Do Police have a right to Murder?

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by ElectricFetus, Feb 8, 2017.

  1. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    When you're dead is a bit too late to recognize that you just happened to be dealing with one of the (ahem!) bad seeds.

    Besides, if it was just the bad seeds the police wouldn't be so worried about making sure the bad seeds get away with it.

    And, you know, come on, all else aside, "Cops are trained to use deadly force last", is entirely subjective. In my state, if the officer says it's the last resort, then it's the last resort, and nothing will change that.

    Do you understand? Even when we catch them, we can't prosecute them. The law is set up to protect even the bad seeds.

    It's not so much that I disagree with your general response to Oystein; those merits, however, are insufficient to justify that third paragraph.

    Most of the time they get it right. And what does that mean to the dead? Or the mouring survivors?

    Oh, hey, don't worry about it, that person over there got one of the good seeds, see? (Makes it all better, doesn't it?)

    For instance, here's one: Why don't they escalate? Because someone has already made the point to them that if they just murder willy-nilly, some people might catch on, so, you know, you have to be careful about who you murder and how you do it—i.e., remember to follow your training and you will get away with it. And, yeah, I know, it's a bullshit paragraph. Just like the ninety-nine point nine-nine bit.

    Still, though, taking Oystein's point in as serious a context as we can, we might note police bad seeds in police departments will still go out of their way to kill people with Tasers. And, besides, if cops were quick-draw dead-eyes, they still wouldn't wing a guy .... well, you know, unless they were "accidentally" six-packing a Negro.
     
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  3. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    It's cold comfort. That's true for ANYONE who dies, not just people killed by cops.
    Why would you not worry about it? It's a problem, and you have to make sure you weed out bad cops _before_ they shoot anyone - and then afterwards, come down hard on the cops who abuse their power.
    Sounds like you've never met a cop.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    There's a gap in the chain - which is that police escalating improperly don't actually kill very often. For every actual death, there are many - hard to say how many - near misses, incidents of severe abuse, incidents of improper threat, etc.

    The other issue is of course the obvious: that the very bad "so bad" decisions are not always, or even usually, prosecuted - let alone the great majority of improper escalations that were not lethal.

    The question that comes up, then, is how many actually "improper" killings would it take to establish a norm of impunity and abuse - the common knowledge that the police can do what they want to, what they want to do is abusive, and resisting this abuse can get you killed by them with little or no risk of repercussion. It probably wouldn't take more than one or two per State - less than a hundred total.
    I've met cops fitting that description. You haven't?
     
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  7. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Sounds like you tailored the quote for the sake of a dishonest retort.
     
  8. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    Let me change the question around, since this is a trick question posed out of the context of the entire reality. Say you have a gang of street thugs who go round beating, stealing and shooting people, doing property damage, extorting business and breaking into people's homes. Is it wrong for the police to apply street justice to protect the innocent from this gang?

    The question, as originally posed by the topic, leaves out this front end and starts the premise of the police being the gang, picking on innocent criminals, who only do crime because of white privilege, misogamy and homophobia. It has noting to do with their own choice to be predators. In the real world, the police come in after the fact and try to protect and serve the innocent victims by taking it to the thugs.

    By the time you catch a criminal and put him in jail, he may wronged a hundred people. Few criminals get caught the first time out. He will not be charged with all these extra crimes, since there may not be proof, but the victims still add up. If the police mug him, he gets only a fraction of a just payback that includes all his victims. If you have a criminal with a long rap sheet, multiply that by 10 to get the true number of victims. Innocent people have more priority to the people on the right. Criminals are preferred by the people on the left. The left engages in scams and crime all the time and protect the criminal to set legal precedent to protect themselves.

    If I got mugged, I have the right to return to the same state I was before the crime; pursuit of life, liberty and happiness was diminished.This mean I have the right to get even, since that restores everyone back. Since I am not the type of person to revenge, it is not fair that being just requires I remain in deficit and the criminal, who has no conscience, gets to benefit. I should be able to ask a proxy, who likes to mix it up, to help me out. This is the job of the police, who get to harass and even mug criminals with the same force, plus 10% for pain and suffering.

