top | item 26378457

(no title)

splaytreemap | 5 years ago

Cops almost never kill law-abiding citizens in the line of duty, so I doubt you'll be able to find much evidence supporting this claim. And no, you're not a law-abiding citizen if you die resisting arrest after committing a DUI.

discuss

order

Judgmentality|5 years ago

First of all, people aren't always resisting when the cops kill them. There have been numerous instances in the past few years that got international attention, so I'm not going to detail these.

Then there is the very obvious problem of SWAT raids, where police regularly get the wrong house! But they still go in with their guns, and sometimes shoot before they ask questions. How would you feel if police broke down your door and pointed assault rifles at you, threatening to kill you if you moved? Also, how would you know they're police? They regularly break down the door and threaten to kill someone before ever announcing that they are the police. And even then, how would you know that they are the police? I'd feel absolutely justified murdering anyone that attacked me like that, I don't give a fuck if it's the pope.

Here's some data you can explore if you want to, though.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/

https://policeviolencereport.org/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police...

dragonwriter|5 years ago

> Cops almost never kill law-abiding citizens in the line of duty

That's pretty much true by definition, since an officer killing a law-abiding civilian outside of a very narrow class of reasonable bona fide mistakes of fact is, ipso facto, not properly performing authorized job functions, and therefore not acting in the line of duty.

alisonkisk|5 years ago

This comment has no relevance to anything. "Law-abiding" is not a requirement for life, and police extremely frequently fail to be law-abiding.

splaytreemap|5 years ago

This comment has no relevance to anything. I never said law-abiding is a requirement for life.

But I can all but guarantee you will not be able to find more than one or two examples of police killing a law-abiding citizen and receiving no punishment. It doesn't happen.

grey-area|5 years ago

I guarantee you have broken some laws, even if unwittingly. So you are not a law-abiding citizen, ergo cops can kill you with impunity. Still OK with that?

dang|5 years ago

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The GP comment was egregious flamebait and shouldn't have been posted, but by the above three guidelines, this reply shouldn't have been posted either.

happymellon|5 years ago

> you're not a law-abiding citizen if you die resisting arrest

Example one.

> I can't breath.

There are numerous examples happening on a regular basis in the US. They kill US citizens who are not a threat and not resisting all the time.