kimilseung

The child of English and Kiwi parents was shot in his car, when the police faced no immediate threat. Probable mental incident from the 22 year old.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...box=1671051407

PetrifiedExPat

Idiots with guns both in and out of law enforcement. The issue is humanity (or lack thereof), shrouded in a childish notion of freedumbs.

Jack_Russells4ever

Many American police officers are poorly trained and many of them should have never been given a badge and a gun. I suspect many of them were not screened psychologically before being hired. If I were still living in the US I would seriously consider NOT calling the police for help.

LegalEagleTX

Sadly many police are psychopaths which ever country you are in.

destone

As we’ve seen in the case of Sarah Everard, RIP.

Jack_Russells4ever

I believe many police officers should be disarmed and only allowed to carry a taser because of the growing numbers of unjustified police incidents of use of lethal force to handle a non life threatening call for service. Certainly their is a need to have officers that are armed for serious incidents but not the average street cop. Gun violence has become a problem on both sides of the badge.

Giantaxe

And nothing will change. With such a heavily armed citizenry, there is no way that police are going to go around unarmed. Every interaction with an individual - like this one - police have to assume the individual is armed leading inevitably to a lot of people being killed. It's part of the tragic "price" of the US's gun culture.

kezza88

Inspiron

Just look at the UK, where I live. If they had routine guns, it'll be all over before you even spoke to them. Not just psychos, but fraudsters and cheats who misle their way into the Police force.

Pulaski

Well as Giantaxe pointed out, there is a significant risk of LE officers being shot, so personally I think you probably have to be at least a little mad to want to be a police officer or sheriff's deputy in America. .... A friend of mine transferred from Charlotte, NC PD to a smaller city near where he lived, and a year or two later, after three officer-involved shootings in a week (none involving him), he turned in his badge and gun, saying that with a wife and two children he didn't need to deal with that much craziness.
And to your point about not calling the police, there is some logic to that, as if you are under imminent threat of being attacked, or worse, even if you live in the urban center of a large US city there is little prospect of an officer showing up in time to save you.

Further out, there is no chance of LE showing up in time to stop an assault or burglary. Even in North Carolina where I live, the prospects of a sheriff's deputy showing up timely if I called 911 at night, is slim, as there are only a few deputies on duty covering the county of several hundred square miles.

Obviously in many US states there are both more sparsely populated areas and even larger counties. As the saying goes "When seconds count, help is only minutes away"; also "Nobody is coming, it's up to you!"

Inspiron

There's also a saying, '.45.22,.300, .380 are all faster than calling 911.'

Lion in Winter

The man is obviously mentally unstable and ill. I can see that some officers tried to be calm and de-escalate, but why on earth did they break into the car? And does a group of officers with guns really need to shoot someone holding a knife five times?

Inspiron

They have no procedures in place for mental health crisis de-escalation. Just shoot if it gets too much for Mr policeman.

civilservant

I agree with not calling the police. At least until after the shooting has stopped.



The reason that gun safety lessons were one of the first things that happened after I arrived in the US and purchasing several firearms happened shortly thereafter.

As Pulaski always says though, the chances of you being involved in a firearms incident, as a normal citizen who living in the suburbs, is vanishingly small.

Inspiron