> This process is designed to have a weapon be discharged.
Unfortunately, as a US civilian you need to be smart about de-escalating encounters with underpaid rage-monster cops with something close to legal immunity. Your goal should be to avoid injury or death until you can get to a lawyer.
Or is it whoever (edit: in the Wichita police) dispatched them without checking the details of the call, or adequately briefing them that the details were not clear?
Because the guy who shot made a huge and deadly mistake, but the fact that you can call 911 and have someone SWATted is a big problem on its own.
SWATing should just lead to a bit of wasted time, and a “sorry to bother you sir”. With proper response procedure it should be a complete non-issue. Placing blame on anyone but the cops is completely discounting the problem.
I am saying it should be placed on the cops' boss.
I agree with you that those should have been the consequences---i.e., none. Though, in a country where SWATting is a thing, whoever placed the call is very much responsible too, because he must have known the possible effect of his prank.
All in all, the cops (while responsible) don't have the largest slice of responsibility.
If you are a cop in this situation, not the lead officer, a grunt among other grunts. You are told the basic situation is that shots have been fired and women and children are in danger...as are you and your team. There is an ARMED individual in the house. Your police training also tells you there is a split second between you and one of your team getting killed as well. Your team members are also husbands and fathers. Your version of deescalating the situation is to remove the suspect as quickly as possible before anything REALLY bad happens (wife gets killed, kid gets killed, you get killed). These aren't "rage-monsters", they are afraid of what could happen.
Also, it is good to remember, the worst case situation, is what cops often have to deal with. But those cases often don't make the news. Even in my small city, these worst case situations happen.
But there isn't an armed individual in the house. You've just been told that there might be. Don't you see how you've fallen into the epistemological error here of not only assuming the truth of a claim without further evidence, but also shifting all your attention tot he possibility of someone being armed.
That sounds very hand-wavey and you might say well it's a lot different in the real world, but I've been in a bunch of high-danger real-world situations. Survival is about more than having great reflexes, it's also about having a cool head and knowing when not to act.
And look, while it's legitimate to have some fears/stress, rage monsters are absolutely a problem in policing. Cops are just as likely, or more, to take steroids or be assholes as people in the general population. Let's not forget that nobody is forced to be a cop. If you want to help people and like excitement you could always be an EMT or a firefighter.
Your version of deescalating the situation is to remove the suspect as quickly as possible
See, that's not de-escalation, it's catharsis through crisis - literally the exact opposite of de-escalation. By abdicating your own decision-making power you've ended up arguing for counterfactuals. I realize that you're attempting to model the thought process of police in high pressure situations, but counterfactuals + weapons = deadly errors. The thought process is, however, something we could change.
They signed up to put themselves in danger. I as a civilian never signed up for it. If anyone should accept an increased risk, it's not me or my family that were peacefully minding our own business.
I agree with the rest but underpaid, no. For the Oakland Police Department, where I live, the starting salary is $69,912 to $98,088. Retirement starts at 50. This job requires a GED.
There is no universal concept of "market pay" which applies across occupations; only within a given occupation. The Oakland police are the only police available to examine in this particular "market"; there is therefore no basis for an argument about "market pay" in this context.
Compared to newly-minted coders getting low 6 figures? Well... The world would be a better place if cops and teachers were trained, paid, and respected like doctors. Police officers' jobs are mostly boredom (e.g. manning a radar gun) mixed with occasional stress and quite a bit of dealing with people in their worst moments (e.g. desperate, angry, drunk, or high). If they were paid more, the job might attract enough candidates to hire more people with the intelligence to de-escalate situations, and fewer who get off on the power.
Police officers in Suffolk County New York get $250K-$350k/year compensation packages.
The former Suffolk County Police Chief is currently in federal prison for attacking a handcuffed citizen. [1]
Sorry, but paying Police Officers as if they were SAP consultants does not improve the quality of their policing.
Oh, and if you're wondering, why didn't the District Attorney protect citizens from the police? Well, he is under federal indictment for covering up police crimes. [2]
> I agree with the rest but underpaid, no. For the Oakland Police Department, where I live, the starting salary is $69,912 to $98,088. Retirement starts at 50.
For a job dealing with crime reports and disputes all day and one of the routine job hazards is being shot dead at any moment, that's hardly a particularly attractive deal. Hell, I doubt there's very many people on HN would take that job for twice the pay.
This is a misleading point. Assaulting an officer ranges from an elbow to the rib during an arrest to beating the crap out of them.
We have roughly 900,000 police officers. A total of 135 police officers were killed in duty in 2016.[0] And 14,453 injuries. We point these people towards danger daily and in a single year only 1 in every 62 of those officers will be 'injured'. I would say that's an acceptable risk for the job if the alternative is the circumvention of due process.
The police, particularly in the US, seem to be quite fond of shooting people who are laying face down on the ground, or otherwise clearly not a threat. It isn't so clear how we are expected to act in an effort to reach the goal of avoiding death during a police encounter.
Unfortunately, as a US civilian you need to be smart about de-escalating encounters with underpaid rage-monster cops with something close to legal immunity. Your goal should be to avoid injury or death until you can get to a lawyer.