The Briefing Room
General Category => National/Breaking News => Topic started by: rangerrebew on September 20, 2017, 04:36:20 pm
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Federal Court Ruling Guts Police Ability To Use Guns
Posted By Anders Hagstrom On 10:50 AM 09/20/2017 In | No Comments
A federal appeals court in Seattle ruled Tuesday that police can only use force “proportional” to the threat they face, seriously damaging the Seattle Police Department’s ability to use firearms.
Article printed fromThe Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com
URL to article: http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/20/federal-court-ruling-guts-police-ability-to-use-guns/
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How so? Are they supposed to use a knife if their assailant has a knife? Do they have time to ingest some PCP if their suspect is high on it?
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The decision is here: https://res.cloudinary.com/sagacity/image/upload/v1505860889/Use_of_force_Mahoney__9th_Cir._2017__dknfxw.pdf
IANAL, but my take is that the City of Seattle made a policy that was challenged on 2nd Amendment grounds. The court said that the 2nd Amendment wasn't violated by the policy -- that "the use of force policy did not impose a substantial burden on plaintiffs’ right to use a firearm for the purpose of lawful self-defense."
The Use of Force Policy states in part, that “[ o]fficers shall only use objectively reasonable force, proportional to the threat or urgency of the situation, when necessary, to achieve a law-enforcement objective.”
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So let em go lawless a la Chicago and see how they like it. Act only in self defense of themselves or their family. I bet it gets turned around real quick.
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A federal appeals court in Seattle ruled Tuesday that police can only use force “proportional” to the threat they face, seriously damaging the Seattle Police Department’s ability to use firearms.
There is nothing whatsoever wrong with limiting the police to using "proportional" force as long as k=100 or so.
(I hate the misuse of words like "proportional." The word does not really mean "matching" or "equivalent" or "comparable" or "commensurate with.")
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If this stands the grievance groups will play this like a fiddle.
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There is nothing whatsoever wrong with limiting the police to using "proportional" force as long as k=100 or so.
(I hate the misuse of words like "proportional." The word does not really mean "matching" or "equivalent" or "comparable" or "commensurate with.")
You do understand that words can have multiple meanings?
http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-law-basics/self-defense-overview.html (http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-law-basics/self-defense-overview.html)
Proportional Response
The use of self-defense must also match the level of the threat in question. In other words, a person can only employ as much force as required to remove the threat. If the threat involves deadly force, the person defending themselves can use deadly force to counteract the threat. If, however, the threat involves only minor force and the person claiming self-defense uses force that could cause grievous bodily harm or death, the claim of self-defense will fail.
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You do understand that words can have multiple meanings?
My complaint is that the word proportional has been rather recently assigned the meaning that you cited--so assigned despite the fact that there is no genuine proportionality idea in that usage. (Look again at the definition that you cited to see what I mean. It's an idea of matching threat [or force] with force.)
If I am not mistaken, the word came into a not-really-proportional usage for the specific purpose of talking about the ethics of self-defense and limited warfare. That bizarre non-proportional meaning of "proportional" in this specialized usage is a subtle obfuscation of language for talking about doing nothing more than might be effective.
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How recently was that additional definition assigned? Before our lifetimes? Or more currently?
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/proportional (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/proportional)
Definition of proportional in English:
proportional
adjective
1Corresponding in size or amount to something else.
‘the punishment should be proportional to the crime’
1.1Mathematics (of a variable quantity) having a constant ratio to another quantity.
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How recently was that additional definition assigned? Before our lifetimes? Or more currently?
I dunno. But I never heard that "The punishment should be proportional to the crime" until recently indeed. The historically resonant quote, I believe, is the non-npnsense sentence "The punishment should fit the crime."
An altogether different flavor, it seems to me.
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There is nothing whatsoever wrong with limiting the police to using "proportional" force as long as k=100 or so.
(I hate the misuse of words like "proportional." The word does not really mean "matching" or "equivalent" or "comparable" or "commensurate with.")
So what does it mean?
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(http://universalacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/88aa560b421d47c3bbd4f4e1cb599cf6.jpg)
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So what does it mean?
Elderberry found an OED citation that actually illustrates my consternation over usage. That (old? new?) OED definition essentially says that "proportional" means that "Entity A is proportional to Entity B if Entity A corresponds (?) in size or amount to Entity B." Well, duh, that is not a very precise idea for a definition is it?
