K_Z
Verified Anesthetist
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2010
- Messages
- 6,657
- Reaction score
- 2,500
I think you are preaching to the choir. I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who did not find KG's behaviour extremely unsettling.
The argument is not whether or not KG was a criminal or social misfit. The argument is that many of your fellow citizens believe there are too many of these situations where LE are not placing maximum value on human life. Thy should approach these situations where you have an out of control person the exact same way they would approach if it were their out of control grandmother or daughter.
There is no question that if these officers lives were under immediate threat they had the right to use lethal force. No doubt about it. Could they have go into this situation with a better plan? Could they have waited to arrest her when she was going about her daily activities or another scenario where she wouldn't have access to a firearm? They knew she was a hostile and likely suicidal person.
Regardless of my respect for LE, when you see things like what just happened to that young man in Chicago, how can you help to wonder if they are not going into these situations without a care of whether or not their suspect ends up dead?
That is all activists and BLM supporters are asking for. To give the same value to the life of a career criminal or social misfit that you would to your loved ones. Is that something we can all agree on?
BBM. No, I don't agree that a career criminal actively engaged in homicidal violence is a life worth preserving "at all costs". The lives of their actual and potential victims, LE, and bystanders are far more valuable at that point in time. Their own actions have decreased the value of their life by engaging in homicidal violence.
If we can arrest them or subdue them alive without further risk, that's fine with me. But if their actions mean they have to be subdued by an officer's weapon in a lawful and justified use of lethal force, then that's what is morally, ethically, and legally the right thing to do. I don't weep for dead criminals, nor do I celebrate their killing. But sometimes the actions of the criminal suspect can best and safely be stopped with a well placed lethal bullet. That's another form of de-escalation. I don't ever want to take that ability away from police. Or the military.
Never forget, criminals always have choices. Police don't have the option to walk away from violent criminals. It's their job to neutralize the situation.
Once KG brought out the shotgun, it didn't matter anymore why the police were originally there. It was a whole new set of circumstances, a whole new set of multiple felonies she was engaged in. She alone got herself killed, and she alone put her child in extreme and imminent danger.