UPS Truck Hijacked. Hijackers Shot, Killed. UPS Truck Driver Shot, Killed. Bystander Shot, Killed. Passive Voice Used.

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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80 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    You’d think that there’d be common ground findable on abolishing the police.Report

  2. Oscar Gordon says:

    And yet Bob Barr thinks that communities that criticize the police should lose police ‘protection’.

    I’m not seeing that as a bad thing, at this point…Report

  3. Chip Daniels says:

    Elections have consequences.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      “This is why you should vote for the people who want only cops to be armed.”Report

      • Brandon Berg in reply to Jaybird says:

        It seems plausible that police would shoot fewer people if they could be confident that suspects were unarmed. It’s not like police are going around hunting people for sport. They shoot because they’re afraid that the suspect will shoot first. Or sometimes stab or beat them to death, but usually shoot.

        If you look into cases of police shootings that turned out in hindsight to have been unjustified, a common pattern you’ll see is that the officers went in believing that the situation was more dangerous than it actually was, often because a 911 caller gave bad information.

        Conversely, there are very, very few situations in which shooting at the police is a winning move.

        I’m not saying that only police should have guns, but this is not a case that shines a particularly unflattering light on that idea.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Brandon Berg says:

          The number of cops shooting people in the back for running away during a stop for a busted taillight when they find a warrant for child support being in arrears strikes me as evidence against this.

          Stuff like the Kathryn Johnston shooting provide further reasons for me to say “hold up, wait a minute”.

          And stuff like Rampart just pushes me over the edge.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Brandon Berg says:

          Here’s the problem with police being so terrified of people shooting at them:

          1) Statistically, it’s a non-issue. Police are more likely to be shot at than your average citizen not engaged in violent criminal activities, but it’s not a huge jump in probability. Police just act like it is.

          2) Allowing the police to maintain that fiction and behave as if it is truth, and allowing them to escape consequences for rash acts, it opens up a dangerous avenue for the next mass shooter, who needs to only do something to get the police keyed up enough such that a handful of carefully fired blanks could get the police to commit the shooting for them (Google: Contagious Shooting).Report

    • veronica d in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      To be fair, I think it would be foolish to assume that Democrats would handle this better. After all, Broward Country is pretty blue.

      The Republicans are often more brazen in their fascistic tendencies, but ACAB, even when the Dems are running the show.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to veronica d says:

        By elections, I mean all elections.
        Primary elections, party delegate elections, the elections where we citizens determine our priorities and norms.

        I remember the early 70s mockery and ridicule of liberals as being weak on crime, and how “get tough on crime” became a standard applause line, the Willie Horton ad, the jeering at Mike Dukakis and Rose Bird, to where we now stand, in a nation where even the mildest of critiques of police are met with fury and outright threats.

        What we are looking at in this one episode is the result of thousands of elections where the message of more violence and more gunplay was consistently chosen over de-escalation and rehabilitation.

        This is what the American people voted for.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          It’s also the result of courts (liberal and conservative) upholding QI no matter what.Report

          • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            Which in turn are the result of elections.

            I referenced Rose Bird. For those not familiar, she was a liberal CA Supreme Court justice who became vilified for consistently voting to overturn death penalty cases and being generally supportive of criminal defendants. She was voted off the court in the 80’s and replaced by justices more supportive of police and the death penalty.Report

            • DensityDuck in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              Where ever has a judge who’s directed a jury specifically to consider QI in its deliberations been the subject of a public election rather than an appointment?Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to DensityDuck says:

                Judges are appointed by elected officials.

                The disconnect is that elected politicians probably aren’t thinking about how the judges they appoint feel about QI and police use of force.Report

              • cjcolucci in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                In may experience, they certainly are. Law and Order has long been the politically expedient place to be. When is the last time it was a political plus for a judge to be labelled soft on crime?Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to cjcolucci says:

                But how much of “Tough on Crime” overlaps with “Holding police to account” when it comes to how politicians think? Yes, judges that are tough on crime tend to also be soft on cops, but I doubt politicians (and certainly voters don’t) think about that.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Just look at how politicians campaign, from, say, 1964 up to and including our current President.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to CJColucci says:

                Let me come at this from a different direction. You know how Saul (at least, I think it is Saul) likes to remind us that we are something of anomalies among the voting public, in that we are all rather politically aware? This is related.

