Let's Debate the Police and Criminal Justice

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Let's Debate the Police and Criminal Justice

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Dead Reckoning posted:

So officers would be allowed to keep and bear arms as private citizens, but not while on duty? Do you think that officers having less capacity for force than the people they are supposed to police might be a problem? If faced with a school shooter or armed robber, would officers need to wait for the firearms unit, even though rapid action can often save lives?

These are so easy to answer I figured they were rhetorical, but if you really want them:
Yes. No. Yes.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2015 03:31

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 18:33

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Radbot posted:

Do you have literally any data or evidence to back up the notion the policework is more stressful or difficult than many other professions with higher death and injury rates? I get that it's totally obvious that it should be like the most stressful job EVER, but data would be nice, especially considering how often people literally pay money to become reserve cops but I don't see a lot of reserve sewer maintenance people around.

I don't understand why you are putting up a fight on this. Overly qualified people are going to leave their job for a job that is at least perceived to be better regardless of whether it actually is more often than merely qualified people. If you have an abundance of merely qualified people then there is no reason to go after overly qualified people.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2015 19:01

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Radbot posted:

I'm taking issue with the use of "overqualified" here, to refer to police officers needing to be intelligent. Let's start with why you think being intelligent necessarily makes you overqualified to be a cop.

Because it obviously does. We have a test, this test claims to measure some sort of intelligence, and the HR department apparently believes its officers need some minimum score to function in their job. Literally any score above that is by definition over qualified. Now, there probably isn't an abundance of people who score exactly the minimum, and the job hopping rate probably has some margin where it's only significantly impacted by scores above some level, and you're probably willing to tolerate some level of extra job hopping to have a smarter group anyways, so you specify both a minimum and a maximum that makes sense.

I've personally been turned down for a job, because I was a dumb kid that thought listing an A+ certification was a smart thing to do on a retail job application, but that's just sound business.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2015 20:44

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Radbot posted:

That's pretty odd considering that A+ is a retail-level certification (used to work at a CompUSA with people with A+ on the floor, not in the shop).

It's not, but that's not really relevant.

quote:

On the other hand, I work at a corporate employer getting paid very well, and they want as intelligent a person as possible in this job. Why the difference there?

Your corporate employer is probably able to arbitrarily incentive an arbitrarily smart person. Like if a literal omniscient entity showed up for an entry level job, you can just make them CEO/whatever. In my city if you want to make detective, you need to work for three years minimum before you're even allowed to take the test. Sergeant is minimum five years.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2015 20:56

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Radbot posted:

Nope. There are no promotions in my department - there haven't been for the last four years. I'm incented solely by the folks I work with (I like them) and the money I earn (I like that too). It's like that for most people in a corporate environment.

Ok, your company is run by idiots then.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2015 21:46

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Radbot posted:

I think you're the idiot if you think most people get promotions instead of moving between jobs these days. Maybe you need a bit of education about what the corporate life is like.

You need to understand the difference between strategy and reality. Hiring people you know you can't provide market compensation for is bad long term strategy, because they will leave for a better job and you will be stuck eating the training costs and loss of tribal knowledge. It turns out that in reality, lots of companies engage in bad long term strategies (yours included apparently), this does not impact whether it is a bad strategy.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2015 21:52

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Radbot posted:

Welcome to 2015, I guess? Feel free to criticize strategy, we're talking about reality here.

No we're not. We're talking about whether a particular department has a good policy. The answer is "Yes that is good policy because it lets them avoid acting as a training center for more desirable positions", not "No that is bad policy because it is unlike the policy of the particular company that I work at and possibly others."

# ¿ Apr 13, 2015 21:58

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

Edit: people do want this information, as evidenced by sites like killedbypolice.net. This reporting needs to be mandatory, no excuses.

I'm in general pro-information, but I see some pretty obvious fifth amendment problems with mandatory reporting. How do we solve that?

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 02:52

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

DARPA posted:

Is turning over your passport not standard?

Even if it were, "I don't have/lost my passport" is not a hard sentence to say.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2015 04:10

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

FuriousxGeorge posted:

In this case...racism, politics, poverty, corruption...many factors. So do you have the numbers?

