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Using a Bomb Robot to Kill a Suspect Is an Unprecedented Shift in Policing (vice.com)
A police standoff with a suspect in the killing of five police officers in Dallas came to an abrupt end on Friday morning in an unusual way. The police said that negotiations broke down, an exchange of gunfire happened, but then they had no option but to use "bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was." Motherboard explains the unprecedented shift in policing. From an article: Peter W. Singer, an expert in military technology and robot warfare at the New America Foundation, tweeted that this is the first known incident of a domestic police force using a robot to kill a suspect. Singer tweeted that in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers have strapped claymore mines to the $8,000 MARCbot using duct tape to turn them into jury-rigged killing devices. Singer says all indications are that the Dallas Police Department did something similar in this case -- it improvised to turn a surveillance robot into a killing machine. Improvised device or not, the concerns here mirror a debate that's been going on for a few years now: Should law enforcement have access to armed drones, or, for that matter, weaponized robots? In 2013 Kentucky Senator Rand Paul staged a 13-hour filibuster that was focused entirely on concerns about the use of armed drones on US soil. Last year, North Dakota became the first state to legalize nonlethal, weaponized drones for its police officers. [...] The ability for police to remotely kill suspects raises due process concerns. If a shooter is holed up and alone, can they be qualified as an imminent threat to life? Are there clear protocols about when a robot can be used to engage a suspect versus when a human needs to engage him or her? When can the use of lethal force be administered remotely?
"I mean you call something a war, and pretty soon everyone is going to be running around acting like warriors." -- Major Colvin
Regan declared The War On Drugs and, unsurprisingly, people started acting like warriors. We now have a militarized police force that, in many areas, is effectively an occupying military. Guess what happens when an occupying military starts killing civilians? Insurgents are created.
I have a feeling this situation is going to spiral out of control pretty quickly.
"If a shooter is holed up and alone, can they be qualified as an imminent threat to life?"
In this case, definitely yes. Obviously a blanket judgement cannot be made for all cases. Each situation is entirely different.
5 people are dead. 5 more are in the hospital.
There are major perceived racial issues and conflicts at hand, and you want to focus on the specific equipment at hand?
This was not an autonomous killing machine. It was similar to an RC car with an explosive charge attached to it. All other attempts to kill the gunman had failed, and putting even more people into extreme risk was ill-advised. Putting him down *hard* was the best possible option given the situation.
The gunman was actively shooting other people. At that point, killing them via whatever method is the only sane option. The situation had already been escalated beyond most thresholds.
Turning the conversation into a "but... robots are evil" mess detracts from the very real issues at hand.
http://philly.curbed.com/2013/5/13/10244298/how-philadelphia-became-the-city-that-bombed-itself
"It has been 28 years since police lieutenant Frank Powell leaned from a helicopter and tossed a gym bag packed with C-4 and Tovex explosives onto a residential rowhome in West Philadelphia, leading to the deaths of six adults and five children, along with the complete destruction of 61 homes.
On May 13, 1985 at about 5:30 PM, Philadelphia gained the immortal moniker of "The City That Bombed Itself"; a brutal ending to the city's longstanding struggle with an organization that called itself MOVE."
This isn't an issue, as long as there is a human controlling the robot.
It's like saying that using a rifle raises issues because the rifle is isn't close to the target. Using the robot merely slows down the process of moving the killing object from the source to the target.
No, a real issue would be autonomous killing devices. They are coming and will probably be in use before there is general awareness of them. Their use is more likely after that experiment that showed an autonomous robot pilot was better than a skilled human pilot.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This is a tremendous shift. They didn't just detonate a bomb nearby the subject, the PLACED a bomb near the subject and detonated it. In my opinion that is not law enforcement, that's assassination.
Opinions aside there are a few questions raised: does the bomb squad keep a stock of bombs around? Are they fragmentary devices? Undirected charges or directional? Did they fabricate this bomb themselves or repurpose an existing explosive? Is this something they train for or were they improvising on scene (potentially risking even more lives)? Who made the risk/benefit determination? Similarly, who approved this action? The police chief? The Mayor? Governor? FBI? Justice department? Was compliance with the posse comitatus act waived? By whom?