                Yes, elections matter, but people aren’t voting for the police to be protected from their bad acts, they vote for other things, like promises of safety, being tough on crime, maybe officers being protected from being sued by the family of a criminal who was killed, who are now looking for a payday. Most people aren’t drawing the lines between those things and police officers being able to kill two innocent people in an effort to kill criminal suspects. People aren’t drawing those lines because those lines don’t necessarily need to exist. There is no logic that demands that tough on crime policies requires that police need to be able to go all Judge Dredd.

                Saying elections matter is like saying CO2 matters when talking about Climate Change. It’s one part of a much larger systemic issue.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                This is true, that people don’t consciously vote for police immunity, but they also don’t vote against it.

                Meaning it is dismissed from people’s minds as an inconvenient truth.

                People generally have no trouble drawing lines between actions and consequences when they want to do so.
                For instance, there is no reason why robust civil rights for the accused and rehabilitative justice have to equate with indifference to the victims, but those lines get drawn all the time.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                What happened in Baltimore when Democrats finally got elected to power after Freddie Gray’s rough ride?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                I honestly don’t know.
                What happened?

                I am more familiar with things here in Los Angeles, where the Democrats routinely trumpet how tough on crime they can be, despite the appalling scandals of LAPD.Report

              • greginak in reply to Jaybird says:

                The Feds had the Balto police under their supervision trying to clean them up. Trump elected, he took away Fed supervision. So as always plenty of issues with D, R’s far worse. Carry on.

                As a chaser Trump pardoned Arapio, so message to cops received. There have been some serious reformer DA’s elected as D’s who are getting cops all up in arms.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to greginak says:

                So after the Feds stopped supervising, what did the Democrats do now that they were finally in power in Baltimore?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Seriously, are you trying to make the point that Dems are insufficiently critical of militarized police?

                Point accepted!

                Now what?
                More rooting for injuries?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I was just pointing out that elections have fewer consequences than you’d think.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                There is no logic that demands that tough on crime policies requires that police need to be able to go all Judge Dredd.

                It isn’t a matter of logic; it is a matter of experience. What politician in actual life runs on “promises of safety, being tough on crime, maybe officers being protected from being sued by the family of a criminal who was killed, who are now looking for a payday,” while actually opposing robust immunity for cops. The combination is, to be sure, logically possible, but as a practical political matter it doesn’t exist. And I doubt that anyone who tried to thread that needle would get elected in most districts.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to CJColucci says:

                Exactly! So elections don’t matter as much, because we are rarely ever given a choice of “tough on crime” or “police reformer”.

                I would rephrase Chips statement to be, instead:

                Politics matters.

                Politics is how we determine the choices that elections determine.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Fair enough, and we could say that since elections are downstream of politics, politics is downstream of culture.

                I am no longer able to watch those police procedural shows because all I can think about is how divorced they are from real policing. I can’t see cops as heroes now, there has just been too many horror stories of abuse.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Unless by “elections don’t matter” you mean that practical politicians have found that one side of an issue wins and another loses, I’m not sure what you’re saying, exactly.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to CJColucci says:

                That depends on if you view politicians. Are they actively shaping the politics of our culture, or are they merely the end result of the politics of our culture.

                IMHO, they shape more than they want us to believe.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                So what’s your explanation of why so few politicians try to thread the needle? is it a supply-side or demand-side explanation?Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to CJColucci says:

                Laziness and no real incentive to make it an issue. Criminal Justice shortcomings very rarely impacts those who are elected to office or have positions with the two dominate parties. And even if they do feel it through friends and family, the police have a powerful lobby.

                I truly think that the best way to enact CJ reform would be for politicians and judges to be more directly impacted by police activity, but cops aren’t completely stupid, they know to tread carefully with the elite and their families.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                So short of the highly unlikely possibility that the cops will harass the well-off, powerful, and, relatively speaking, law-abiding for no good reason, there is no politically plausible way to get from here to there. Sounds about right. Maybe that explains why the few politicians who push for criminal justice reform represent the marginal constituencies for whom it’s a real-life issue, and don’t get traction with Real Americans (TM).Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to CJColucci says:

                Yep, pretty much.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                they know to tread carefully with the elite and their families.

                Not just cops. My wife is an immigrant, ergo we had to deal with Immigration. Wonderful experience. The agent was friendly, intelligent, competent, helpful, and did a good job. We got walked to the head of lines, we messed up her photo and he pointed this out and had us send him the replacement so he could just swapped it in. I’d rate him 5 stars out of 5.