This is not what that word means. The confounding variable here is that the police are a self selecting group, so it wouldn't be surprising to see that they do X at rates different from not self selecting groups (like black people). Also the police have people who aren't men. I'd expect your average police officer has more resources and a substantially better understanding of the legal system than your average black man, so you'd need a mechanism to tease apart how much of the discrepancy is caused by that. It also seems rude to ask for numbers, if you think those numbers are important, you should be finding them.

GlyphGryph posted:

We aren't legal policy experts - recognizing there is a problem and pushing to fix it are not bad things for members of the general public to do, because there are experts, presumably, who actually make a career of understanding the intricacies of complex systems like the justice system.

How do you go about "pushing to fix" a problem without proposed mechanisms? You can't just demand that things become better without believing there's an effective way to make things better.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2015 16:44

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Lemming posted:

Someone needs to come up with a name for this very stupid argument. It comes up a lot.

Ok, I guess it is physically possible to demand things become better without believing there's an effective way to make them better, but why bother to do it? No one disputes that police getting away with committing crimes is in general bad, the only thing in dispute is what should be done about it. If you're here just to say that police committing crimes is bad you aren't helping the conversation.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2015 16:58

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

GlyphGryph posted:

Are you dumb? Has anyone anywhere ever in this thread said they do not believe there's an effective way to make things better? Obviously there are ways to make things better, or there wouldn't be departments that are better than others, which it very much seems like there are?

There's been people who claimed that they don't need to offer mechanisms to fix things. If they do reasonably believe there's an effective way to make things better, I would be suspicious if they can't offer a proposed mechanism. Different departments having different rates does not imply the existence of an effective way to makes things better (In fact, I would wager that the "best" departments are policing overwhelmingly white communities and hiding racist effects that would exist in any other community).

Lemming posted:

Are you kidding me? This is not true at all. There are people who think that the cop who shot Walter Scott did nothing wrong.

I said everyone agrees that police committing crimes is bad. Whether or not shooting a particular person was a crime is a distinct issue both from that and from the discussion on how we can improve society.

quote:

People who are chiming in that they think the situation is hosed up is absolutely an important part of the conversation. Plenty of people are just fine with the status quo.

Here's the problem. The status quo exists and in the immediate future you have no choice but to be fine with it. A better status quo could exist in the future, and if you have path to a better status quo, I would be interested to hear that path. Complaining that our society does not currently occupy whatever you individually perceive as a global maximum is not helpful.

quote:

And the entire point of noticing the problem is to create the push for the desire to solve it, but just because you aren't an expert in lawyering or copping or legislating doesn't mean you shouldn't get to contribute to the conversation. Saying "shut the gently caress up if you don't have a solution" is 100% a way to shut down conversation. If the person doesn't have the perfect solution, then they're either told to shut the gently caress up because they don't have an idea, or to shut the gently caress up because their idea is stupid. Not everyone is going to be an expert and able to meaningfully contribute to a useful solution, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to say they think something is bad and should be changed.

I'm not asking for a perfect solution, I'm asking for literally any solution, and yeah if you can't contribute to a useful solution you should shut up and let the adults talk. If your solution is bad we can talk about why it's bad (edit: and that discussion is helpful since understanding why things are bad helps us understand how to make good things), but if you don't like the status quo, and you don't have a path to a better future, literally the only thing you can say is "I don't like the status quo", and why should anyone care?

twodot fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Apr 22, 2015

# ¿ Apr 22, 2015 18:15

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Lemming posted:

The crux of your argument is that everyone agrees that the police have issues and that if you don't have a solution you should shut the gently caress up. What you fundamentally don't understand is that the first half of the situation, i.e. "the police have issues," is again, emphatically not something that everyone agrees on. Without people acknowledging that the police have issues, there can be no push for reform. It is a very important thing to talk about current problems and how people feel about them. Without that in place, even if you have the perfect solution handed down by Xenu himself it won't matter for poo poo because nobody will care enough to do it.