In this case they did, they negotiated for hours. Pretty sure Micah X Johnson was not going to be taken alive.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
So all those police that killed people on sight should just expect to get killed? That's basically what happened here, yet the police are now victims?
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
How has the hashtag inspired violence? The police killings of blacks is what is inspiring the violence and murder.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Absolutely wrong. Your way throws due process out the window, and makes our police force nothing more then a death squad. I am going to guess you are not an American since you seem to have no idea how our system of justice is supposed to work.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
What I wondered is: did the suspect have a gas mask? If not (I haven't seen anything that said he did), why not launch some tear gas - or even have the robot deploy it - rather than an explosive device?
If they took the guy alive, then perhaps they could have gotten information on accomplices etc.
After killing an officer, the waiting for surrender bullshit goes straight out the window.
If you kill, you should expect to be killed, end of story.
Why are cops sacrosanct compared to the populous? what about due process?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
The hashtag against racist violence is to protest the violence, not to inspire it, but the racist-right can't handle the idea of black people having the same rights as the rest of us do, so they'll pretend that a murderous nut is the fault of Black Lives Matter, even though he was shooting at BLM protesters in addition to the police.
Racist right? Like Stalin? Like the national socialists? You keep on talking about the "right" but libertarians are "right" and are all about individualism to an extreme rather than collectivism and centralised control.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
They effectively used a suicide bomber with an IED to get the job done.
Something that we, as America, have a tendency to denounce whenever it's used against us. .. outstanding.
We're not going to shoot them anymore, we're going to blow them up . . . . . . lol .
What's next ? We going to strap a suicide vest on the K9's, let them run the suspects down ? :|
Maybe fill a police car with explosives and drive it into the house the bad guys are holed up in ?
Here's a thought, maybe someone should take a step back and figure out what the problem is
here. ( Hint: Police keep killing folks. Many of them unarmed, in handcuffs, and mostly black )
Of all the people killed by police under questionable circumstances, how many times were the police
prosecuted for it ?
Exactly.
Once enough folks lose faith in the system, they will cease to rely upon it. The results can be quite
devastating. The police love to tell everyone " This is a war ! ". Though now that folks are no longer playing
by their rules, the game becomes a little more difficult to play doesn't it ?
I suppose the same argument can be made for the Government's behavior as of late. ( I'm looking at you
FBI ) When the rich and powerful get a free pass to do whatever they want, the rest take notice. When
that system pisses enough people off, I would expect the reaction will be very similar.
So you call out ad hominems and sweeping generalizations by using ad hominems and sweeping generalizations?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
The mear fact that some idiot gave the police a bomb in the first place. They have no need ever for that sort of ordinance. Anything past a breaching charge or a flashbang.
No sir I dont like it.
Lethal force was no longer called for once he was contained. Police have no business having never mind using explosive as an intentionally deadly weapon, realy nothing past a breaching charge or flashbang.
No sir I dont like it.
The dude explicitly stated he wanted to hurt white people, and he had pro-BLM posts all over. When you shoot 17(?) people and only two of them aren't cops, you have to wonder how much he was actually targeting the protesters.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
" Next step is to eliminate the threat, if cops have to tie a bomb to a robot to do that, so what."
And this is where you are exactly, completely wrong. The role of CIVILIAN law enforcement is to apprehend the suspect using the least amount of force possible and turn them over to the judicial system. they are not there to assign guilt or innocence. they are not there to render punishment. they apprehend, collect the evidence, and that's it. The role of a MILITARY FORCE is to close with and destroy the enemy. I'm not comfortable with the blurring of that line. If they could strap a bomb on it, they could have put gas grenade or flash bang. The went instead for the most lethal option. If the suspect was in fact in a secured location with no means to escape then the correct choice was to wait it out. He will surrender or suicide eventually. It's been around 100 F in Dallas this week, and a few days in an open air parking garage without water would render him too weak to fight or unconscious.