                Because I understood who and what I’d be dealing with, and just how fished we were if it went pear shaped, I put a letter from the local Congressman in my wife’s application. I can’t prove this had a lot to do with my experience. However I am the ONLY person I’ve ever talked to who had good experiences with them and I talk to a lot of immigrants.

                The government serves its own interests. This includes every aspect of it. We should never lose sight of that.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to CJColucci says:

                “what’s your explanation of why so few politicians try to thread the needle?”

                Voters come and voters go, but there’s always gonna be a cop union, and that union has zero compunctions about fucking you and your city if you try to give them any stick. San Jose voted to turn police pensions from defined-benefit to defined-contribution and the union told all the cops to quit, and they did. San Francisco voted in a sheriff who wasn’t the union’s candidate, and the union got him split up from his family and ultimately kicked out of office.Report

              • greginak in reply to DensityDuck says:

                There has always a decent sized group of voters who want hard ass cops and will support leo’s to the end. Complain about cop unions, which do suck, but until people face that some voters want what the worst cops are selling there will be no progress. Get rid of cop unions and those voters will still be there pushing for aggressive cops and screaming about getting tough on crime.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to greginak says:

                Get rid of cop unions and those voters will still be there pushing for aggressive cops and screaming about getting tough on crime.

                The rock we need to move would be heavy but not uphill without the union. Voters get distracted, have other interests, aren’t especially focused, and forget. The union is focused, moneyed, works with insiders and is always there. The union’s job is to prevent reform and shield their members from responsibility.Report

              • greginak in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Tough on crime voters were a giant thing from the 70’s on wards. They are loud and vote. They tend to be older so they get a lot of say. It’s a conservative bias to focus on unions rather then the actual people, who sure as hell trend conservative/independent. The tough on crime vote was a big part of R’s winning over D’s in many states at the fed level from the 70’s and 80’s. Tough on crime was a part of ramping up the drug war through the 90’s. It’s still a trope R’s throw at D’s.

                If you get rid of unions all those tough on crime people will still be screaming for tough cops. It’s not an accident how often juries and judges and DA’s side with cops. You dont’ change all those things by getting rid of unions.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to greginak says:

                If you get rid of unions all those tough on crime people will still be screaming for tough cops.

                True. However A+B when both numbers are large and positive is always bigger than just B by itself.

                Get rid of the union and this will be MUCH easier. Whether or not “much easier” means “possible” is unclear, but the union doesn’t have a reason to exist other than prevent this sort of thing.Report

              • North in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Agree with Dark. However hard it is to tackle policing problems it becomes ten times as hard when there’s a police union involved. Just don’t know how you could get rid of them; police love their unions for obvious reasons.Report

              • greginak in reply to North says:

                I see unions as shitty and secondary. If we get rid of unions that doesn’t change all the other parts of the problem. Changing institutions and cultures is hard, especially very conservative rigid and resistant cultures. If we want different cops we need to train/ retrain them and enforce new rules/expectations. Better leaders need to be promoted. In short, its a long process, not an easy fix.

                Also if unions are gone there will be plenty of Police Benevolent Associations around channeling the NRA adverts and lobbying hard for what cops want. Plenty of people will donate to them for a wallet card, sticker for their back window (wink wink) and to push for tough on crime policies. Unions are part of the issue but you can’t engineer around the significant section of people who want hard ass cops.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to North says:

                People in the military don’t have Unions.

                New rule, if you are allowed to carry a gun for the government, you don’t get a union.Report

              • LeeEsq in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Many state level judges are directly elected. This is a big mistake because it subjects them to political pressure.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq says:

                Aaron Persky was removed from office after the Brock Turner thing.

                That’s just off the top of my head and I doubt we’re going to find a whole lot of examples of people explaining that this sort of thing shouldn’t happen after a particular judge is removed (but only talking about how, in theory, that would be bad).

                But when I think about judges opposing QI, part of the problem is that the only court that is likely to make it out to normie-adjacent circles would be some of the cases that make it to the 9th Circuit and I haven’t heard of any of those showing up for a long, long time.

                Hudson v. Michigan is the most recent case that I can think of that’s vaguely related to this issue (mostly due to Scalia’s laughable appeal to a “new police professionalism”) but that case was vaguely tainted by the fact that they were busting a drug dealer who had a lot of drugs (crack cocaine, even) that got nabbed by the cops in the raid… which makes it a less than perfect case to appeal to when it comes to the appropriateness of police officers using innocent bystanders as human shields when bullets are flying.

