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California officer shoots and kills boy, 15, holding gardening tool
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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TLDR: What is the "5 foot garden tool"? That's all I want to know!
So many details and blame thrown about, but suddenly vague on "gardening tool?" It was 5 feet of something. A rake? A scythe? A stick?
It sort of matters what is in your hands when you approach police; not that that's ever a good idea. Even with a disability, he could be dangerous.
I'm astounded by The Guardian. How does an article explain is such detail the events of an altercation and aftermath yet space so terribly on such basic information?
Maybe don't take a job of protecting and serving if a kid with a gardening tool is a bit too frightening for you to handle non-lethally.
Yeah, the kid didn't have something dangerous like an acorn.
Ha! That was a hoot of a story back then. Not for the dude in the back of course.
Jesus christ, america
I have plenty of dangerous gardening tools in my shed.
The fact is, and point I was trying to make, we don't know what the tool was therefore, we can't draw conclusions about acceptable risk yet.
Protecting includes the family, the ones who called the police in the first place, from danger too.
Oh for Christ’s sake. What other countries does this happen in? Is the US so profoundly filled with dangerous gardening tools that they present a clear and present danger in the hands of a child facing armed and armored officers? I believe they have garden tools in places like England and New Zealand and such.
Maybe if we didn’t arm every cop like they’re supposed to take Baghdad and train them that their first job is coming home alive, huh?
Yo, no offence here, buut you people seem to forget all about the random Europe attacks with bladed instruments. Let alone all the attacks in the rest of the world that go unreported globally.
Melee weapon attacks are dangerous and often deadly. My country prohibits having anything that can be classified as a white weapon in your car due to how many fuckwits started hitting and stabbing each other in traffic.
You lot are really downplaying the risks involved just because cops were at the center of it.
No offense here either, but you seem to have fallen for the NRA-driven narrative that knife attacks are more common in Europe as if that balances out the enormous rate of gun crimes (including this one) in the US. Statistically, both the US and Europe have approximately the same rate of knife attacks - with some countries in Eastern Europe being a bit higher.
But let’s reason that through a bit more, just to be scientists. If an officer is willing to fire a gun at the literal drop of a hat, and that was somehow a deterrent to knife crimes, then we might hypothesize that the fact that in European countries officers use de-escalation first and engagement with pepper spray or tasers second would in fact see far higher rates of knife crimes. They don’t.
So logically speaking, I don’t think either the statistics nor the models support your hypothesis.
My "hypothesis" is simply that you're downplaying the dangers of an attack with a melee weapon. They can be and often are deadly, regardless of how often they happen.
So should a cop respond with lethal force against a child because they have a garden tool, or has the rest of the planet been making a terrible mistake that only the Americans, with their off the charts levels of violence and incarceration, have figured out?
Do you think a militarized police force has a negative effect on violent crime and the rest of the world outside of places like Haiti and Somalia need to catch up with us?
You know what I think? I think it doesn't matter what I think. Society is gonna do what it does regardless. And as it seems, the general consensus of society in this regard is fuck the kids. Epstein's island, clergy abuse, school shootings, bombings, starvation, kidnappings, mutilations, etc. No matter the corner of the world, kids are getting fucked in every way possible. You think these cops shooting a black and/or autistic kid makes them special? It doesn't. Not even top ten of the most fucked up thing happening to kids across the world. The outrage is ridiculous.
The cops aren't the problem. They're a symptom. They lack training, proper equipment and the leadership to grant what they need. But even that isn't enough. They need a competent elected government that will grant the correct laws and the required budget to enact these changes. And that can only be done through fair elections by an educated electorate.
Without actually changing society at the fundamental level, this outrage of yours doesn't solve anything. Because obviously not enough people in the right places care enough to get shit done.
None of that though changes that you're downplaying the dangers of melee combat.
I'm not here defending or jumping to conclusions of anyone or any economic, cultural, or racial statement.
All I want to know is what the damn tool was!
Dude it literally doesn't fucking matter. Police in other countries disarm people wielding knives on a regular basis, without fucking killing them.
