't been tried and convicted, so the law presumes that she may be innocent. "Not guilty" criminal verdicts don't imply innocence; they simply state that the state did not prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. There is no dispute concerning the violence in which she had already engaged against an adult. She was out of control, and her hands were where they shouldn't have been. Perhaps she was no danger to the police officers' lives, but she might have intentionally hurt them physically, however slightly (the degree is irrelevant). That's not something they have to tolerate.
Are the officers above reproach here? Not necessarily. Perhaps if they'd restrained the violent brat better beforehand, she wouldn't have been able to get her hands in front of her. Perhaps they should have cuffed her feet, too, and used better restraints. That's a matter worth investigating, surely. But restrained or not, the girl wasn't simply kicking the car; her hands were in a dangerous position.
You're dancing perilously close to Guilty until proven innocent here, Noah.
And I'm sorry, but if multiple officers can't subdue a cuffed 65 pound thirteen year old that's already in their cruiser without resorting to a tactic that has the potential to kill and has killed grown adults, then they need to find another line of work.
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docwebster) wrote2005-03-08 09:17 am
no subject
It is a fact of life that sometimes good people do unreasonable things, sometimes people get drunk and get in fights they would never be in if sober, sometimes they get angry as hell about something and are temporarily unable to respond to reason.
If they threaten the life of others in that state then the police are justified in using violence to restrain them, however if they pose no threat to others then the police should be the ones exercising restraint and should not put the culprit in greater danger by their actions.
In this case the threat seems to have been to property and there does not appear to be any reason for the police to believe their safety was in danger, certainly there is no reason for them to believe their lives were in danger from an unarmed 65lb girl.
To extrapolate, should the police be allowed to shoot someone merely for refusing to stop for them if they are otherwise driving safely?
No the only time police can open fire on or ram a car is when the actions of the driver are threatening the lives of others.
If the police feel the lives of officers or civilians are in danger then I can accept them using potentially lethal or even lethal force.
They risked a 13 year old kids life for screaming at them and kicking their car, that is a definite over reaction.
I expect the police to risk personal injury to protect innocents from harm.
The girl was innocent, under the law she is innocent until proven guilty, we are none of us totally innocent, they used potentially lethal force on someone who posed no threat to life and only a minimal threat of injury to others.
no subject
The girl was in no way innocent; she simply hadn't been tried and convicted, so the law presumes that she may be innocent. "Not guilty" criminal verdicts don't imply innocence; they simply state that the state did not prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. There is no dispute concerning the violence in which she had already engaged against an adult. She was out of control, and her hands were where they shouldn't have been. Perhaps she was no danger to the police officers' lives, but she might have intentionally hurt them physically, however slightly (the degree is irrelevant). That's not something they have to tolerate.
Are the officers above reproach here? Not necessarily. Perhaps if they'd restrained the violent brat better beforehand, she wouldn't have been able to get her hands in front of her. Perhaps they should have cuffed her feet, too, and used better restraints. That's a matter worth investigating, surely. But restrained or not, the girl wasn't simply kicking the car; her hands were in a dangerous position.
no subject
And I'm sorry, but if multiple officers can't subdue a cuffed 65 pound thirteen year old that's already in their cruiser without resorting to a tactic that has the potential to kill and has killed grown adults, then they need to find another line of work.