                What were we talking about? Oh yeah. Judges.

                Hard cases make for bad law and I’m pretty sure that every single judge who was removed by ballot is going to be unsympathetic… even as those cases send signals to every other judge in the state “don’t be like that guy”.Report

              • JoeSal in reply to Jaybird says:

                I suppose the issue is what level of quality is being produced by a monopoly institution, deploying a monopoly service.

                If the police would have just shot only the hijackers without hitting the hostages this would not be deemed as a quality control issue, and Chip wouldn’t be yammering about “it’s the elections”.

                Elections which have little affect on the incentives of accuracy provided by a monopoly institution producing a monopoly service. There is no incentive of competition. The cop isn’t competing for his job against someone else who has incentive to marksmanship in the field.

                All the cop has to do is say, “I was bound by law to engage”. That answer is missing any degree of competency/quality standard.

                Not only is it the worst of systems to choose from, it’s incentives are screwed up.

                But statists can’t admit:
                “My preferred ideology doesn’t work and the incentives are screwed up, let’s try something else”

                So we get this whole:
                “It’s elections”
                “It’s this thing over here”
                “It’s that thing over there”
                “It’s bigotry”
                “It’s racism”
                “It’s ACAB”

                Note it will always be anything but the thing that could have been addressed, and actually had a chance of improving the future situation.

                Notice here that I am not saying all cops are incompetent, just that the incentives aren’t set up to generate high quality outcomes from the most proficient for the most of the time, done in an efficient manner.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to JoeSal says:

                I suppose the issue is what level of quality is being produced by a monopoly institution, deploying a monopoly service.

                Very true… but at the same time we need the whole “monopoly” thing. Societies which don’t have a monopoly on the use of force get dysfunctional pretty quickly.Report

              • JoeSal in reply to Dark Matter says:

                I would say the societies who don’t defend their rule of law well get dysfunctional more quickly. Paid enforcement and paid security are fine and good if there is abiding in a pretty agreed upon rule of law.

                That is not what we see in dysfunctional monopolies that fail to uphold rule of law. The institutions are to serve people, not carve out special standing for their members.

                As an example, if you shot a bystandard and weren’t part of a special institution, how do you think you would be treated?Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      That hat suits you quite well.Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      But Chip, you said that we all had to pay taxes because we all benefited from police protection!Report

  4. JoeSal says:

    Toxic Leviathanity.Report

    • InMD in reply to JoeSal says:

      Eh more like poorly trained, undisciplined local bureaucrats with more firepower than brains. I always withhold judgment until all the facts come out. Still I suspect grand schemes and ideology are less important to the outcome than the apparent (and totally rational) belief that no one would be fired for killing the hostage.Report

      • JoeSal in reply to InMD says:

        I’ve read this comment about 20 times in the last couple days. It’s not clear if you are agreeing or disagreeing. haReport

        • InMD in reply to JoeSal says:

          Sorry for taking so long to respond, it’s a mostly disagree, at least if leviathan is the feds. They haven’t helped things with their incentives and sale of military surplus but most law enforcement is county/municipal and most of these problems could be greatly curbed at that level (and virtually all at the state level) of government.Report

  5. The police using bystanders as human shields was a particularly nice touch, as was the official police response that involved insisting that even if the police had been responsible for the deaths of innocent people, it was still ultimately the fault of the thieves.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Sam Wilkinson says:

      Which is funny, given that no one knows for certain who fired first, the thieves or a cop.Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        This is an evolving story, there’s a lot of room left for it to be the cops fault.

        However my read on what the news is reporting is the thieves were shooting before the cops got involved.

        There were shots fired at the jewery store. The police were fired upon by UPS van during the case.Report

        • DensityDuck in reply to Dark Matter says:

          If the thieves are shooting first then that’s all the more reason to back off and let the pursuit team track them. It’s the same reason that better police departments tell cops not to initiate high-speed chases (and to disengage when they get into one.)

          Patrol units should not be issued firearms.Report

          • Oscar Gordon in reply to DensityDuck says:

            Yep, they should be issued this.Report

          • Dark Matter in reply to DensityDuck says:

            That would be the same pursuit team that is being fired upon. As well as anyone else who gets in the way.