In Canada, the BLM movement unfortunately chose to demonstrate during the pride parade in Toronto and felt justified to delay someone else's cause for 30 minutes. I think the hashtag should be #BlackLivesMatterMOST.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I am going to guess you are not an American since you seem to have no idea how our system of justice is supposed to work.
On the balance of probabilities I was going to suggest the opposite. An incredibly large number of Americans are completely oblivious to how their systems of government an policing work.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Per wikipedia: "According to the US Department of Justice, blacks accounted for 52.5% of homicide offenders from 1980 to 2008, with whites 45.3% and "Other" 2.2%." So if you account for 52% of murders I would imagine you'd probably also account for about half of shootings by police and... guess what? Blacks make up about 50% of police shootings. -Keep in mind that blacks are only 12% of the population in the US.
The police can't kill people with bombs, they have to use small explosions in shells to speed up a specific projectile, not an accidental one with a bomb, like god intended it to be.
The police shouldn't be in the business of killing people. They're there to apprehend if at all possible, and let the courts decide their fate. The bobbies in London don't even carry firearms, and they get along reasonably well. Why the fuck do American cops need "assault rifles" (heh), tanks, and now remote controlled bombs? This one-sided arms race needs to stop, and we need to take a good hard look at the societal reasons for the violence. We keep killing or incarcerating "bad men", but nobody wants to deal with the reasons how they become this way. Meanwhile, we continue to allow an army grow within our borders that sees all of us as a possible threat. This is not headed in a positive direction.
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf
They did try. For hours. It's not like they had him cornered, counted to ten, and then decided to blow his ass up.
We don't know the details yet, but I will speculate and state that I personally believe that he had plenty of warning and he had plenty of time to reject said warnings before Dallas PD did what they had to do to end the situation. Everything DPD did last night/this morning was centered around one thing: protecting the lives of the people in Dallas. They did exactly that.
I will further speculate and state that I believe that Johnson knew he wasn't getting out of that garage alive. He had no intention of lying down arms.
It wasn't an autonomous system, it was a remotely operated device. Still it's a bad move, especially since it causes further emotional disconnection to the event and limits sensory input for operators that are already showing a tendency to murder first and not care about the questioning. Something that can only get worse with that shift. Additionally, they used EXPLOSIVES to kill him. You know, one of those rather non-targeting area effect fuck everything in range type nasties? Oh yeah, real good choice with the limited sensory input from a remotely operated device dumbass.... Ever hear of collateral damage and over use of force? Really not the right way to go, but then again, I doubt anyone expected the cops to bring any SUSPECTS in alive for this shooting. Of course, they may not have murdered the right guy, but hell, it's not like anyone can ask him questions now.
There is so much wrong with this entire thing.
"Conservatives by definition are authoritarian"
And modern liberals aren't authoritarian? To the point of legislating soft drink cup size? Or the shape of cucumbers in EU?
"Liberals by definition want to encourage INDIVIDUAL liberties"
That would be the definition of LIBERTARIANS and maybe CLASSIC liberals.
What inspired this cycle of violence was a problem even more basic than the race angle: the steady drift to more militarized law enforcement. What just happened was another step on this road. In the eyes of the police now, we're all burka-clad Fallujans.
Coming soon - the first purpose-built dog shooting robot.
Ahh, but you missed the "individual" part. Cup sizes and the like are buisness regulations, not individual regulations. The laws in NY did not prevent you from bringing in your own cup.
Liberals in general want to protect INDIVIDUAL liberties. Due process, 1st amendment, yes even the second amendment.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
And limit due process whenever it suits them. And get rid of some personal property rights. And take away some religious freedoms. And deny freedom of speech to anyone who organizes as a corporation. And take away freedom to carry groceries in plastic bags. Etc, etc, etc, etc.
They don't believe in individual liberties at all.
Many (but not all) libertarians, especially the American variety, are very much right-wing when it comes to egalitarianism, in that they have no problem with a tiny elite subset of the population controlling all the wealth and thus power of society, so long as it's "not the government" doing that.
