This is just wrong...
I'll just repeat the first sentence of this article and reserve comment: "Four police officers shot and killed a teenager who charged them while holding a 9-inch pair of scissors early Sunday morning, Anne Arundel County police said."
Ok, maybe I won't reserve comment. A pair of scissors? WTF? When confronted by a teenager with scissors, don't police officers have more options at their disposal than, say, "doing nothing" and "shooting the teenager to death"? How about using a taser? Or a billy-club? Cops still carry billy-clubs, don't they?
That's a hell of a way to kick off National Police Week.
Ok, maybe I won't reserve comment. A pair of scissors? WTF? When confronted by a teenager with scissors, don't police officers have more options at their disposal than, say, "doing nothing" and "shooting the teenager to death"? How about using a taser? Or a billy-club? Cops still carry billy-clubs, don't they?
That's a hell of a way to kick off National Police Week.
posted by Johnny Shades at
5/15/2006
12 Comments:
Or maybe the kid should have listened to the cops in the 35 minutes that they tried to talk to him. Charge police with the intent to kill and you get what you ask for.
By
AC Milan, at 2:14 PM
The kid had a pair of scissors. There were four police officers there. Prima facie, this sounds to me like excessive force...
By
Johnny Shades, at 2:27 PM
Scissors are a deadly weapon and the "kid" was attempting to kill a police officer. I'm not saying that it was the ideal ending to the standoff. I'm simply saying that it is very easy to read a newspaper and judge the actions of the police. It is quite a different thing to actually be in that situation, where you have a split second to make a decision and your life is in immediate danger. Using a billy club in this particular situation would have allowed this kid with 9 inch scissors to get perilously close to the officer(s) that he was charging.
By
AC Milan, at 2:49 PM
There were 4 police officers and 1 kid with a pair of scissors. Unless the kid was built like Mike Tyson in his prime, I think it's pretty easy to judge the actions of the police officers here. And warranted, too; to default to your line of thinking (i.e., "you can't judge their actions unless you were there") would be to give the police force carte blanche approval to act however they please without questioning the necessity or appropriateness of their actions. Ultimately, the duty of police officers to to protect and serve the public, not to preserve their own well-being. While it's true that society tolerates the use of deadly force, there are clear limits on the use of this force. In the United States, the use of deadly force is governed by Tennessee v. Garner, which held that "deadly force...may not be used unless necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others." Using this precedential case as a yardstick, I find it very hard to believe that an 18-year old with a pair of scissors posed "a significant threat of death or serious physical injury" to a cohort of 4 adult, armed police officers.
By
Johnny Shades, at 3:07 PM
Dude... He did NOT listen to his teacher when she said, "Don't run with scissors."
And I think the cops could've done 16,000 other things than for all 4 of them to start shooting.
As for AC Milan's comments... Inter is much better and your argument is counter-intuitive: it's the KID'S fault that this was the result after a 35 minute stand-off? There was no other way the cops could think of to get a pair of scissors away from a kid in 35 minutes? They couldn't have brought in oh, I don't know, a Taser gun, pepper spray, tear gas, or even RUBBER bullets? One of the four of them couldn't have disarmed him from behind? I just think that for 4 cops to be talking to a guy armed with scissors and the end result to be the suspect dead from the officers' weapons is completely unacceptable, PARTICULARLY after 35 minutes of "talk" time.
By
Chico's Bail Bonds, at 3:28 PM
I can't believe you pulled in a Supreme Court case into the discussion.... but thank you for doing so, because your quote is making my exact point: "[s]uspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others." Whether there is one, four or 20 officers there, charging someone with deadly weapon is a "signficant threat," and I can not fathom how you don't see this as a direct threat to their lives. I'm not proposing carte blanche for officers of the law - they should be accountable for their actions and their sworn duty - but they also have to be able to defend themselves and their fellow officers.
By
AC Milan, at 3:33 PM
How is this anybody's fault but the kid's? Was there a game clock at the scene? Did the officers know that they had 35 minutes, and only 35 minutes, to get this person to calm down and therefore should have planned their assault strategy accordingly? If, as you suggest, they tasered him or shot rubber bullets at him, then you guys would be arguing that they used excessive force in doing that. They were in the process of using the safest (for the kid and the officers) and most reasonable method of disarming him - talking. Then he flipped and the situation went haywire. Plus, I don't think Chuck Norris was there to "disarm him from behind," but that is a pretty dangerous tactic for everyone involved.
By
AC Milan, at 3:41 PM
Not this year, or last.
By
AC Milan, at 3:48 PM
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
By
Conor, at 4:06 PM
Aziz should know this better than anyone, the MOST appropriate action for the cops to take would have been to pull out rock. Rock always beats scissors. ALWAYS.
By
Conor, at 4:07 PM
Behold the new cop-killing weapon of choice for suburban Maryland teenagers!
Interesting arguments, all of you. I nonetheless remain unconvinced. We'll have to agree to disagree and move on...
By
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