Quote the poster who thinks the police are free from all problems, that police officers never get away with crimes. Everyone agrees that this is happens some of the time. There seems to be a qualitative disagreement about the frequency, which must be the case since there's no numbers available to drive agreement, but that doesn't matter because as long as we agree it happens some of the time, we can talk about solutions. (edit: And having a discussion over whether it happens "frequently" or "occasionally" is insane)

quote:

Talking about the current problems is important. Talking about potential solutions is important. It is not a requirement to have a solution for you to be allowed to speak.

Obviously I can't bend the laws of physics to stop people from talking about things, but why is it important? "Police sometimes commit crimes and are not punished for it, and that is bad." What value did that statement generate? It's obvious why solutions are useful, solutions solve problems, I've yet to see any reason why it's useful to read a bunch of people saying "X is bad, and we have no way to make it not bad".
edit:

GlyphGryph posted:

Ah. I see. You are the one who doesn't believe it's possible for things to get better (because its due to the mixing of the races), and you're projecting. You at least admit there's a serious problem though, right?

I can imagine a variety of ways to make things better, though ultimately you are going to have to confront broad societal problems like racism. Most of the ways I would imagine to make things better are not politically viable or would require Constitutional amendments, so I don't consider them very interesting to discuss.

twodot fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Apr 22, 2015

# ¿ Apr 22, 2015 18:35

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Lemming posted:

A very important step in the process is pointing out problems and showing why people should care about them. In this case, abuses by police are a lot more widespread than people assumed, and it's become an actual thing politically and in the media recently. This is helped in large part by things like people protesting, which is at its very, very core a bunch of people angrily yelling "I DON'T LIKE THE BAD THING!" which, it turns out, is actually very important.

Why? We have a bunch of people yelling "I DON'T LIKE THE BAD THING!", mission accomplished. I don't understand what happened as a result. Is there not enough people yelling? You seem to acknowledge that yelling is not in itself a solution, does it lead to a solution? Do we know what that solution is or even could theoretically be? If you had a solution and an analysis that it made things better, and your main problem was people didn't care about how it made things better, I would have sympathy for you, but absent a solution you just have a bunch of loud people blocking traffic.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2015 18:54

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Lemming posted:

A layperson did a google search and found something from a law school and they linked it. What else can you expect a layperson to do in a discussion like this?

This is not an unreasonable action for a layperson, but the correct response to "Legal academics is dumb, I'm not going to engage with that" is either an argument that legal academics is not dumb (which I would be interested to see) or a request for why they think legal academics is dumb, and not:

quote:

Yeah hand wave away research by an individual whose focus in life is apparently ethics in the courtroom

Which is doubling down on an appeal to authority, and completely reasonably leaves you open to attacks on that person's credibility on related things.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 19:17

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Lucca Blight posted:

I didn't realize "lol pace" was an appropriate response in a discussion. I'll take note of that.

Making the opposite point sarcastically is dumb as hell. If you have a specific reason why comments like "lol pace" are bad, make your case. I've already made my case why doubling down on an authority is bad.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 21:33

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

MaxxBot posted:

I do think SedanChair attacked AR for no real reason but the question "do you think this country's drug laws are ethical?" is really clear and if you answer it with something other than "of course not" then there is something seriously wrong with you, the drug laws are absolutely indefensible.

I'll go ahead and reveal the gotcha, because the follow up question is "Is enforcement of this country's drug laws ethical?" If you answer "No" to this, then you have to support people running unlicensed businesses because their product happens to be drugs, selling drugs to kids, et cetera, and if you answer "Yes" you're stuck explaining how laws can simultaneously be unethical to exist and ethical to enforce, which is a pretty nuanced position.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 22:07

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

hobbesmaster posted:

There are literal guns, albeit lovely guns intended to shoot raccoons and the like at very short range without killing your healing, that are less powerful than that thing!

This doesn't look productive, I don't think the actual danger level of the item matters. The police are claiming they thought someone was pointing a rifle at them, that may or may not be a reasonable belief, but the actual danger level is totally irrelevant to the perceived danger level. Non-functional rifles are basically not at all dangerous, but will have a high perceived danger level.

# ¿ May 12, 2015 19:47

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Lemming posted:

It lets the police apologists sidestep the issue of the unwarranted beating and stripping.