The original left-right divide was not just about liberty but about equality as well. The left was for the common people, against the aristocracy; that was their ends. Their means was removing the authority of the aristocracy and granting liberty to the common people. Being nominally in favor of liberty, but perfectly OK with an aristocratic elite ruling over the common people so long as it's done by "libertarian" means, is hardly in line with the history of the left, and much more squarely aligned with the original right.
(In truth, the existence of an aristocratic elite is evidence that the supposedly libertarian principles by which they're operating aren't so libertarian after all, and some kind of authoritarian power still remains for them to exploit. There are libertarians who acknowledge this, libertarian socialists; "socialism" doesn't equal authoritarianism. My personal suspect for that bit of authority remaining to exploit is the enforcement of certain kinds of contracts, especially those of rent and interest, but also things like exclusivity and non-compete arrangements).
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Some liberals lie and say they want "reasonable" gun restrictions when their goal is a total ban (except for the elites). It's all about getting the thin edge of the wedge under the door.
Upon seeing her Clinton gun ban enacted in 1994, she said: “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them . . . ‘Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in,’ I would have done it.”
Gun Control Misses Mark: Sen. Feinstein Shoots-off Mouth, Hits Foot
The Second Amendment must go: We ban lawn darts. It’s time to ban guns
Only one thing about the whole recent train of events is new:
Smartphones. They've either ripped our heads out of the sand, or overturned a rock, whichever metaphor you prefer. Now what police have long been accused of, and what could reasonably be viewed skeptically, is out in the open.
Should the shooter have done it? No, but that's immaterial.
Was it wrong? Yes, but that's immaterial.
Should he have been engaged with lethal force? Yes, but that's immaterial.
Brutalize a population long enough, and they'll strike out. Forget right and wrong: they WILL, and we can't talk it away or threaten it away. If you don't remove the stimulus, it will just keep happening. And thanks to the smartphone, we now know whether the stimulus is still around or not.
Even military language is standard operating procedure for police.
Police do not patrol neighborhoods, they patrol sectors. Even in small towns it is broken into sectors.
When I think of sectors, I think of militarized zones with fences and lines that need monitoring.
In order for this cycle to end there needs to be respect on both sides. #Blacklivesmatter need to call out people who are being idiots and inciting, #Police need to call out over aggressive idiots on their ranks that are abusive with force instead of condoning it silently as a bystander.
According to reports, this was one man with an AR-15 and a bunch of ammo and look at the damage.
It has to stop on both sides and it has to stop today. It is not cool when someone mows white people down with an assault rifle and it is not cool when police harass Americans for "DWB", driving while black. It is not cool that black people have to teach their children to comply with police or risk getting shot. It is not cool that so many people have nonviolent felonies that they can't get a job. It is a giant cluster mess.
This will take action from society as a whole to fix. I saw an encouraging first step in Detroit recently.
Jobseekers get nonviolent records expunged.
It is not cool that Hilary Clinton gets a get out of jail free card.
It is not cool that General Patraeous gets probation.
It is not cool when teens like Ethan Couch with affluenza walk away with probation or little jail time.
It is not cool that cities like Flint and poisoned with lead just because they are poor.
It is not cool that America rebuilds New Orleans but lets Detroit rot even though it suffered an economic Sunami of Free-Trade Agreements.
It is not cool that some kids can get a decent public education and others can not based on their zip code.
It is not cool that Jails are now a "For Profit" business further preying on people on the margins of society.
It is not cool that America incarcerates more people per capita than any other modern country in history.
American is not perfect, but Trump was right when he said the "system was rigged". While we might not be perfect, we believe in a union of people working together for the common good, freedom, and the hope of liberty and pursuing happiness. The hope to live a good life that doesn't have a violent end because you walked down the wrong street or drove in the wrong neighborhood.
I would encourage everyone looking at these events today not to take a sides, but ask,
"What can we do to fix this, before it gets worse?",
"How can we heal the racial divide?"
"How can we love our neighbor?"
The natural tendency is to be tribal, pick your tribe and then prepare to war with the other tribe. It's human, it is how we survived long ago. If we go down that path, more will die. America is awash with guns and ammo and the killing of whites, blacks, gays, muslims, seeks, mexicans NEEDS TO STOP.
