reesescups posted:
Cawlin posted:
We keep going over it because every time I explain it to you, you rephrase the question and ask it another way. I get that you probably think your trolling is humorous or something, but it just looks like swirly melting down at a slightly slower rate.
I removed everything else and only quoted what I called the crux of the context, the situation. You want to assume the kid was a violent criminal.
When pressured about why you would assume SOMEONE, ANYONE, was a violent criminal - you revert back to the context and situation that we have already moved past. We are trying to have a discussion about lessons learned.
You are like Koneg and unable to extrapolate your thoughts and actions into other contexts. Your assumptions were OBVIOUSLY, IN RETROSPECT, 100% WRONG. Doesn't that give you one sec of pause? A 15 Year old is dead because YOUR ASSUMPTION WAS WRONG. And you apparently don't see anything at all wrong with that and would be 100% comfortable making the same wrong assumption in the future...
The thing is you cannot "monday morning quarterback" this scenario. I knew this was the basis of your argument (and probably swirly's and sin's too) all along and that you've been trying to dance around it because you are also aware of the reality which makes such analysis pointless.
The fact is that judging the scenario with the benefit of hindsight and with the benefit of facts you didn't have AT THE TIME when there was imminent danger to the police (and to the rest of the school) doesn't do anything.
Yes it's sad that this kid got killed. Yes it's ironic (in a sadly morbid way) that the threat wasn't as real as it appeared in the moment, but the fact is that the threat appeared very real at the moment and the police had to make a choice between their own lives, and possibly the lives of the other children and teachers in the school and the life of this kid who had a) already committed a violent act and b) had refused to follow a direct order.
As for abstracting the parameters of this scenario and applying them elsewhere, I am perfectly capable of doing so. In truth, I believe it's you who cannot do so.
When a person makes a threat of violence to a police officer or to another citizen and refuses to comply with orders from the police to cease and desist, the outcome is fairly predictable. Again, yes, in the final analysis it may turn out that things were not as they seemed, but how much time is reasonable to take in the moment to determine all the possibilities? That's time that might be used by the criminal to kill the police or kill other people, and that's time that emergency responders have to wrestle with in situations like this.
Maybe yuki is right that in 9 out of 10 situations like this, the situation could have ended differently, but I don't actually think it's that high of a chance to be honest. However, the fact remains if you put a cop's life in danger or if you put another civilian's life in danger with a cop present, the cop should take any and all actions up to and including terminating your life to stop that danger.
The obvious question is whether or not the presentation of danger existed - and by any account, it surely did in this case, and in some other abstracted scenario where a person points a firearm at a police officer and refuses to drop it when ordered, also presents a clear danger.
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