Witnesses yell 'he can't hear you' as cop shoots deaf man

[Lorgar Aurelian]

How about using some critical thinking skills instead of being blindly prejudiced against police? It doesn't matter if you're deaf or not, when a police officer is clearly yelling at you and pointing a firearm at you, the last thing you should be doing is continuing to walk towards them holding anything in your hand.

It very much does matter if your deaf or disabled, police should have the training to deal with the mentilly ill and disabled the guy who tazed him did the right thing the guy who shot him did not.

[sarahtasher]

Again, it's really cute that Americans imagine that only them ,in the entire world, face far fetched scenarios such as ''arresting someone drunk''

I'm sure all the edgy guys screaming their love and admiration for the studs with big manly guns who shot (another) mentally handicaped man would sing the same tune if the police shot people with CSA flags and lots of gun ''that did not instantly, immediately do everything they say''

[BreakerOfWills]

When I was in grade school the police brought in this "shoot, don't shoot" system to show us kids. You stand in front of this screen with a fake gun and they play a video of a scenario where you have to decide to shoot or don't shoot. The machine will tell you if you're shot or if you shoot the person in the video.

I remember one scenario where you get a call that there's a man with a gun at a train yard. You arrive and this guy is walking toward you, you yell at him to stop but he doesn't he gets closer and closer. He reaches into his shirt. I shot him.

Turns out he pulls out this card that says "I am deaf and mute" so I shot a handicapped person.

SO what you're saying is police are as incompetent as children when it comes to doing one of the more lethal aspects of their jobs?

[Video Games]

Pretty hard for me to have sympathy for somebody dying because they did something stupid.

[Leadsop]

Don't need to be deaf to fail to understand that walking toward anyone, let alone an officer, with a weapon is not OK.

[sionus]

It very much does matter if your deaf or disabled, police should have the training to deal with the mentilly ill and disabled the guy who tazed him did the right thing the guy who shot him did not.

Luckily it's not up to you to decide whether or not the officer acted properly. That's what (grand) juries are for. Apparently you're of the opinion that police are solely responsible for the actions individuals take that result in them being shot. I hate to break it to you but that doesn't match with reality.

[Manabomb]

I doubt they get in trouble at all. They did their part by the book. How were they supposed to know he is deaf or has no criminal background? I'd sure like to know where mind reader cops are stationed.

How about the ones that do their fucking job without killing innocent non-suspects?

That's called murder, mate.

[sarahtasher]

Pretty hard for me to have sympathy for somebody dying because they did something stupid.

Again, do you REALLY think that the US is the only country in the world where the police have to arrest

Mentally handicaped people ?
Drunk people ?
Drugged people ?
Overly agressive people ?

[Heladys]

Again, it's really cute that Americans imagine that only them ,in the entire world, face far fetched scenarios such as ''arresting someone drunk''

To be fair to the americans, improper use of force scenarios do occur everywhere - Sonny Yatim got blasted by an idiot cop in Toronto - but we tend to have a strong history of prosecuting successfully when the police do wrong. The americans imagine that the vast sea of guns they live in is some form of justification for police error, which is false, or that their utter ineffectiveness at prosecuting is an unresolvable problem, which is also false. It's understandable context to the situation, but it's no justification or mitigation.

[Tijuana]

I don't think lynching them in the street is the right answer either, chuckles. But I am reading a basic dismissal in your phrasing. If that's not what you intended, cool I'll take your word for it.

My points are about the over reactions, often that come before the public even has all the facts. That is what I'm getting at. The problem is, when they riot before we know the facts, it creates the appearance that the riot was the cause of charges being filed. This leads to an EXTREMELY dangerous perceived precedent.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

depends on the disability and extent of it....

It does. I'm talking in a more general sense though not every one who wouldn't understand how to interpret with a cop has bigger things going on or need 24 hour care.

[Heladys]

My points are about the over reactions, often that come before the public even has all the facts. That is what I'm getting at. The problem is, when they riot before we know the facts, it creates the appearance that the riot was the cause of charges being filed. This leads to an EXTREMELY dangerous perceived precedent.