Reflect and ask yourself, "how can I be the change I want to see in the world?"
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
Presumably this robot, under police control, had a video camera so the operator could guide it to the target. I'd like to see that video. I'd be Ok with it not showing the gruesome outcome, but the trip to the target, what the target was doing at the time and the eventual detonation. You'd think that a robot carrying a package to an armed man would have been been viewed with some suspicion, even for this unprecedented action. Did it get close enough to see the target? Did it confirm that the target still armed and dangerous at the time? If he aimed his gun at the robot, will that be construed as an aggressive act against a police officer? Who detonated the bomb? If it's a legal, justifiable action, then knowing who did it should be public.
Note: I'm not defending the use of lethal force in this case, I'm really fucking uncomfortable with that as well. Whether they could keep him bottled up until he gave out is a good question and not one that I can answer.
However, if this is a bomb disposal robot, it is likely that the explosive that the police put onto the robot is one that it is designed to carry and initiate. One way bomb squads dispose of suspected bombs is to detonate them at a time of their choosing using a charge placed by the bomb squad robot. I don't know, but think it's pretty likely that the bomb squad robot doesn't have a general purpose 'pull pin on grenade' option to where it could be used with various grenade type objects, but instead that it only works with the specific charges it is designed for.
I'd maybe be even a bit more concerned if the bot could use 'any grenade type object', rather than something specifically made for EOD, because we'd probably see more of this kind of thing. But of course, now that someone has done it (1) more police departments are going to start thinking of this as a valid method and (2) we probably will see the rise of bots that have more general purpose munitions.
Detroit as lots of problems, but poverty isn't actually the worst or most intractable of them.
* Detroit is fairly small in terms of land area compared to cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Atlanta... and a HUGE portion of its land area was polluted decades ago in ways that would probably shock people in CHINA.
* If sufficiently-bad environmental pollution is discovered on a tract of land, the current owners are legally on the hook for 100% of the clean-up costs... regardless of whether those costs exceed the value of the land, and regardless of whether the current owners actually had anything at all to DO with the pollution. During the early 20th century, American factories did some really awful things that would never pass muster today... and Detroit was Ground Zero for American Industry. As a result, no sane company will DARE to take ownership of land in Detroit that's likely to be polluted. Not even if the city/county/state/feds gave it to them for FREE. Because that cheap/free plot of land could end up costing them literally unlimited amounts of money for clean-up costs. And the city can't even indemnify purchasers, because the city ITSELF is insolvent & the feds could still turn around and force the new owner to eat 100% of the costs itself.
* Pollution aside, most of Detroit is what's called a "lienfield" (pun on "minefield"). Many of the properties in Detroit have old city liens whose amounts far exceed any conceivable value of the property. In theory, the city could write the old, uncollectable liens off in order to get the property back into productive use again... but in reality, it can't afford to. The value of those old liens might be a polite fiction that exists only on paper... but it's a polite fiction that's propped up what's left of Detroit's credit rating. If Detroit started writing off old liens, its credit rating would plunge.
If America wants to save Detroit (the literal city of Detroit... the larger metro area is doing just fine), the best place to start would be to change the laws for environmental liability so that someone who buys a property there in good faith, then discovers an environmental nightmare below the surface that they literally had nothing whatsoever to do with, could at least wash their hands of the loss and walk away without being on the hook for more than what they paid for the property.
Note that this problem isn't unique to Detroit... cities all across the "Rust Belt" have problems with abandoned factories rendered untouchable by legal liability. Detroit just happens to have a lot MORE of them relative to its total land area. THIS is the #1 reason why when a factory closes, the land it sat on sits abandoned more or less "forever", and new factories only get built on virgin land (usually, far away from those same factories).
This is also part of the reason why some have advocated having the City demolish entire blocks that have been abandoned by their owners... individually, those derelict properties are worth less than nothing... but as a vacant lot that's a square block in size, they might start to become interesting to investors. Especially if those same investors can buy SEVERAL adjacent square blocks & get the City to agree to vacate the streets & infrastructure dividing them so the property can be redeveloped as a single huge structure. And more importantly, with residents gone from the area, the former neighborhood can become the site of a new factory (that would NEVER be allowed to get built next to a residential area, no matter HOW poor it is).
