“That’s the standard excuse cops use”
DID YOU WATCH THE POWELL VIDEO???
The guy had a knife.
The cops shouted repeatedly “DROP THE KNIFE”.
The guy walked fast toward the cops (guns drawn!) shouting “SHOOT ME”.
What part of “actively trying to create a lethal conflict” does this not fit?
I’m not talking rhetorical theoreticals, I’m talking concrete on-video clear-case specific situation.
[sigh] I know exactly how you’re thinking. I was there too, once. I stood in the very convincing live-fire simulator, Glock 17 drawn & loaded & chambered, faced with a knife-weilding attacker I _knew_ was intent on killing me. He came at me, I kept the car between us as best I could, I - deep down - thought I could somehow defuse the situation just as you’ve insisted, and then ... I lost the confrontation.
That was a very disturbing mental moment.
I finally snapped thru the “this can’t _actually_ happen” barrier.
I hope you will too.
So long as a case _this_clear_ won’t lead you to “shoot!”, instead leaving you flailing with “but what about” and “what if” and making sweeping accusations about unrelated situations, you’re in stark raving denial.
If you want to quibble about their last two shots, sure. There’s room for debate there.
Discussion of the “middle” shots can be had, but are unreasonable.
If you can’t accept the imperative of the cops shooting Powell at all, while claiming training in self-defense, then you’re suffering severe cognitive dissonance and cannot be reasoned with.
Yup. Multiple times.
The guy had a knife.
So they say. I heard them first tell him to get his hands out of his pockets and as he approached them it was then they were saying 'drop the knife'.
Police emptying guns into perps and killing family pets upon dynamic entries are now endemic in society. That's my problem. This killing is just one more in an almost daily slew of reports of cops acting like Enforcers for the mob and not 'peace officers'.
When I was a kid back in the late 60's, I saw a single cop take out a hippie swinging a bowie knife at him, all the cop had was a baton. Hippie was disarmed, cuffed and kicking with his feet into the air like a pig on his back. So do not give me this crappola that two cops have to empty their guns into a single perp with a knife. They couldn't shoot him in the thigh or arm and then rush him? Nope. Cops are now trained to kill first, deal with the consequences afterward.
Thats not a free society. That is indicative of a police state.
If you can’t accept the imperative of the cops shooting Powell at all, while claiming training in self-defense, then you’re suffering severe cognitive dissonance and cannot be reasoned with.
If you accept the fact that cops are justified in emptying their magazines into anyone or anything they claim they feel "threatened by" as 'self-defense', then you are comfortable living with a police state and NO - you cannot reason with me about such a justification. Period.
I have my own personal reasons for loathing and distrusting today's law enforcement. Holder's corruption goes all the way down to the local level if you need a clue.
Cops are now just Enforcers for a beast. Nothing more in my estimation.