You are siding with an incompetent, oppressive and racist organization under the guise of rationality. Please stop. Cops are not your friends. They do not protect you. They are state sponsored bullies.
A couple years ago I would have understood where you're coming from and possibly even agreed with you. But the more I learn about the history of police and how utterly ineffective they are the more I agree with radical leftist beliefs. No matter how much you want to believe we live in a functioning society, with a functioning police force, it just isn't reality. The police have a long and violent history of brutalizing and murdering the weakest and most vulnerable people in our society. Fuck the police.
The "if you're not with me, you're against me" argument is BS and a tool of the ignorant. I'm not your enemy because I refuse to debate a position I never addressed in the first place. I was talking about a garden tool, nothing else. You want to goad me into an argument I simply won't have.
Furthermore, you have no business telling me who my friends are. I have, in fact, had some very positive experiences with police in the past. I don't share your rational and I am, as an individual, entirely entitled to my first hand, fact-based opinion even if it doesn't reflect yours.
You're asking for information that is simply irrelevant, police should and can disarm people wielding melee weapons. Maybe you genuinely believe you are asking an important question, but asking questions like "but what did he do to deserve it" is a common bad faith argument used to muddy the waters and make the situation appear more ambiguous than it truly is. Hence, no one in this thread wants to fucking answer your question. You are the one attempting to goad people into engaging in an argument we simply won't have.
I too have had positive experiences with cops, this proves absolutely nothing. You are entitled to your opinion and I'm entitled to think society would be better off if people like you had a more critical opinion of an organization that does pretty much anything other than serve and protect.
What a crap take. You know how many people young and old have been in a foreign country with a majority of the populace looking to kill them, have a thing called ROE Rules Of Engagement to guide when they should shoot to kill. Many time people with weapons, lethal weapons in their hand and those people would have to gauge whether or not they were a threat.
All police should have to adhere to a common ROE when engaging with the America/non American populace. If soldiers had to do it in a country where they were not welcome it should be a no brainier that the people sworn to "protect and serve" should have to do this bare minimum in our own country.
You did read the article including the part he was attacking his sister possibly with the garden tool or "piece of glass" while his other family was avoiding him and calling the cops? What is your threat assessment of that?
Anyways...
I don't know if the shooting was justified or not, and I've never made such statement and don't have an opinion one way or the other.
My post, if you read it again, is about The Guardians lack of information about the freaking tool.
That's all I want to know. What is the tool? JFC people.
Do you think that his family who called the cops wanted the cops to murder him?
Heard you the first time. Just leave it there then? Perhaps they hadn't been given that information yet.
That's the beauty of it, police don't have to protect and serve in America. Courts made sure of that. Don't need to know the laws they're enforcing either. Just run an obstacle course and take a 40 hr course on killology - the idea that policing is the most dangerous job on the planet and everyone is trying to kill you at all times- and presto, they give you a gun, body armor, and protection from the legal and financial repercussions of your actions.
Plus, there's lots of networking opportunities with local white supremacist and christofascist organizations.
Too bad he wasn't a big white man with a knife! Then the cops would have tried to talk him down!
I hear what you're saying, and black people are targeted disproportionally for these sorts of extra judicial killings, but there are plenty of videos of white people being executed by cops and also facing the same cushy "repercussions".
If minorities aren't safe then nobody is safe.
Aren't police carrying non-lethal stuff like tasers and trained in deescalation techniques that could be used to subdue someone without shooting them?
Edit: not 'desecration', although maybe they are
Some do carry batons, pepper spray, or tasers. All carry guns.
Some might be trained in deescalation. Some might be trained in "killology": https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/warrior-cop-class-dave-grossman-killology.html
Desecration is definitely not the right word but I'm having trouble inferring the one you meant to use. De-escalation perhaps?
Lol, yes!
FYI, tazers aren’t “non-lethal.”
They are less lethal, but like far less lethal.
The description of the video describes it as such.
What the hell? Maybe I didn't expand the article or something when I went back to check.
Good point. My bad. Corrected.
I think it might be a clipper for branches hard to reach.