The thing to factor in is they're rarely rioting over the immediate situation. It's the spark, it's not the giant puddle of fuel. They're rioting that it HAPPENED AGAIN. And that there wasn't a satisfactory resolution to the last one either. Or the one before that. Or the one before that.

[Manabomb]

Luckily it's not up to you to decide whether or not the officer acted properly. That's what (grand) juries are for. Apparently you're of the opinion that police are solely responsible for the actions individuals take that result in them being shot. I hate to break it to you but that doesn't match with reality.

Frankly the police are responsible for not knowing sign language. That's a gross act of civil negligence. That's like trying to be a cop in East LA with English as your only language. You are literally doing your community a disservice by not knowing these methods of communication, which is sad when they are supposed to enforce laws.

But hey, guess what happens when your law enforcement and protection agencies are all capitalistic in nature? The bottom line is the only thing that matters.

[niil945]

That's Stockholm syndrome. You are a hostage to the violence that perpetrates American society. Common sense would dictate that the ONLY reason why we give guns and a license for violence to police offers is because we trust them to be better than average people in responding to crisis situations. What you get instead, are people who respond WORSE by drawing weapons and killing people who present marginal threats at best.

A proper police officer should disarm the civilian by non-lethal means and deal with him appropriately after that. A badge is not a license to kill, even if its out of a fear for your own life. We pay these people and venerate them for the exact reason that we expect them to be heroic in dealing with situations like these, and not shoot at first provocation.

Speaking from a position of idealistic moral superiority isn't intellectually honest. I can find dozens upon dozens of videos of officers who hesitated for a split second and were shot and/or killed. They react this way because they're trained to do so. Like the guy who earlier posted that cops who are blatantly guilty are let off in court, that's because the courts are required to judge the actions based on the law. And the law is in the vast majority of cases in support of the cops actions, regardless of the outrage and mob mentality. People often have a few seconds at most to react once they identify a potential threat, and within ~30 feet or so a melee attacker will reach an injure a cop before the cop has time to draw a weapon and respond. Hell, due to reaction time, a guy with a gun pointed at the ground 20 feet away will ~80% of the time shoot a cop that has their weapon pointed at the hostile target and is yelling for them to drop the weapon. It's the time difference between acting and reacting that is not in the cops favor. There are going to be casualties from fringe cases like this. Cops are going to die or civilians are going to die based on our laws. We chose (it already happened, you didn't get a vote, no one cares if you agree or not) that a cop's life is more important than a potential threat's life. This isn't going to change. But the choice we do have is what we're going to do about guns. Either we start heavily restricting them, registering everyone with one, holding them responsible for the damage caused by the gun, or we keep going just like this. Because until the threat that cops face comes down, cops are going to intentionally react as harsh as possible to potential life safety threats because in a fraction of a second they could die. That's what we train them to do. Because if we don't they die. We have decades of dash cam footage and ton of body cam footage now to support it. These .00001% of shootings that are in the limelight every day are tragedies, sure, but they've already been deemed acceptable losses. Because if we don't change gun laws and we do change how we train officers and the laws that support them, the body count is going to shift to cops and other civilians at the hands of criminals and it's going to get worse. It's a pure numbers game. Which is why it's never going to happen.

[Belize]

Don't need to be deaf to fail to understand that walking toward anyone, let alone an officer, with a weapon is not OK.

If having a metal pipe, at your home, is carrying a weapon, then why are millions of plumbers and average Joes around the world not being arrested for carrying weapons?

[sionus]

A cane is not a weapon. A cane is a cane... when you have something with you for a long time, you take do not consider how other people will view it, especially since it is a walking aid.

Anything can be used as a weapon, even keys, should we shoot anyone that walks toward us with hard things in their hands?

If you're going to use analogies to try and reinforce your argument, you should probably use ones that make sense and not try to sensationalize in the process.