    This is not two wrongs making a right, but rather it is a wrong and righteous act restoring the original balance. None of this math would occur of the criminals did not draw first blood and violated the rights of another. The innocent people do not start the process. The motto of the police is protect and serve. If they protect, this can preamp future wrongs. If the wrong does occur, that will serve innocents to restore balance.
     
  9. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    murderlust

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    Yes.

    No, it doesn't.

    No, actually it doesn't. In fact, that is such a bullshit statement I challenge you to analyze the topic post↑ and justify yourself.

    Yeah, like when they shot the innocent guy to death following their instructions.

    No, that's a cheap action film with an Austrian bodybuilder as the star.

    Vengeance is not justice.

    That bit of make-believe is undone quite simply by your post. You remind clearly the difference between justice and what "people on the right" want.

    Quit advocating murder, Wellwisher. Your vendetta fantasies do not license murder.

    And, furthermore, I challenge you to explain just what benefit society gets from having the police as a Death Squad, such as you and your fellow conservatives advocate? Just how do you think it right that the police should wander around murdering innocent people? Why would you advocate that? That's terrible, Wellwisher.

    No, actually you don't.

    Vendetta is not justice.

    A hit team.

    Seriously, you're advocating murder.

    Quit advocating murder. Murder is not a righteous act, Wellwisher, no matter how badly you want it to be.
     
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Agreed. Those are, of course, less serious - and present an opportunity to weed out bad cops _before_ they escalate even further.
    No. I have never met a cop who would happily "murder willy-nilly" except "some people might catch on" so they "have to be careful about who they murder."
     
  11. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    I never advocated murder, only retroactive self defense. This is a revisionist's history version of self defense, We blame the present for slavery, so why not place a cop at the scene of the crime, after the fact, even if there is no direct rational connection? Once the cop is place in the past; scene of the crime, he can defend in real time, based on revisionist history. The left already set this precedent of retroactive guilt for something you did not do, and allows retribution for those who were also not even there. I merely extrapolated this to create a balance. I call it revisionists history self defense by proxy.

    You have twisted the facts, in liberal fashion, to create fake news. You are trying to take everyone's eye off the ball. If I borrow a cup of sugar from you, is it too much to expect for you to give me back something of equal value? It does not have to be a cup of sugar; eye for an eye, although that will also work. Why is it OK to scam or steal and not be expected to make the situation whole? Does one side have to be the bigger person and always be the one that has to forgive?

    The current system is set up for lawyers, who benefit by repeat offenders created by the concept of criminal rights. Helping to restore the victims is not a large part of this equation. The victim did nothing wrong, but has less resources earmarked than those who do the wrong.

    Picture this legal scenario, where someone is mugged and their wallet stolen. Culture now has to reimburse the victim for the actions of the criminal, who is currently given excuses and rights. This change will cut into the current budget process. They will either need to downsize or lower the percent going to the criminals.

    The three main components of tangible costs are victim costs, criminal justice system costs, and crime career costs. Predatory crimes generated the highest per-offense cost to society with $1.28 million per murder, $41,247 per rape/sexual assault, $21,398 per robbery, and $19,537 per aggravated assault.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2835847/

    Say we needed to cut these tangible costs by 50%, while adding new spending connected to making victims whole. How do you do that? The lawyers and police will not take a pay cut. We need other ways to make the criminals pay for the social cost and tab their create, by victimizing others. The criminal starts the cost, and will need to part of the solution. If they were a good citizen there would be no costs. How do you make the criminal like a good citizen while spending more on victims?

    How about instead of a private room with benefits, murderers have to work to pay for their own costs, no matter how long it takes. This could justify life in prison. How about if you put a value on a police beating of the suspect, as worth $50,000 against their tab. Some criminals will take the beating, to be released early. This goes a long way to empowering victims. If it buys you a year less in prison, it may be worth it to some.

    Crime career costs are also part of the equation. We need to make this career path not worth it. How do you do that? You can't control the black market, to make stealing less profitable. One way is to steal from the thieves, so their time is worth less. Police will shake down career criminals.

    The eye on the ball is about criminals creating costs to society. No costs occur until the criminal do their thing. Up to the point the criminal creates a crime, they are equal to an innocent civilian. Once they cross the line, we need to restore and reduce costs.

