SpiderHyphenMan posted:

In which like 5 cops just shoot a black guy who's totally cornered.

He's dead.

The Kingfish posted:

Will someone please explain to me how weight works I seriously cannot understand how someone who looks how Tamir does in the photos could weigh 195 at 5'7".

E: like, scientifically.

E: how does he weigh 40 pounds more than me at 4 inches shorter and not looked muscled or fat??

MattD1zzl3 posted:

Like 80% of these national outrage cases this one is a lot more reasonable when you arent getting emotional and imagining an ideal scenario where they, a supercop forums user would have made the right call, no problem.

As a clevelander: "Suck it, Debate and discussion, your tears make me immortal".

CommanderApaul posted:

The issue is that the legal standard for charging an officer with a crime while they're carrying out their duties is whether their actions are reasonable given what they knew at the time the alleged crime occurred. The dispatcher was told that there was a black male at the park repeated pulling out a gun and pointing it at people, but that he was probably a juvenile and it was probably fake. The information dispatched to the officers was "black male at the park repeatedly pulling a gun from his waistband and pointing it at people." The Grand Jury decided that given that information, the officers were justified in shooting the kid when he reached for his waistband because they were responding to what was relayed to them as a borderline active shooter. The age and size and all that stuff doesn't really enter into it because it has nothing to do with the legal standard that the prosecution has to meet to justify charges. The prosecutor is flapping his gums about it because he needs to find some way to justify the Grand Jury not issuing an indictment to the media and the public, otherwise the city is going to explode. And he's doing a very, very bad job of it, because giving a straight clinical legal explanation of why the charges weren't warranted isn't going to help either.

This case is ridiculously similar to that Walmart "assault rifle" shooting in Beavercreek in that the responding officers were given either bad or outright false information that they acted on as if it were true, without stopping to evaluate the situation, and ended up killing someone because of it.

There are some major structural and training changes that need to be made to policing in America so that officers are not so drat jumpy. I've been out for 10 years and it has given me an interesting perspective on things, and the us vs them attitude that a lot of people that I used to call my friends had back then and still have now is frightening. There's a huge amount of "everyone you come into contact with has the potential to kill you so you need to be on your guard 24/7" training that gets drilled into your head, with accompanying video like the Dinkheller shooting (warning: audio of officer begging for his life after getting shot by suspect) and Surviving Edged Weapons (warning: nasty knife wounds), and it just puts you in a really bad mindset.

Raerlynn posted:

Then tell me, where do you imagine that conversation goes? Everyone here has said it's bullshit. We're also saying that it's a minor detail not worth getting bogged down in when you have a loving mountain of other reasons that are much harder to defend.

I mean if you want to go ahead and tilt at that windmill, go for it. Your not anywhere near where the dragon is standing though.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

They can probably get a wrongful death suit out of it.

God help us if they actually do, though. The right wing hate sphere is going to have a field day on that. You're going to hear nonstop "they're just greedy jerks using the tragedy for a quick buck."

sudo rm -rf posted: