Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

Intent to Kill

Laid out in considerable detail, this post explores what happened to the deceased Gaza activists.  This is an excellent example of a basic premise: if you want captives, send police; if you want corpses, send soldiers.  Their training is different, and you get what you pay for.

I do not consider Israel a civilized nation.  (I wish it would have been, but sheesh and baksheesh, Germany  is accruing beans faster on the civilized side of the scale.)  I sincerely wish that America would stop sending money there.  It is funding atrocities.  This costs America a lot of civilized beans.
Tags: news, politics
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  • 74 comments
raindrops

raindrops

June 6 2010, 22:10:43 UTC 11 years ago

Don't have time right now to add to the Israeli part of the discussion, but I have to make a point-of-order call here regarding cops vs. soldiers.

Most major US police forces are trained to empty their weapon if they fire it once. The (publicly stated) rationale for this is that if you're in a situation wherein you deem deadly force necessary, it should be lethal, period.

A major side effect of this is that there are a lot of extra-judicial sentences carried out against people who made the mistake of being in the wrong place, of not speaking the right language, etc.

I've been doing Copwatch for years, and have worked with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights for several years as well. I'm not talking out my arse about this. I've witnessed firsthand 4 cops emptying and reloading and emptying their mags again, into an unarmed but belligerent suspect.

Cops pile up bodies just as readily as soldiers.
ysabetwordsmith

Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

June 7 2010, 07:27:37 UTC 11 years ago

>>Most major US police forces are trained to empty their weapon if they fire it once. The (publicly stated) rationale for this is that if you're in a situation wherein you deem deadly force necessary, it should be lethal, period.<<

Then they're doing it wrong on several counts.

1) With that training, you get a lot of corpses. It's appropriate for soldiers, who are supposed to face enemies; not for police, who are supposed to face your own citizens.

2) If you've decided to kill, then kill. If you need four or five bullets to be sure you've done that -- especially at close range and against unarmed opponents -- then you are not adequately skilled with your weapon. At most, one to disable and one to finish, unless the circumstance are highly unfavorable (such as heavy-cover firefights).

3) A gun, like many weapons, offers options. Lethal force should be reserved as a last resort. Many modern guns have excellent "stopping power," so that if you shoot someone in a nonvital area he will almost certainly quit causing trouble. Lethal force is justified if your life or someone else's life is in clear and present danger. Otherwise it's not. If you have a gun and the other person is unarmed or trivially armed, lethal force is not justified. Even severe injury is usually unjustified against an unarmed opponent.

4) When you use excessive force, you teach people that this is acceptable behavior. That is not a lesson you want to be teaching if your goal is to protect the peace. And there are always more people outside the force than in it.

>>I've witnessed firsthand 4 cops emptying and reloading and emptying their mags again, into an unarmed but belligerent suspect.

Cops pile up bodies just as readily as soldiers.<<

Then they are bad cops, and should be replaced forthwith; and the training is bad if it consistently produces that result. I note that some other nations seem to have less of this type of trouble, while others have more; and America has moved up and down the scale over time. It is therefore malleable, so identifying the variables and moving them to protect the peace would be prudent.