    Say there is finite budget and finite manpower to restore balance, in terms of social costs. The justice system and police cannot deal with all crimes, in a ways that can lower costs, due to limited manpower and resources. The logical way is to look at crime statistics and target the worse crime areas, with your limited resources, so you get the most social bang for the buck. A good approach it to preempt crime ,by adding opportunity costs to the known criminals, to lower the career benefits; harassment.

    If you are indoctrinated into liberalism you are conditioned to think crime is justified for certain people. For example, destroying property during riots is OK. There are a 1001 excuses to justify crime for certain leftist groups, most based on revisionist's history. The idea of balance of costs, in the liberal analysis, takes into account the opportunity costs of slavery, so the present day victims stay in deficit, repaying alleged past crimes. The left already does this cost system approach. Their equation is not rational, but then again that is the nature of the confidence game of criminals.

    Explain to us why criminals should have more rights when you do a cost analysis? Did I adequately define the premises of your logic?
     
    Last edited: Mar 5, 2017
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    I think I have.
    Not in their own self-perception, of course (they have rigid principles and worldviews, often, which only produce "willy-nilly" effects when set up alongside a physical reality in essentially random agreement with them).
    I think this is backwards.
    I doubt the "less serious" ascription is safe, and I'm not at all confident that the actual killings are escalations. From the look of the situations, most of the harm from the racism-based killings comes from the apparent fact that they are not escalations - that they are occasional and easily predictable consequences of tolerated, normal-range behavior. Normal-range behavior, by definition acceptable and tolerated, probably provides little opportunity to "weed out bad cops", even, let alone "weed out" the George Zimmermans of this world.

    Consider the example of Freddie Gray in Baltimore - the mentally crippled black guy killed by being bounced in the back of a van, you recall? https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...b6c1998b7a0_story.html?utm_term=.3198153e214c

    Here's the money quote, in my opinion:
    So no "escalation" involved, apparently. And it seems reasonable to posit that the harm from this abuse derives not from Gray's death, but from the fact he was killed by police officers behaving as they are allowed to behave, normally.

    The point would be that the constant threat from the police, to the community, is the source of the serious harm. The percentage of police stops that actually result in killings would be almost completely irrelevant, in other words - not even a measure of escalation, let alone damage done or seriousness of situation.
     
    Last edited: Mar 5, 2017
  13. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    ¿Vengeance Isn't Murder If You Have a Time Machine?

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    Click to taste revenge.

    "You take the first blow; I taste revenge. Let anger come, my will is done — malicious in my intent."


    (guffaw!)

    Do you ever stop with the make-believe?

    Oh, well, I guess so, long enough to ... er ... ah ... okay.

    You know that bit about how all those conservatives bawl crocodile tears about how they're being left behind? This is why they're being left behind, because everyone else isn't inclined to stop making progress so conservatives cna throw fits about time machines and retroactive guilt in pursuit of an excuse to murder.

    Only because your make-believe requires it.

    No, you just posted a bunch of useless, uneducated crap hoping to justify a murder fantasy.
     
  14. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    You tickle me wellwisher - WTF do you think "retroactive self defense" is? Besides a phrase you just made up to justify vigilante murder? Hmmm?

    Compare and contrast retroactive self defense and vigilantism for me, would you?
     
  15. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    You've met a cop who would likely "murder willy-nilly" except "some people might catch on" so they "have to be careful about who they murder?" What did you do? What's his name/badge # and what department does he work for?
    OK. Every other person I've met thinks that killing someone is more serious than "near misses, incidents of severe abuse, incidents of improper threat." That does not mean that abuse, threats etc are NOT serious, simply that they are less serious (and more reversible) than killing someone.
    OK. If you believe that reducing the number of unjustified shootings would not help, then I disagree, but you are entitled to your opinion.
     
  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    I've met several, and I explained what I meant by that.
    It's routine, to meet such police. They are not rare birds. The rigid authoritarian mindset, corrupted by racial bigotry and accepting of violence, is something you've encountered, I'm sure of that.
    You have not addressed my argument: that the continual and existing and general and ubiquitous and very common threat from routine painful and humiliating and even obviously potentially (without being actually) lethal abuse is much more serious in its effects than the occasional actual and comparatively inconsequential deaths that you rightly claimed were rare.