            We could simply let them go… but that might be encouraging behavior we shouldn’t. There may be no good answers to this situation.

            Having said that, we’ll know more in a month.Report

            • dragonfrog in reply to Dark Matter says:

              It’s a UPS truck with a GPS in it, and there’s a helicopter overhead. They’re not getting away.

              Hanging back until there’s an opportunity to engage that doesn’t mean flail-handed panicked mag dumps in the middle of rush hour traffic and civilian human shields, is not the same as “letting them go”.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to dragonfrog says:

                You’re assuming they’re not already running around shooting people.

                With what is on the table, it’s very easy to make assumptions that would make the police totally incompetent. It’s also easy to make assumptions that would give them no choice but play out a bad hand. They can’t let them run around shooting people because they’re afraid they’ll run around shooting people. Letting them get to places where they can take lots of hostages is probably also a non-starter.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to Dark Matter says:

                “You’re assuming they’re not already running around shooting people.”

                Congratulations, you’ve identified another reason to back off and de-escalate the situation.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to DensityDuck says:

                Congratulations, you’ve identified another reason to back off and de-escalate the situation.

                When a group of criminals start shooting people, we want the police to back off to “de-escalate the situation”?

                If I’m committing a crime and it goes pear shaped, my best move is to shoot some people so the police will let me escape?

                You tell me the rules, I’ll tell you my actions. These rules seem to encourage things we don’t want.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Just so we’re all on the same page:

                At approximately 4:14 pm, Lamar Alexander and Ronnie Jerome Hill robbed the jewelry store, Regent Jeweler at Miracle Mile in Coral Gables, Florida.[3] They held the stores cashier at gunpoint and stole diamonds. The two suspects exchanged gunfire with the store owner during the robbery,[4] injuring one jewelry shop worker…

                Police were alerted when the store’s silent alarm system went off. A minute and a half later, when officers arrived, the gunmen opened fire on the officers who returned fire on the gunmen. The gunmen… carjacked a UPS delivery truck at gunpoint and took the driver hostage…

                Several police cars pursued the suspects until the UPS truck became boxed in by slow-moving rush hour traffic in Miramar, about 20 miles (32 km) north of the jewelry store.[8] Police then took cover behind the cars of bystanders and opened fire on the suspects.[8] A total of 19 officers engaged the suspects, including thirteen members of the Miami-Dade Police Department. The other six officers were from the Miramar Police Department and the Pembroke Pines Police Department.

                Four people were killed in the shootout. The two suspects from the robbery, both age 41, were killed by police. The hijacked UPS driver, age 27, and a bystander, age 70, in another car, were also killed.[6] A female store employee was shot and wounded in the initial robbery.[7]

                (wiki)Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Just to be clear (and we’ll see if bodycam footage bears this out), the robbers shot at the police at the store, but did not open fire when boxed in by traffic (i.e. a new location far removed from the original site). So the police surrounded the truck and immediately opened fire on it, before taking fire themselves, and before they had done anything to clear other motorists out of the area, or even attempted to secure the surrender of the robbers?

                Do we even know if the robbers discharged their weapons at the police at that time? Or did the police just let loose the moment they bailed out of their cars?

                I see it this way. If the robbers stopped, got surrounded, and the robbers started shooting at the police, I can see the police shooting back, although they really should have focused more on getting motorists out of the line of fire, rather than using them or their vehicles as cover for an exciting gun battle. Because they robbers weren’t going anywhere, their vehicle was penned in, they only way they were leaving was on foot. Also, they had a fecking hostage! The safety of the general public was a non-issue, but the safety of those motorists and the hostage was at risk, and many times more so should the police start throwing high velocity slugs fecking everywhere!

                However, if the robbers never got a shot off, then the cops straight murdered four people, two of them innocent, because they were all hot and bothered that someone shot at them and ran away.

                Either way, having 20 cops start shooting at a thin metal box from all directions violates the 4th rule of firearms safety (be sure of your target and what is beyond it). And regardless of what Hollywood thinks, cars are concealment, NOT cover. Pistol rounds will pass right through a car body unless they hit something solid, like the engine block. Those cops were out of control, and their leadership had lost control, and none of them should be armed because they all have zero trigger discipline.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to Dark Matter says:

                “When a group of criminals start shooting people, we want the police to back off to “de-escalate the situation”?”

                Yes?