"Corresponding" could mean equal--which is the way the gun-control and anti-war zealots are determined to use their word "proportional" in contempt of mathematical usage--despite the fact that their definition, even if dignified by the OED, is lousy by virtue of its non-specificity.
Of course, "proportional" could also mean that Entity A corresponds with Entity B in a way that is drastically unequal so long Entity A tracks up and down mathematically ("proportionately"!) to maintain that drastic unequality as Entity B changes.
My bottom-line point for all of my unabashed peevishness over mushy language is that the threat of an armed burglar is so serious that you should probably empty your entire magazine into him even if he gets off only one shot at you. And if he manages to get off yet another shot, then common sense says that you should be within your rights in the heat of a desperate situation to empty another six-round magazine into him. That is my idea of a proportional use of force in self defense. It corresponds to the fact that the bad guy is still alive and able to shoot. The proportion I advocate, in other words is six-to-one--not the naïve modern idea that liberal judges use to say that only one-to-one is "proportional."
Under the new doctrine of proportionality, cops are going to be prosecuted for pumping multiple rounds into a killer even if he might have been still dangerous before they finished. And military personnel will be court-martialed if they do their real job of annihilating our enemies.
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Under the new doctrine of proportionality, cops are going to be prosecuted for pumping multiple rounds into the back of an unarmed perp running away from them.
I see holding the police to "proportional force" as a good thing.
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You do understand that words can have multiple meanings?
In the legal world, words have meaning and the choice of words makes a difference. They usually have specific definitions.
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Under the new doctrine of proportionality, cops are going to be prosecuted for pumping multiple rounds into the back of an unarmed perp running away from them.
I see holding the police to "proportional force" as a good thing.
Absolutely. Especially with the younger generations whose idea of 'reality' is Grand Theft Auto.
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So what does it mean?
To me it means you start with pepper spray...move to the taser...then release the dog...after that double tap to the chest.
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Under the new doctrine of proportionality, cops are going to be prosecuted for pumping multiple rounds into the back of an unarmed perp running away from them.
I see holding the police to "proportional force" as a good thing.
@Elderberry
There used to be a DOJ study on the use of deadly force available on the web, it has apparently been removed as I can no longer find it. In that study the DOJ found that when police used force they used excessive force about 70% of the time. That statistic included non-deadly force as well.
In the case of that guy out in San Fran who was shot in the back at the train station while handcuffed and laying on his stomach. In that case I never understood why 4 cops felt the need to have their guns drawn on a guy who was already cuffed and laying on the ground with 4 cops holding him. That case would seem to be a good example for this decision.
However, in the recent case in Atlanta where the cop shot the knife wielding guy in Atlanta. Does the judge expect the cop to switch to a taser or pepper spray?
Seems once again we have a judge writing the law.
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@Elderberry
However, in the recent case in Atlanta where the cop shot the knife wielding guy in Atlanta. Does the judge expect the cop to switch to a taser or pepper spray?
Seems once again we have a judge writing the law.
@driftdiver
I would think it depends on distance. If the cop is a safe distance away, I could see him using a taser or pepper spray with his off-hand. He should keep his firearm trained on him the entire time. Knives are definitely lethal weapons, so the cop is justified in using his lethal weapon if he feels he or anyone else is in immediate danger.
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Under the new doctrine of proportionality, cops are going to be prosecuted for pumping multiple rounds into the back of an unarmed perp running away from them.
Most police jurisdictions have not tolerated the scenario you mentioned anyway. They would not say that the officer was violating "proportional force" doctrine, so I respectfully submit that the scenario is irrelevant to this thread's discussion. I think we ought to take your scenario off the table to be able to see the more serious problem.
I see holding the police to "proportional force" as a good thing.
I sort of agree with you about that, because I do not blindly trust cops to do the right thing (especially if they are Democrats!), but that's not the real problem down the road for you and me. For example, neither of us is likely to be shot in the back running away from a local cop.
The real problem is that our cops (yeah, they are our guys and gals, even if some of them are self-important jerks) are going to get hurt or even killed if we default to letting federal judges micromanage them in every case of an officer-involved shooting. In that context, judicial micromanagement--i.e., on top of all the use-of-force protocols that have already existed in police departments--will make the career of a police officer exceedingly unenticing for purposes of recruiting (and we could get some real weirdoes inducted into our shrinking police departments).