How so? If everyone was just saying "It's bad for the police to beat someone for 20 minutes, they should face consequences for that action" and didn't mention the sedative, you're saying that police apologists would say "No, it's cool to beat someone for 20 minutes, as long as you sedate them afterwards"?

# ¿ May 12, 2015 21:37

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Lemming posted:

I don't know what would happen if something different had been said, but what was said was that "it's wrong to beat someone, then strip them, then strap them to a chair, inject them with sedatives, and leave them alone for 4 minutes" and what the apologists pounced on was "ah HA you see the sedatives were actually fine! The cops weren't wrong about that!" and then post pages about it to cloud the issue.

Right, thus the question of why anyone even brought up/defended that concern in the first place. It's just not rhetorically smart to mix strong and weak arguments for the very reasons you bring up, so why are people doing it? The reason isn't that not doing lets apologists side step an argument.

# ¿ May 12, 2015 21:45

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

DARPA posted:

Not too hard, not too soft. The beating was just right.

A beating can be both A) Too hard and B) Not the direct cause of someone's death. Why is the anti-police rhetoric so terrible in this thread? The police are bad and shouldn't beat people, but this is just an ineffective argument.

# ¿ May 13, 2015 04:27

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

ElCondemn posted:

I think the problem I have with your line of reasoning is that a guy gets arrested, then dies shortly afterwards. If that's not the fault of the police we have to assume the guy was going to die on his own regardless of the arrest and fight. Do you believe this guy would have died naturally had the police not done whatever it is they did to him? Like, he would have just keeled over later in the day for no discernible reason?

I have no medical expertise, so I have no idea. With my total lack of expertise, it seems pretty plausible that the sedative is what killed him, but it's an up hill battle no matter what. My whole point is that rhetorically speaking it's really easy to say "Hey maybe we shouldn't injure people in custody unnecessarily", and advocating reform is way easier if you don't over-stretch your position.

# ¿ May 13, 2015 04:37

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

tezcat posted:

It's not "anti-police" rhetoric to demand that police not try to pull a Kelly Thomas on anyone. I'm puzzled how you could even think that.

Saying that the police are systemically doing bad things that need to be addressed is pretty clearly anti-police. If any of the people who are talking about individual instances don't think those are representative of a trend, I've mischaracterized them. If that's the case I encourage them to speak out, but I don't think that has happened.

Dead Reckoning posted:

On precisely what are you basing this?

What happened here? I specifically said I didn't have any sort of solid evidence to back that claim, and I was replying to someone who asked for my opinion on a matter I didn't haven't any solid evidence for. Is this thread where people with lovely rhetoric just post at each other in an unending circle? I don't even care what side of the debate you fall on, there's just no excuse for being so stupid.

# ¿ May 13, 2015 05:13

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

size1one posted:

No, it's not. It's anti-abuse/corruption. The argument isn't to get rid of the police, it's that they should act professionally. This isn't an unreasonable thing to expect from the police, but you clearly seem to think so.

They're presumably anti-abuse, and the anti-abuse person is saying the police are fostering an abusive system and covering up each others instances of abuse, which implies they don't like the current police very much. I mean maybe it's "anti-police-as-the-police-are-physically-instantiated-at-this-time-and-in-this-country", but it seems dumb to say that. Why in the world am I getting push back on characterizing this as anti-police? The police are terrible, everyone should understand they are terrible, and we as a society should build structures to hold them accountable for their terrible actions. Existing structures don't appear effective, but that can change.

# ¿ May 13, 2015 22:44

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

DARPA posted:

Saying children shouldn't be raped doesn't make you anti-catholic or anti-Penn State. Saying prisoners shouldn't be attacked with chemical weapons without cause, beaten to death, or locked in a room for days without food or water doesn't make you anti-police.

If you think the Catholic church has a systemic issue of raping children and then covering it up, you really should be anti-Catholic. If you think the issue of prisoner abuse is actually just a matter of a few bad apples, there's no need to be anti-police, but then you would be an idiot.

Cichlid the Loach posted:

Because generally in the U.S. where all issues are just a team sport where you're either pro-something or anti-something, "anti-police" is used to characterize anti-abuse positions as just inherently hating law and order and wanting to literally murder police officers and stuff. It's cool that YOU see the nuance, but you're sort of walking into a rhetorical trap with that term.

