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Comment by ramon156 | Hacker News Reader

> the prosecution evidence is insufficient to rebut the officers' assertion that they were acting in self defence

Awesome, they got away with unlawfully killing a man.

In protest at the suspensions, over 120 out of the 400 Metropolitan Police officers authorised to use firearms handed in their firearms authorisation cards, with Glen Smyth, a Police Federation spokesman saying, "The officers are very concerned that the tactics they are trained in, as a consequence of the verdict, are now in doubt."[10] The officers' suspensions were lifted shortly afterwards.[11]

What a joke.

Many, many people think the tactics they're trained in are exactly the problem - a few hours at most training in deescalation, little to no training in recognising or dealing with the mentally unwell, hundreds of hours of training in putting a bullet inn somebody

They got away with accidentally unlawfully killing a man while doing an inherently dangerous job by the book. You can blame the system for that certainly and propose changes, but I don't think it's fair to charge the officers with murder for acting in what they believed to be fully justified self defense in the normal course of their job.

> At the junction of Fremont Street and Victoria Park Road in South Hackney, close to his home, Inspector Neil Sharman and PC Kevin Fagan, the crew of a Metropolitan Police armed response vehicle challenged Stanley from behind. As he turned to face them, they shot him dead at a distance of 15 feet (5 m).

While it may have been an accident, it was a negligent accident. If I accidentally killed someone with a gun I would go to prison. In addition they were found guilty by the jury. It was overturned due to political pressure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Harry_Stanley

I think what's fair is to expect police officers to have as their top priority the protection the citizens they are serving. Too often they seem to have as a top priority the protection of themselves, which means as a consequence that they'd rather risk the lives of others than their own. What good are they to us then?

You can't afford police that give up their own safety.

How much would your employer need to pay you for you to sacrifice your own safety for your job?

I travel to work, and engaging with the outdoors, traffic, etc. involves sacrificing safety that I wouldn't have if I stayed at home.

So, how much would my employer need to pay me? Not much, I guess? I definitely get paid less than the average cop in my city.

There are plenty of jobs that involve sacrificing safety, but very few of them give you the opportunity to kill people because you "didn't want to give up your own safety".

Very weird question. What do you think most jobs entail? Driving, mining, warehousing, even office jobs all come with risks. Perhaps the most relevant example though is firefighting. Just like in policing, there is obvious risk you take on in exchange for early retirement etc.

The last mindset I want policemen to have is to go into every situation assuming the worst because of a small chance their safety may be at risk. Which is exactly what it seems happened.

You can't just shoot someone who's holding a bag with something in it just because some random person has judged it could be a firearm.

“The officers had told the inquest that Mr. Stanley had turned around ‘in a slow, deliberate, fluid motion’ and pointed his wrapped-up table leg at PC Fagan, adopting a classic firing posture, which prompted Chief Insp. Sharman to open fire, hitting him in the head.” [1]

Yeah right, that definitely happened. An innocent man is dead because some damn pig wanted to kill someone. That is all this is.

"Times Online reports a “furious reaction from fellow police marksmen, who are threatening to lay down their weapons in a rebellion which could hamper security plans for the G8 summit of international leaders. Some members of the Yard’s elite SO19 firearms unit are already refusing to carry guns, saying that these arrests have shattered morale.”" [1]

barf

[1]: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/06/stan-j07.html

Being a policeman isn't even very dangerous, I don't think it even breaks top 50 most dangerous jobs.

It's not normally dangerous, on average. That doesn't mean confronting an armed suspect in a dangerous part of town is "safe" and that there's no reason for officers to get jumpy when that person turns and appears to point a concealed gun at them.

I'm not saying I know a better solution, but punishing officers for acting in what they believed to be self-defense in a very scary life-threatening situation doesn't seem particularly helpful. If you put your employees in a situation where they feel like they have to chose between a possible trip to jail and a possible trip to the morgue, they're going to pick jail every time, assuming they're even dumb enough to put themselves in that situation by working for you in the first place.

I agree it's not the correct solution because the issue is systemic, not individual. Punishing individual officers won't affect the overlying system.

But it's important to note that officers are specifically taught to be jumpy and aggressive. That's not a natural response. The reason we see so many accidental shooting is because the training around it encourages it. Accidentally shooting a few innocent people in the pursuit of stamping out crime is a necessary evil in the eyes of American police.

Ultimately, the police only really know how to shoot, and we put them in situations they're not equipped to handle. It's not shocking, then, that people end up getting shot. They truly have no business doing wellness calls, or mental health assistance, or even routine traffic stops.

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