One of the most worrisome aspects of the micromanagement problem is that everything that the cop does will be second-guessed by a likely hostile, activist judge. "Second-guessing" concerning the common-sense. departmental-policy-compliant propriety of a given cop's actions has been traditionally handled by local Police Review Boards. But as one poster on this thread has intimated, politically unreliable judges will take over as the supreme arbiters of every juicy case. Every juicy case will be a circus arena with the media-driven rabble pointing thumbs down for the cop.
Having already expressed my sentiments about the peculiar language of "proportionality," I would point out again that the vague language of "proportionality" poses a potentially monstrous problem: If we too eagerly (too carelessly?) embark upon reining in the cops at a federal level and also use too-subjective language to do so and also permit federal judges to be the supreme arbiters of those cases , we really will put our cops in handcuffs (as the title of the article suggests). Thus, I fear that we will wind up with unintended and very bad consequences for our already deteriorating state of law-and-order. Having a federal judge tell our cops that they must never use even an iota of force beyond the barest minimum necessary will definitely tend to make our police far, far less effective in protecting us.
As I have already stipulated, I do not blindly trust cops to do the right thing. But the biggest problem we have at this time is bad judges, not bad cops. That is what the headline of the article reminds me.
(As a side note, I will point out that even civilian CCW permittees who wind up using their firearms often get into enormously serious legal trouble from parties who were not present at the scene of a righteous shooting--on the grounds that the CCW permittee was not following a doctrine of proportionality. At some point this mess of nit-picking legalism in lieu of lawfulness tends to gut the 2nd Amendment, does it not?)
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The 9th Circus strikes again. There are more bad judges than bad cops, but neither should be tolerated.
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If you were in the cops shoes and saw a guy reach into his hoodie pocket, is he pulling a phone, a switchblade or a gun. You only have a fraction of a second to decide or you are the one dead.
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If you were in the cops shoes and saw a guy reach into his hoodie pocket, is he pulling a phone, a switchblade or a gun. You only have a fraction of a second to decide or you are the one dead.
Are you saying he should err on the side of personal safety and fire not knowing what's in his hand?
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If you were in the cops shoes and saw a guy reach into his hoodie pocket, is he pulling a phone, a switchblade or a gun. You only have a fraction of a second to decide or you are the one dead.
IMO, all police should then have red-dot laser sightings on all their weapons.
Easier to 'wound' when a scenario as you've described, presents itself.
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IMO, all police should then have red-dot laser sightings on all their weapons.
Easier to 'wound' when a scenario as you've described, presents itself.
I don't have a problem with police having red-dots or lasers, I have several myself. But when they shoot, they should be in immediate danger, and shoot to kill.
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Under the new doctrine of proportionality, cops are going to be prosecuted for pumping multiple rounds into the back of an unarmed perp running away from them.
I see holding the police to "proportional force" as a good thing.
How do you assess that, except by effect? Is a pipe or a stick a lethal weapon? Assuredly has that potential, as do fists and feet, a glass bottle (especially a molotov cocktail), a baseball bat. Fists and feet account for twice as many deaths as rifles, for instance. Would it be okay to shoot the guy with the rifle but not that hulking big sob who is amped up on PCP or flakka who wants to beat you to death?
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How do you assess that, except by effect? Is a pipe or a stick a lethal weapon? Assuredly has that potential, as do fists and feet, a glass bottle (especially a molotov cocktail), a baseball bat. Fists and feet account for twice as many deaths as rifles, for instance. Would it be okay to shoot the guy with the rifle but not that hulking big sob who is amped up on PCP or flakka who wants to beat you to death?
To me, it means if you are being threatened with immediate bodily harm, shoot the SOB. If he's just a kid with a squirt gun, or he's being an bleep and pissed you off, or is running away, then its not proportional to blast him and then claim you were in fear of your life.
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Are you saying he should err on the side of personal safety and fire not knowing what's in his hand?
Exactly. Not many people will live if it turns out to be a loaded gun and wait to see if it is. That is the fallacy of all those arm chair critics. A cop has less than a tenth of a second to decide or potentially be killed.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfi3Ndh3n-g (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfi3Ndh3n-g)
Police training video. What would you do?
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To me, it means if you are being threatened with immediate bodily harm, shoot the SOB. If he's just a kid with a squirt gun, or he's being an bleep and pissed you off, or is running away, then its not proportional to blast him and then claim you were in fear of your life.