The rhetorical trap of "Are you saying that you want to murder police officers?" "No, just that the police as it currently exists at this time in the US are horrible and need structural changes to not be horrible" doesn't look all that bad to me.

# ¿ May 13, 2015 23:17

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

ElCondemn posted:

Maybe he doesn't know the full details of that particular robbery, but for the majority of robberies he's right. What do you think, if you can prove he's wrong about one case it will justify your position?

If their position is "That person is wrong about that case" it would.

# ¿ May 23, 2015 16:46

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

ElCondemn posted:

Right, he's just trying to clear up the misconception about one robbery case. He hasn't been constantly trying to justify police actions every chance he can.

This is the upside of being correct, you get to be correct. Attack them somewhere where they are wrong.

# ¿ May 23, 2015 16:59

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

ElCondemn posted:

If he's right about one thing he feels he can use that as a way to discredit the position/ideas of the people against police abuse. It's a stupid persons argument style.

They're right about someone being wrong. It's totally reasonable to use the fact that someone is wrong about something to discredit their other ideas. You should be attacking the wrong person, not harassing the right person for being right. If you think Jarmak is wrong about other things, you should be attacking the things they are wrong about, and at most ignoring the things they are right about.

# ¿ May 23, 2015 17:21

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

ElCondemn posted:

If the goal is to feel like a winner you've got a great strategy, ignore anything you can't win. If the goal is to understand, scrutinize and defend your position it's a real poo poo strategy.

My point here is explicitly that you should not attempt to feel like a winner all the time. If the opposition is right about something, just let them be right about something. Other people will be right from time to time. Arguments are not soldiers, you do not need to attack every argument on the other side, and you don't need to defend every argument on your side.

# ¿ May 23, 2015 18:33

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

oohhboy posted:

On this alone in New Zealand he would have failed to assert Self Defence.

Do you have any case law on this? In a situation where I have 1) hands and 2) a gun, and two intruders I believe to be dangerous, I don't see a way of applying minimum force to the situation, or rather the minimum force that will be successful is shooting them. Note New Zealand doesn't even require my belief that they are dangerous is reasonable:

quote:

The fact-finder must determine what the defendant believed the circumstances to be when he or she resorted to the use of force. This is a subjective inquiry. The defendant�s belief need not be reasonable, although lack of reasonableness may influence the fact-finder in deciding whether the defendant genuinely held that belief.

twodot fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Jun 1, 2015

# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 14:41

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

oohhboy posted:

It would have easily fallen under this.
Again the homeless shooter would be denied self defence.

My understanding is that perceived threat was that they were holding a gun, and we don't get to test the reasonableness of that perception. Like it's cool that you can make assertions, but it's not very impressive unless you actually give your reasoning.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 15:07

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

oohhboy posted:

I don't much appreciate you trying to trip me up by flooding me with irrelevant questions when said questions have been asked and answered.

Are you replying to me? I've asked you exactly one question, and it's not one that's been asked or answered (whether you have any case law supporting your interpretation, which still hasn't been answered).

quote:

If you like, you can follow the case law inside that link that the article is based on. I don't have to give my reasoning as others far more studied have already made clear far better than I can how the Law works in NZ and it is self evident as to how it applies to the past 3 mentioned cases.

Ok, maybe I understand now. That link doesn't contain any case law, just law. You're correct that I can't physically force you to give your reasoning, but I don't really get why your posting if you don't want to.

quote:

In any case, the Homeless killer had sought the situation he found himself in. Not only did he fail to make any attempt to prevent violence, he initiated it making him the attacker. At that point it would be the two homeless acting in self defence had they the ability to respond. You don't get to play Rambo under our law.

Again, the danger the person sought to avoid was being shot by the gun they believed was being pointed at them. That seems pretty pressing to me. While I agree that factually he was the attacker (as no such gun was recovered), the law posted calls for two things, that the person actually believed they were in danger (which you so far haven't denied) and that the response was reasonable to the perceived danger. I see an argument if he did something aggressive prior perceiving a gun pointed at him, but there's no evidence for that. (I can't consider entering your own property to be aggressive)

# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 16:31

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Trabisnikof posted:

So do you think this man shouldn't be convicted of murder?