Been watching these assholes sling their weight around for almost 50 years. Fuck the assholes who make the laws who empower the police. Police are just another cult group like the NRA or the Catholic Church, preying on peoples fears. Everyone wants us to feel sorry for the Police since they got ambushed, yet I didn't see any of those same assholes bitching about their fellow cult members shooting unarmed citizens. Downmod away.
The point about details is a good one. We won't know if the killing of Micah Johnson was justified until we know the details. He undoubtedly deserved it but that's irrelevant. Police bring people to justice; or if they have to they kill people who pose an imminent threat to others. But in no circumstance should they ever mete out justice.
Killing a suspect has to be on the decision tree somewhere -- e.g. when an armed person has hostages and a police sniper has a clear shot. However, that doesn't mean you get to kill someone because you're pissed, even (or perhaps especially) when you're very justifiably pissed. You should follow the procedure you carefully thought out before you ended up in the heat of the moment.
If you do follow the procedure and you get to the kill-the-suspect box on the flowchart, you should just do it, then go home and try sleep soundly, knowing you did a difficult job as well anyone could be expected to do it. But if you don't follow the procedure you're guilty of manslaughter, albeit possibly with extenuating circumstances.
How you feel about doing it doesn't come into the decision one way or another, because people in highly charged emotional situations are lousy judges of what should be done. Micah Johnson was pissed, possibly justifiably, over the shooting of Philando Castile, so it seemed perfectly reasonable to him to go out and kill five guys who had absolutely nothing to do with it.
That's what we're up against: reptilian brain thinking armed with advanced ape technology. So the rule has to be that the reptilian brain doesn't get to decide what to do. Even when it feels like the right thing; what your primitive brain wants always feels like the right thing.
If the Dallas cops did what their training and policy says they should do, but simply did it creatively, I commend them. If they cut corners, then it's a disciplinary, possibly a criminal matter. In our society everyone is supposed to restrain themselves and act lawfully. Even the cops.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You're right. This isn't about platforms, this is about following the law and IMNSHO, DPD did not do that. Without any information except what has been reported on this and other websites, it appears that after preventing his ability to move, cordoning off the area and attempting to negotiate for hours, they made a judgment call to end his life. He may or may not have been a threat to the general population or to the officers on scene. Regardless, the power to end another life is precisely what is at issue in the mind of the shooter, the mind of the police and the mind of every US citizen that is aware of the increase in police violence. Civilian police forces should not be in the business of killing people and that's what the constitution is talking about with the phrase "due process". It's the military's job to kill people and the military are not peace officers, they are war officers. The distinction is important and bound by law, but increasingly ignored by police forces with the aid of the federal government. The militarization (not just a FUD word, but literally, the conversion of peace officers to war officers) of police forces is the issue and the reason why there was a protest in Dallas and the reason why Johnson went mental and decided to kill cops there. Assassinating him (look up the definition) only reinforces the feeling among Americans that the police are out of control. Did he deserve to die? Most likely, but it isn't the job of police forces to determine that. That is what a judge and jury are for and one of the reasons thirteen colonies because thirteen states after a long and bloody war. If there is not a strong legal reaction to DPD's use of force in this way, the situation will get worse, not better. If there is not a show of restraint by those who are sworn to "serve and protect" there will be escalation that leads to civil war. The USA has already had one and we should do everything we can to avoid another because it was the single great cause of American deaths, ever. If you say you care about people, then you should care about upholding the law, especially for those who are given guns by the government chosen "by the people".
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
The mods here went full on conservative about a decade ago.
As I understand it:
The mods are chosen algorithmically from the non-anonymous Slashdot users.
The meta-mods, who moderate the moderators' decisions (and affect the algorithm's future awarding of moderator points) are self-chosen.
Are you saying that the algorithm went right-wing? Or that the meta-moderators drove it that way?
Or are you saying that you, personally, are so left-wing that the general membership's moderation looks right-wing to you.