                Given that we know what the alternative looks like, which is “a gun battle between moving vehicles on a crowded freeway which ends up with two non-criminals shot dead and several other non-criminals injured”?

                Given that when high-speed chases happen, people get killed, and it’s not always the fleeing suspect?

                “You tell me the rules, I’ll tell you my actions.”

                You are now in the position of suggesting that taking hostages should make the police more likely to open fire. I don’t think you thought your clever plan all the way through.

                “The two suspects exchanged gunfire with the store owner during the robbery…injuring one jewelry shop worker…”

                hm, so, yeah, the jewelry store owner started the shooting? Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea after all?Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to DensityDuck says:

                Given that we know what the alternative looks like, which is “a gun battle between moving vehicles on a crowded freeway which ends up with two non-criminals shot dead and several other non-criminals injured”?

                You have to weigh that right-now-this-time cost vs increasing the number of future incidents.

                This is why Israel went to war with Lebanon and dropped a billion dollars of damage on their economy. It would have been cheaper in the short run to make a deal to get their people back, but that’s encouraging hostage taking and rewarding what should be punished.

                You also need to worry about “how do the police tell the difference between active shooters and active shooters”? The first group is economically motivated and descalating the violence makes a lot of sense. The second group is motivated by increasing their kill count and “descalating” translates into English as “giving them more time to increase the body count”.

                We (now) tend to forbid high speed chases because they’re really dangerous and the bulk of them are done by civilians who you can let go home and you’ve defused the situation rather than made it worse. That’s pretty irrelevant to this situation because the cops were dealing with active shooting before they got onto the stage.

                You are now in the position of suggesting that taking hostages should make the police more likely to open fire.

                As far as I’m aware, when someone takes hostages a large group of armed officers show up and try to deal with the situation. Taking hostages is an extremely aggressive action and will be treated as such.

                My expectation is there has been a lot of research on the subject and if you’ve got something which suggests the best course of action is to simply let them go, by all means put it on the table.

                the jewelry store owner started the shooting? Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea after all?

                First of all, we’re talking about what the police should be doing. The jewelry store owner isn’t an agent of the state and is free to judge whether being armed increases or decreases his risk profile.

                2nd, it’s morally wrong to blame the guy being robbed for starting things. The armed criminals robbing the place have responsibility here.

                3rd, you’re assuming facts not in evidence. It’s possible that the owner made a bad call here and was trigger happy. It’s also possible the armed trigger happy criminals who were later running around shooting at things didn’t give him a better choice.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to Dark Matter says:

                “You have to weigh that right-now-this-time cost vs increasing the number of future incidents.

                This is why Israel went to war with Lebanon…”

                errrrr now we’re at the point of intra-state conflict justifying the cops standing in the middle of a crowded freeway shooting blindly at center-of-mass on a UPS truck with a hostage in it

                you are just so sure that if you keep digging you’ll eventually get out of the hole you’re in

                “You also need to worry about “how do the police tell the difference between active shooters and active shooters”? ”

                gonna go out on a limb and say that two dudes driving away from the scene in a UPS truck are probably not too interested in “increasing the body count”

                “when someone takes hostages a large group of armed officers show up and try to deal with the situation. ”

                and according to you the way they should deal with the situation is to shoot the shit out of everybody at the slightest provocation and not stop shooting until the corpses are hamburger

                “we’re talking about what the police should be doing. ”

                Well yes we are, aren’t we. And what they should be doing is minimizing the number of people who get shot, and one way to do that is to not provoke further shooting by the suspects.

                “it’s morally wrong to blame the guy being robbed for starting things. ”

                it is absolutely not morally wrong to say that the guy was a stupid turd who started a gunfight and got a bunch of people shot (and four of them killed) and that if he hadn’t started shooting then that wouldn’t have happened. It sucks that he got robbed. If he hadn’t been thinking he was Charles Bronson then nobody would’ve been killed.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to DensityDuck says:

                gonna go out on a limb and say that two dudes driving away from the scene in a UPS truck are probably not too interested in “increasing the body count”

                You put up a very good link showing that “letting them go” in the context of a high speed chase is not only fine, but the desired policy.

                If you can do the same for here, i.e. put up a link that “letting them go” in the context letting go people who have already shot civilians, then you win the conversation.

                Well yes we are, aren’t we. And what they should be doing is minimizing the number of people who get shot, and one way to do that is to not provoke further shooting by the suspects.