[Tijuana]

To be fair to the americans, improper use of force scenarios do occur everywhere - Sonny Yatim got blasted by an idiot cop in Toronto - but we tend to have a strong history of prosecuting successfully when the police do wrong. The americans imagine that the vast sea of guns they live in is some form of justification for police error, which is false, or that their utter ineffectiveness at prosecuting is an unresolvable problem, which is also false. It's understandable context to the situation, but it's no justification or mitigation.

Do you have numbers that show our errors are out of line with yours, statistically? We are a pretty big nation. If .0001% of cops make mistakes daily, that would provide hundreds of news stories every day. The frequency of the news stories is more due to it being a hot topic, than an epidemic of misuse of force. Simply saying, "It must be a problem because I keep seeing it on the news", is not a valid analysis of the issue.

I would say this phenomena is similar to mass shootings. By all statistical analysis, mass shootings are down, and have been in steady decline for a hundred years. Yet, we see them on the news frequently, and perceive it to be some sort of epidemic, despite the factual opposite being true.

[Video Games]

Again, do you REALLY think that the US is the only country in the world where the police have to arrest

Mentally handicaped people ?
Drunk people ?
Drugged people ?
Overly agressive people ?

I don't think i said otherwise. The fuck you on about?

[Tijuana]

If having a metal pipe, at your home, is carrying a weapon, then why are millions of plumbers and average Joes around the world not being arrested for carrying weapons?

A metal pipe with a leather strap attached to it, is not plumbing, its a weapon. Period.

- - - Updated - - -

Speaking from a position of idealistic moral superiority isn't intellectually honest. I can find dozens upon dozens of videos of officers who hesitated for a split second and were shot and/or killed. They react this way because they're trained to do so. Like the guy who earlier posted that cops who are blatantly guilty are let off in court, that's because the courts are required to judge the actions based on the law. And the law is in the vast majority of cases in support of the cops actions, regardless of the outrage and mob mentality. People often have a few seconds at most to react once they identify a potential threat, and within ~30 feet or so a melee attacker will reach an injure a cop before the cop has time to draw a weapon and respond. Hell, due to reaction time, a guy with a gun pointed at the ground 20 feet away will ~80% of the time shoot a cop that has their weapon pointed at the hostile target and is yelling for them to drop the weapon. It's the time difference between acting and reacting that is not in the cops favor. There are going to be casualties from fringe cases like this. Cops are going to die or civilians are going to die based on our laws. We chose (it already happened, you didn't get a vote, no one cares if you agree or not) that a cop's life is more important than a potential threat's life. This isn't going to change. But the choice we do have is what we're going to do about guns. Either we start heavily restricting them, registering everyone with one, holding them responsible for the damage caused by the gun, or we keep going just like this. Because until the threat that cops face comes down, cops are going to intentionally react as harsh as possible to potential life safety threats because in a fraction of a second they could die. That's what we train them to do. Because if we don't they die. We have decades of dash cam footage and ton of body cam footage now to support it. These .00001% of shootings that are in the limelight every day are tragedies, sure, but they've already been deemed acceptable losses. Because if we don't change gun laws and we do change how we train officers and the laws that support them, the body count is going to shift to cops and other civilians at the hands of criminals and it's going to get worse. It's a pure numbers game. Which is why it's never going to happen.

FYI nobody will read text walls here. Just sayin...

[sionus]

Frankly the police are responsible for not knowing sign language. That's a gross act of civil negligence. That's like trying to be a cop in East LA with English as your only language. You are literally doing your community a disservice by not knowing these methods of communication, which is sad when they are supposed to enforce laws.

But hey, guess that's what happens when your law enforcement and protection agencies are all capitalistic in nature? The bottom line is the only thing that matters.

It's nice to see how little responsibility you place on the individual approaching police with a metal pipe in their hands while the officers are pointing firearms at them and clearly yelling at them.

If you want people to take your opinion seriously don't start bringing in ridiculous statements about how police departments are capitalistic and powered by greed. It makes you sound like a lunatic.