    You have not addressed my example: that compared with the effects of having a police force whose officers can and do - whenever they want to, so routinely and without consequences that it's an accepted reality with its own slang term ("rough ride") in the community - bounce someone in the back of a van as they did Freddie Gray, without regard to the risk of serious pain and injury obviously faced by all of the victims,

    the effects of the vanishingly rare actual death that may or may not ever happen is comparatively minor. The deaths don't even have to occur.

    You attempted to dismiss the threat, by pointing to the percentage-measured infrequency of actual killings. I pointed out that that's irrelevant. The threat - the abuse of the community and the central matter at hand - does not depend on any great frequency of actual killings, and the killings themselves can be vanishingly rare while the threat posed by the ability to inflict pain and injury to the point of killing at any time, the routine risk of life and health, remains. This is, one would think, fairly obvious.

    If police are routinely dangling people out of high windows during interrogations, the percentage they actually drop is almost completely irrelevant. And once in while,

    - at long intervals, rarely, less than .01% of the time, almost never, only bad cops do that, probably by accident, after all, in unusual circumstances, it was windy maybe -

    dropping them,

    is not an "escalation".

    The guy who said this
    was right. Whole communities of people who have had such fears abetted or even inculcated by the police, as a routine of control and "law enforcement", are sane people who are being abused by the police, regardless of how many of them are actually killed.

    Your premise - this one:
    - was shit, ok? Don't defend it. Give up on it.
    The Fox-question - that ugly little lie of an "if" - does not belong on a science forum.
     
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    OK. I will ask again - what were their names, badge numbers and departments?

    One of the reasons that bad cops remain on the force is that people are willing to cover up for them. I hope you do not fall into that category.
    I very much doubt that their families and friends consider those deaths "comparatively inconsequential."
    I neither dismiss the threat nor do I try to hide it.
    Agreed. Solution is to find the cops doing that and put a stop to it - not to cover up those events.
     
  18. Oystein Registered Senior Member

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    890
    There are some cops out there (hopefully a small percentage?) that shouldn't be cops. They're either sadistic, power-hungry, racist assholes or they are always "scared for their lives". Both groups are likely to commit murder. The first group should be in jail and the second group should quit and become webmasters, accountants, programmers, etc. -- jobs where they will be safe.
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Do you remember the name and badge number of every rigidly authoritarian and racially bigoted cop you ever ran across? I don't. Never knew them, actually.
    Another reason is that they aren't "bad cops" - their attitudes and behaviors are within the normal range of tolerance, there is nothing to cover up.
    So?
    Agreed.
    In this case, "find" a whole bunch of regular police officers acting in accepted and recognizably normal ways, and change the way they behave in hundreds of events over the years of their service - against their professional judgment and in defiance of their collective view of the world.

    .
     
    Last edited: Mar 7, 2017
  20. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    No. I can remember a few unusually bad cops, but the rigid authoritarians? Met too many of them.

    But you didn't claim that. You claimed you have met a cop who would likely "murder willy-nilly" except "some people might catch on" so they "have to be careful about who they murder."

    If that was the usual Internet bullshit, then you are forgiven.

    If it's not - and you have actually met a cop who was a psychopathic murderer, willing to murder willy-nilly if no one was looking - then shame on you for not even bothering to remember who it was. If that's really true, then the next time you complain about why no one is doing anything about bad cops, look in the mirror.
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    That's the same claim, from opposite perspectives. here:
    They wouldn't say, or even believe, their killings were "willy nilly", of course. They would have reasons for what they did. But self-awareness is not presumed here.

    And what prevents them from going even farther down that road than they already have is probably - I think likely - the awareness that they are accountable to people who don't share their "street knowledge", as they might put it.
     
  22. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    Fear is both good and evil. Death is the same way. Fear, and Death are Hades angels. The forbidden fruit itself.
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2017
  23. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    So authoritarian and bigoted cops are the same as psychopathic murderers.

    I have to wonder if you have ever met any cop in real life.
     

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