                Same comment as before. I’m not an expert in violence but it’s counter intuitive that letting them go the moment they start shooting is going to appease them into submission. Maybe it is and it’s the actual thing to do here.

                However you’re pointing to a bad outcome and insisting that the core problem was bad policy. That faced with a woman shot in the head in a jewelry store the best course of action is for the police to let the shooters go into the community because the root problem must have been that someone resisted them.

                and according to you the way they should deal with the situation is to shoot the shit out of everybody at the slightest provocation and not stop shooting until the corpses are hamburger

                And now you’ve moved to strawmen.

                “the slightest provocation” was a woman being shot in a store, the police being fired on at the store and then again when they attempted to follow the car, as well as a carjacking and hostage taking.

                We’re in “active shooter” territory.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                There’s a hell of a lot of room between “letting them go”, and “don’t engage them in a location where the risk for collateral damage is high unless you absolutely have no choice”Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to Dark Matter says:

                “If you can do the same for here, i.e. put up a link that “letting them go” in the context letting go people who have already shot civilians, then you win the conversation.”

                You…really want me to cite a source for my argument that a highly-visible and easily-identifiable suspect vehicle being tracked by air support doesn’t need to be engaged with lethal force in the middle of a crowded freeway?

                ” it’s counter intuitive that letting them go the moment they start shooting is going to appease them into submission. ”

                yeah brah you’re insisting that “don’t engage” is equivalent to “let them go” and it makes me wonder what’s going on in your brain

                “We’re in “active shooter” territory.”

                and two more people got killed after the cops started shooting, at least one of whom was shot by the cops, so, looks like some of the active shooters were driving black-and-whites.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to DensityDuck says:

                yeah brah you’re insisting that “don’t engage” is equivalent to “let them go” and it makes me wonder what’s going on in your brain

                DarkMatter: “When a group of criminals start shooting people, we want the police to back off to “de-escalate the situation”?”
                DensityDuck:Yes?

                It’s very fine to say having a gun battle on the highway is a bad idea and this was poorly handled, and I agree with that. And I fully agree with Oscar’s comments about a lack of trigger control and fire control.

                Having said all that, Civilians have been shot. The police were fired upon at the store. The police’s pursuit vehicles were fired upon on the highway. Hostages have been taken. All of this was done in the pursuit of criminal activity. What’s going on now is the criminals are attempting to shoot their way free.

                Letting them take more hostages is a non-starter. Letting them go is a non-starter. Letting them flee back into the community would be both of those things.

                De-escalation can NOT get in the way of any of these non-starters. For example having the cops back off can’t happen at the expense of giving these guys the opportunity to stop a bus and carjack it.

                The unreasonable people in this situation are the criminals who are trying to shoot their way free. The police handled this situation in a non-optimal way, but they didn’t create this situation and we can’t assume the unreasonable people trying to shoot their way free would be reasonable absent the police’s actions.

                Do I think the police can and should have done better? Yes I do. Do I think corpses ending up on the ground would still have been a serious posibility even then? Also yes.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                The truck was stuck, it’s not going anywhere. They have a hostage. The smart thing would be for the patrol officers to clear the area, pull back, and wait for SWAT.

                But the police are not smart, and more importantly, they have utterly shit command and control, which allows every officer to be a ‘Warrior’ who can act independently and can ignore team tactics and trigger discipline.

                Whenever you see a group cluster fuck like this, it always comes back to poor trigger discipline and team coordination coupled with every cop wanting to be a hard driving, high speed, low drag, bad ass operating operator.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Well put.Report

  6. LeeEsq says:

    We need to start training all new police recruits with Peelian Principles. If necessary we should outsource training and supervision to British police officers until there is a change of culture.Report

  7. Chip Daniels says:

    On topic:
    From the Guardian:

    The Kamala Harris campaign is over. So is the era of the tough-on-crime Democrat
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/06/kamala-harris-campaign-tough-on-crime-democrat

    “As Harris ascended into the position of San Francisco district attorney in 2003, the electorate made it clear its primary concern was safety. It was the year of the Abu Ghraib scandal, when photos surfaced of army and CIA personnel torturing and humiliating prisoners in an Iraqi prison. And while there was some outrage, there was a greater sense that Americans would tolerate whatever it took to “keep us safe”, even if that included torture, the loss of civil liberties and the beginning of mass surveillance.”Report