= = = =
A hint, though:
Many left-wingers apply social pressure to each other to conform to certain behavioral templates. This includes agreeing with a number of ideological points, regardless of whether they are consistent with observed reality - or each other.
To someone who has internalized this idea system, any questioning of any of its points is a sign of heresy or non-membership. This calls for immediate criticism - to return the straying sheep to the fold or to attack a non-member of the flock.
Such criticism often takes the form of labelling the heretical speaker as right-wing, i.e. a member of the perceived largest group of enemies.
To a true believer, any deviation honestly appears to be a product of the alleged vast right-wing conspiracy.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You are drawing a false equality/similarity. The majority of police shooting are NOT directed at homicide suspects. So it would not be surprising to find that if one broke down the distributions of citizens killed by police to find a racial disparity in homicide suspects being killed and, as you point out, this wouldn't be surprising. However since the majority of police do not involve homicide suspects it is hard to say. It is even harder to say because the Republican controlled Congress has blocked funding to study police violence.
The founders of this nation distrusted standing armies, viewing them as inherent threats to liberty. The Second Amendment was primarily established as a way to secure the ability of the People to defend their Nation. The burning of the Capitol in 1814 might well have heralded the death of the civilian militia: the defenders, though vastly more numerous, were unarmed or poorly armed, and completely failed to impede the British Army. Even before the War of 1812, with the purchase of the original six frigates of the United States Navy, we turned away from the path of the citizen militia, and since then we have gone so far away from the ideals of our founding as to have amassed the largest and most expensive defensive force that the world has ever seen.
There have been a handful of examples where the U.S. Military has been used against its own citizens, but overall the threat to (domestic) liberty has been negligible, although the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII could be an important exception to the rule. The Founders' fears of standing armies were completely mistaken -- or were they?
Until the middle of the 19th Century, guns were expensive, time-consuming to maintain and to fire, and police forces when they existed at all were armed with swords and clubs. During the middle of the 19th Century, however, we see a great shift in American society and culture. The Civil War spread both arms and conflict, and men like Samuel Colt both popularized and enabled gun ownership on a wide scale. It was (as far as I am aware) during this era that police forces were instituted -- and armed.
Today we have a national crisis. The country resounds with gunfire, and daily we hear of new atrocities, of acts of brutality, and of ever-greater police powers. I believe that we have taken the idea of the citizen soldier to its ultimate bloody conclusion, and that we must disband this hostile Army which has set itself over us. I believe we also have a duty to disband the Gun Culture or perhaps even to disarm ourselves as well, given the failure of the purpose of the 2nd Amendment and the examples of other countries around the globe. We have badly strayed from our founding principles. We have a new Civil War which is escalating daily. We need to drastically revise our society, starting with our Police.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Here's the source of the DoJ stat:
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...
Unfortunately, there aren't really any consistent and nation-wide statistics on the race of people killed by police (no national database with consistent reporting), but here are some stats:
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub... (Table 5, pg 22)
2003-2009, 2011: whites make up a bigger percentage (47.8%) of deaths than blacks (28.4%)
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
2015: 990 people shot by police. 494 (49.9%) white, 258 (26.1%) black, 172 (17.4%) hispanic, 38 other, 28 unknown
https://www.washingtonpost.com... ... 52% through the year)
2016 so far: 509 total. 238 (46.8%) white, 123 (24.2%) black
we are 190 days into this year, which is a leap year (190/366
If you forward-project based on the current average, there will be 978 police shootings in 2016, 458 white and 237 black
http://www.theguardian.com/us-...
The Guardian has different numbers: 569 total. 279 whites. 137 black
If you use per-million numbers: 3.25 blacks/million, 1.41 whites/million
He just killed 5 people and wounded others. The five he killed were armed and trained. Of course he was an imminent threat. Would you walk into a building some fuknut was likely trying to lure you into after all that? I'll admit that the remote control drones have encouraged a casual attitude toward killing in other theaters, but there was nothing casual about this particular event. They absolutely made the right call to not risk any more lives trying to take that guy. If I was going to debate against use of drones I wouldn't start with the incident where it was unquestionably the best decision.