Ideally, the entry woulds should be in the front of the suspect, much the same standard for a non policeman who uses a firearm in personal defense. Some yayhoo doing spinning back kicks or such might be an exception. Shooting a fleeing suspect? no. Hostage situation, anything is fair, but if they haven't killed yet and aren't on the move, it may just be a cry for help. If there is any doubt, though, drop them.
The problem with the whole shoot to wound thing is that I have seen a guy so coked up (and, admittedly, in shock) he was walking on the stump, dragging his foot and ankle behind him. Suspects on PCP or Meth or Flakka or a host of other aggression producing drugs might not even go down from what would ordinarily be a debilitating wound. They will still present a lethal threat. Considering most gunfights happen inside 7 meters range, that isn't much distance for that perp to cover, even wounded.
So all the happy thoughts about shooting guns out of someone's hand or wounding them sort of go out the window for a guy who has to decide in less time than it takes to type "now".
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Exactly. Not many people will live if it turns out to be a loaded gun and wait to see if it is. That is the fallacy of all those arm chair critics. A cop has less than a tenth of a second to decide or potentially be killed.
I guess I'm lucky to be alive then. I was pulled over in the winter. I had an army jacket on. It was cold and I kept putting my hands in my pockets. The cop would yell to get my hands out of my pockets. I'd pull them out, get cold again and stick them back in my warm pockets. He'd yell at me again. I'd pull them out again. He was not amused when he frisked me and found 2 knives on me. He didn't shoot me. He never even drew his weapon. It didn't help that one of my passengers would break out laughing whenever the cop yelled at me. Especially when he was shaking my knives at me, saying "You were going to stick me with this, weren't you!"
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The bottom line fact is, cops are very poorly trained and are as often as not amped up on adrenaline, which can be just as bad as any other drug on ones judgment, and they are shooting, too often, too soon, and killing people who were simply not that much of a threat.
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I guess I'm lucky to be alive then. I was pulled over in the winter. I had an army jacket on. It was cold and I kept putting my hands in my pockets. The cop would yell to get my hands out of my pockets. I'd pull them out, get cold again and stick then back in my warm pockets. He'd yell at me again. I'd pull them out again. He was not amused when he frisked me and found 2 knives on me. He didn't shoot me. He never even drew his weapon. It didn't help that one of my passengers would break out laughing whenever the cop yelled at me. Especially when he was shaking my knives at me, saying "You were going to stick me with this, weren't you!"
Hands in the pockets, especially in winter, do definitely make them nervous, but it doesn't mean they will necessarily shoot you, nor should it. Here, in winter, exposed flesh can be damaged in as little as 30 seconds, depending on wind and temperature, and the police know this. It's removing the hands, body stance, intervening distance, prior signs of aggression (aside from just being unhappy about being pulled over), all factor in. You didn't bring your hand out of your pocket with a knife in it did you?
Frankly, it isn't a job I'd want. for every time people are happy to see you, there are a bunch they are not. Especially with the crap around glorifying killing police.
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The bottom line fact is, cops are very poorly trained and are as often as not amped up on adrenaline, which can be just as bad as any other drug on ones judgment, and they are shooting, too often, too soon, and killing people who were simply not that much of a threat.
Let me throw a " some" in front of cops, there. Sure they are amped up on adrenaline, depending on the behaviour of the person involved, whether they had to chase them, the area they make the stop and time of day/night, there are things which indicate some stops are going to be more of a problem than others. No two ways about it. Some do shoot too soon, or do not correctly assess the threat. My experience has been that the police here have generally conducted themselves professionally, with reasonable caution.
But then, I call them "officer", and have kidded with the youngsters in the family often enough about being on a first-name basis with all the police force (that being "Officer") and that they can be, too, if they just remember that. It sets a different tone than "M*****f****r!", and chances are that whatever was an issue will be the only issue, solved calmly, no gunplay involved.
They are told to speak calmly, respectfully, and to refrain from profanity.
Hmm. Civil, nonthreatening behaviour works. Hoodathunkit?
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I've never had any problems with the police. I've always called them Sir. Once I got pulled over by two policemen. I was talking to one officer and looked over and saw the other officer was beating the crap out of my passenger. Must of been something he said. Like I said, personally, I've never had any problems with the police.
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I've never had any problems with the police. I've always called them Sir. Once I got pulled over by two policemen. I was talking to one officer and looked over and saw the other officer was beating the crap out of my passenger. Must of been something he said. Like I said, personally, I've never had any problems with the police.
Me, neither. A little common sense keeps it that way.