Slashdot Mirror
Robbery Suspect Tracked By GPS and Killed
New submitter Lew Lorton notes a NY Times story about a thief in New York City who was tracked and located using a GPS device inside a decoy pill bottle he had stolen (along with other pill bottles) from a pharmacy. When police confronted the thief, he raised a gun to shoot at an officer, and was killed
"The decoy bottles were introduced last year by the police commissioner at the time, Raymond W. Kelly, who announced that the department would begin to stock pharmacy shelves with decoy bottles of painkillers containing GPS devices. The initiative was in response to a sharp increase of armed and often deadly pharmacy robberies across the state, frequently by people addicted to painkillers. ... The bottles are designed to be weighted and to rattle when shaken, so a thief does not initially realize they do not contain pills. Each of the decoy bottles sits atop a special base, and when the bottle is lifted from the base, it begins to emit a tracking signal."
OK let's get this out of the way...
He didn't deserve to die for stealing the pills... ... but soon as he chose to put the life of an officer in danger instead of surrendering, then he did.
The thief was killed because he raised a gun to an officer, not because he was tracked down by GPS.
Can we mod a submission as "-1 TROLL"?
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
People are becoming addicted to prescription painkillers. They cannot just buy these products. Therefore they (or others) have to rob them. Men worry about "erectile disfunction" because of advertising. Robbers steal the same products that are advertised for this. Guns are widely available in the US. Guns are used to commit these robberies. Police shoot the suspect because he's carrying a gun.
The decoy pill bottle is just a symptom in all this.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
... a use GPS devices I can support.
Yeah, if there's one time when lethal force is justified, it's this. Doesn't excuse scumbags tazing grannies, but kudos to this officer for handling a dangerous situation optimally.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
For all you statists here who want to government to decide what you can and can't put into your own body, I hope you're happy. This high-speed chase and shooting wouldn't have happened without the ridiculous requirement to have a prescription for certain things people willingly choose to ingest.
In Britain, the regular patrolmen are not tracking GPS devices in pill bottles. That would be the special police forces, who do carry weapons.
Maybe it's an outlandish concept to some, but in most civilized countries police doesn't deem it necessary to carry guns to protect themselves from the rest of society. They tend to expect society to work WITH them, not AGAINST them.
Of course, it's usually different in dictatorships.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hmm. You left out the 16-year prison sentence the guy already had behind him for "sexual abuse and robbery convictions", which seems odd for someone genuinely defending the police here. You also jump to the rather ridiculous conclusion that there's a "PC leftist crowd" ready to condemn the police for shooting an armed nutcase who pulled a gun on them. Are you simply a troll hoping to initiate a left-right tribal battle over what seems a pretty clear case of a violent career criminal making his final mistake?
That said, we could once again blame the War on Drugs, which makes it profitable to rob damn painkillers at gunpoint. If people who want high could get high legally, and people who want to get completely messed up could do so in licensed places with medical and security staff, we wouldn't have to deal with this kind of shit. Nor would places like Mexico need to deal with their derived problems.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
No. Race has nothing to do with it. The fact that not only do you think it might, but that it is foremost, indicates that bigotry and prejudice are alive and well in your heart.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
There is the problem.
Not enough guns.
If you had more guns then you would need more guns.
Because more guns is the answer to all gun related issues.
The smart ones go into law and politics.... ...or even retrospectively make it legal.
Where you can buy, bamboozle or masonic handshake your way out of your crimes.
Sounds like suicide by cop. Maybe the idiot didn't want to go to jail.
but in most civilized countries police doesn't deem it necessary to carry guns to protect themselves from the rest of society.
Only if you define 'civilized' as 'most police don't carry guns'. Most police in Europe carry guns. Most police around the world carry guns. The UK and Norway don't get to dominate the stats.
I'm not saying that we don't have problems, I'd LOVE to reform our police and justice systems here in the USA, but routine carrying of arms isn't one of them. My view is if they can't be trusted with a weapon, they can't be trusted to be an officer.
I don't read AC A human right
Do you happen to have a source on Finnish officers shooting 'to incapacitate'? Much less in the leg? Because my self-defense and military training is that a leg shot is both potentially fatal(big arteries there, fast bleedout) and not likely to be incapacitating(if you don't hit the artery they can still fight).
By my training 'Center of Mass' shots, IE to the chest, is both an easier shot to hit with, is more likely to actually incapacitate, and given prompt medical attention not actually all that more likely to be fatal.
I shoot to 'stop', not to 'wound' or 'kill'.
That being said, I'm all for officers using negotiation instead of gunfire were possible. But if that trigger has to be pulled, it needs to be pulled in the most effective manner possible.
I don't read AC A human right
It's not that they don't trust the officers with a gun, it's that everybody knows that patrolmen don't have guns. Why spend money to get a gun when you know that you're not at risk of being shot at to start? And then why shoot at an officer who you know won't shoot at you?
The idea is that it lowers the stakes all around.
Well the US is fairly unique as the rights and privileges of sovereignty are granted to the Government by the Governed, where in European Countries the opposite is true, soveignty is granted by God, throught the Church to the King and the people were chattle. The Monarchs didn't have to say "you're not allowed to have guns" because the default is all rights and privileges are deigned unless specifically allowed by the Sovereign; which in Europe is the Government, and in the US is the people.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
You can argue about suicides until you're blue in the face, but the facts remain: In the USA, more than any other western country, more kids shoot their siblings. More kids shoot themselves. More drunks shoot either other, widowing mothers and orphaning kids. More men shoot their wives. More criminals shoot 7-11 clerks, taxicab drivers and people in movie theatres. More cops shoot teenagers because the cops think their iPod is a gun.
The USA has said this is fine and this is the society they want to live in, but to the rest of us it is batshit crazy and we want no part of it. Handguns do not belong in a civilized society. Full stop.