News Article: Cop shoots caretaker of autistic man playing in the street with toy truck

Tider@GW_Law said:

I still feel strongly that LEOs, at some point in their careers, should have to put in some significant time in "social work" or something equivalent. I'm not sure exactly how this would work - one week out of the year spent doing social work or an hours requirement prior to starting. I know there are some departments that do training in some of this, but I don't know that it's enough.

I just feel like with social work you get a real understanding of other people's problems, particularly those at the bottom of the socioeconomic. You come to understand all the obstacles in the system for a lot of people (e.g., rarely, if ever, is it because somebody is just lazy) and learn all the other options there might be for somebody other than locking them up for the night, etc. You get a real feel for being to talk things out with people from diverse backgrounds, because a lot of the time there isn't much you can do for them other than being a good listener. I spent a summer doing this type of work and I still think back on some of those lessons learned almost daily.

In sum, it just seems like a lot of these LEOs suffer from the "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" problem - they are trained extensively on aggressively controlling suspects, so this is what many of them go to in a situation where they sense any risk whatsoever, which is a different complex issue altogether (some risk used to be expected for LEOs - had to see a gun, not just somebody reach in their pockets). I don't know, but I've been thinking about these situations a lot in recent months.

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Catfish said:

Hey, everybody. It's all good. There's a perfectly reasonable explanation. They never meant to shoot the caretaker. The officer meant to shoot the autistic guy with the toy truck.



http://wsvn.com/news/local/video-shows-moments-before-north-miami-police-shot-unarmed-man/

I ask again. What exactly would a cop have to do for more than 1-2% of other cops to call BS?

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he movement of the white individual looked like he was getting ready to charge a firearm into Mr. Kinsey,” said John Rivera, president of the Miami-Dade County Police Benevolent Association, “and the officer discharged, trying to strike and stop the white male, and unfortunately, he missed.”

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Catfish said:

Yeah, everything would have been fine if the officer had only killed the mentally challenged guy with the toy.

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selmaborntidefan said:

I think everyone who has an opinion like that should actually go through an LEO academy themselves with the whole "if you hesitate your dead" thing, too.

I'll guarantee you that would suppress 99% of the "the cop did that because he was a racist" argument. The other 1% would be the valid ones.

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Tider@GW_Law said:

In sum, it just seems like a lot of these LEOs suffer from the "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" problem - they are trained extensively on aggressively controlling suspects, so this is what many of them go to in a situation where they sense any risk whatsoever, which is a different complex issue altogether (some risk used to be expected for LEOs - had to see a gun, not just somebody reach in their pockets). I don't know, but I've been thinking about these situations a lot in recent months.

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selmaborntidefan said:

This is going to be rhetorical I guess.

(Side note: based on what little I've seen and read, this appears to be one of those cases - like the McKinney and Arlington cops - of the cop being in the wrong).

But why is it these videos almost always promise MORE than they can deliver? They're like wrestling promoters. Virtually every one of these I phone videos of a cop shooting a person is INCOMPLETE. In this one, it jumps from the cop yelling to the guys on the next portion saying he shot the black guy but not the fat kid. They always manage to turn away and miss the actual shooting and yet people then make them go viral. Virtually none of them I've seen conclusively proves anything one way or the other.

Why is that?

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Catfish said:

Hey, everybody. It's all good. There's a perfectly reasonable explanation. They never meant to shoot the caretaker. The officer meant to shoot the autistic guy with the toy truck.



http://wsvn.com/news/local/video-shows-moments-before-north-miami-police-shot-unarmed-man/

I ask again. What exactly would a cop have to do for more than 1-2% of other cops to call BS?

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92tide said:

additionally, we are armimg the police like a military force. i see it in georgia regularly, cops doing traffic work (speed checks with radar) in o/d or black "bdu's" and fully decked out in tactical holsters, etc looking like special ops troops. at some point, that has to affect how some officers see themselves and their role vis a vis the public.

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2003TIDE said:

Yep. I think I've posted it on NS before, but everyone should read Radley Balko's book on the subject. It is an interesting read on the history of police and his take on how we got to this point.

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92tide said:

i've read a little bit of his stuff in the past and it was always informative

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LA4Bama said:

I agree it would be good for people to know first hand what cops go through, but I am really concerned by the message in your post. I suppose you know about the so-called Cheney 1% doctrine -- that if there is a 1% chance that a rogue nation will use WMD, we should treat it as a near certainty. This was part of the background for the shift from traditional just war theory to preemptive strike theory under the W. Bush admin. It is beginning to feel like that is the doctrine of the police; if there is a 1% chance that a suspect might have a weapon, they can treat it as if it is a near certainty. I used to think cops tried to diffuse tough situations instead of come in guns-a-blazing. I believe we must not go down that 1% doctrine path. Courage is the risk of doing the noble thing in the face of real danger, not the elimination of possible danger by preemptive force. That sounds horrible to some ears because it admits that cops are at risk, but I confess I believe it is the only way, and that we must ask our cops to be courageous the way we ask our soldiers to be. And they deserve honor and just compensation for that risk (there is no "just compensation" for losing your life, but that hasn't stopped us from sending troops to war). But, we must not have cops trained in the reflex that "if you hesitate you're dead." Worse is the doctrine that this justifies shooting at people who do not pose a real and imminent threat.

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92tide said:

because they don't want to show the caregiver turning into a ninja and pulling two sawed off shotguns out of the back of his shirt and leaping 10 feet into the air trying to attack the police. it would ruin the narrative

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selmaborntidefan said:

Y'all don't get to have it both ways.

You don't get to complain that "the cops camera conveniently went off and didn't show what happened" when posted videos are likewise edited. Amazingly enough, they never seem to be able to capture it live and unedited, either.

I reiterate - just as the McKinney pool cop and the Arlington cop, this one looks merely by virtue of the 'explanation' to be a cop who doesn't need to be copping.

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