I mean, just because there wasn't a gun doesn't mean he didn't really believe there was one, right?

You can't generalize what I've said about the application of New Zealand law to a specific situation to entirely separate situations. The only plausible reason I can think of to do this is to attempt a slap fight over who is wearing the right jersey, which is a stupid thing to do. Dunn seems like a pretty clear candidate for imperfect self defense assuming his jurisdiction has the law. I strongly doubt that Dunn decided he wanted to just murder some kids over a music dispute, but I also suspect his belief he was about to be shot wasn't reasonable (even assuming he honestly thought he saw a gun). New Zealand doesn't have a reasonableness requirement, so I don't know how they handle this situation.

Yes, that's correct. You shouldn't have to ask this question if you know English.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 18:02

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Rent-A-Cop posted:

Entering a dwelling you know to be occupied, armed and in the dark, is aggressive regardless of who holds title to said dwelling.

If the occupants give you permission to enter, this is clearly not aggressive. Also for this to matter you have to think that "Entering a dwelling you know you actively don't have permission to be in" is not aggressive, which I was willing to concede, but not if "Entering a dwelling you definitely have (edit: legal) permission to enter" is somehow aggressive. I don't see how you can justify the notion that we have to respect the wishes of occupants, but don't need to respect the wishes of the title holder (absent a contract specifying such).

twodot fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Jun 1, 2015

# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 18:32

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

VitalSigns posted:

Because instigating an armed confrontation in the middle of the night iver some property you've abandoned for a decade is being reckless with people's lives and safety?

Go check on your property in the morning when it's daylight. Bring a sheriff with you if you're worried.

What does this have to do with aggression? Obviously it was reckless to enter the property, he knew there was a serious risk that violence would occur, and ignoring that risk entered anyways, but by this standard squatting is equally reckless. Checking on the property in the morning with law enforcement is definitely a better strategy, but unless you can find a "duty to secure access to law enforcement and daylight" statute, I don't see the relevance.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 18:52

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

VitalSigns posted:

Unarmed squatters sleeping in a building they knew was empty and not shooting at anything that made them jumpy were not being equally reckless.

They couldn't see a plausible risk that someone might attempt to violently remove them (either the property owner or other people wanting their space) and ignored that risk?

# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 18:58

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

flakeloaf posted:

Now a fun thought: A reasonable person blasted out of his skull on meth might not recognize his duty to flee and might react to an old man waking him up (e: if you're high on meth you're unlikely to be asleep, so let's say he's coming down and strung out) by yelling and waving guns around with violence of their own. Supposing they'd killed him, could they sensibly argue self-defense?

I can imagine a series of escalations where they could sensibly argue self-defense in a variety of jurisdictions, but that didn't happen, so why are we discussing a counter-factual?

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 17:22

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

The Mattybee posted:

Alternatively, he is lying and we can't ask the people who he shot because they're dead, and noted coward Waco Panty Raid is reflexively defending guns because otherwise he wouldn't feel safe if he thought people might do bad things with them.

This is certainly possible, but I think you're the first person to suggest this. Let's say he is lying, then he is a murderer who got away with the crime, what do you want to discuss about that? (Also one of them is not dead, and we did indeed ask them what happened.)

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 17:41

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

The Mattybee posted:

If I am the first person to suggest that maybe this was a deliberate killing, why was he charged (and, of course, found not guilty) of first-degree murder? Clearly there is someone other than me who thinks that "straight up deliberate killing" is not an unlikely scenario.

Sorry, I meant in this thread, which is why my follow up question was "What is there to discuss about a dude that got away with murder?" Why didn't you answer that question?

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 18:53

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 18:33

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

ElCondemn posted:

So you think it's reasonable to expect to be killed for breaking and entering a building you assumed was abandoned.

So this seems like a fact thing rather than an opinion thing. Breaking and entering a building you assumed was abandoned definitely has some risk of being killed, I'm not sure how that risk compares to other things like driving or such, but regardless of that "You should be cautious when breaking and entering, yes." seems like good advice. What's the alternative? "Be incautious when breaking and entering"?

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 19:22

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Let's Debate the Police and Criminal Justice

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