Better the lives of ten cops than one innocent

I believe that the life of one innocent man is more important than a single LEO's. LEO's have signed up for a job they knew to be potentially fatal. I don"t believe all LEO's are power hungry evil scum, but at what point do we take a step back and look at the reality of the situation? The police have become a highly militarized force. With military force comes military muscle. The police are turning this country into a war-zone. When a highly militarized group has muscle they tend to use it, much like our country uses it's might for war and domination rather than peace. The average officer isn't trained for war, they tend to resolve issues with their own safety in mind rather than the safety of the citizen. They also lack the ability to see the bigger picture.

It is a sad day when the population fears and hates those that keep them safe.

I believe police are necessary.... I don't believe half of what we have, is, though. People call them pigs but I see them more as hyena's. Police seem far more predatory than they should be.

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer",
Blackstone

This is not the modern sentiment.


Only 32 officers were shot and killed in 2013, 2 were stabbed to death, and 1 was bomb related. The rest, total of 102, were accidents. These are national numbers. link

Total number of killings in 2013 by law enforcement officers in the United States: 320 link

Wow look at that! 320 people killed by police officers! 34ish officers killed by people! (FYI I say 34ish because some stats are for things like "struck by vehicle" but they don't discern between whether accident or homicidal)
The numbers seem very one sided to me.


818 people died in the construction trade in 2013 link

Seems to me these officers that are so afraid for their lives are in a much safer place than those that build this country.


Anyway my point that I am getting to is that the general LEO needs to be disarmed. There should be a separate department that deals with and responds to violent crimes. We should not send people with guns to check noise complaints, traffic violations, etc. If force is required and can't be dealt with by using a stun gun or pepper spray the LEO should call professionals in. The money saved on weapons could easily be used to buy camera's and such.

Better 10 police die than 1 innocent

Seriously?

a reply to: fieldyznutz

Yes

Yes again

and... Yes a third time

ETA: just an FYI you should think about changing your SN. Nobody takes children seriously.

WOW. really?! LMFAO. Actually... big

???

The next time you're in a serious emergency, don't bother calling these hyenas whose live's don't matter to come to your aide.

Ironic that the OP has the name Einstein in the signature line.

You failed to list the stats on how many of those officer related deaths were people who were clearly attempting to do serious harm to the officer before the officer shot him. You know like those idiots who tried to execute two cops in Missouri not so long ago. They were asking for trouble. They had their guns drawn, and if they hadn't been shot, they would have shot the cops, so you could have added two more to your officer fatalities.

So, where is the division on those who were armed and dangerous and those who should maybe have not been shot?

a reply to: cleverhans

Read this

Didn't bother then so why would I now?

a reply to: theyknowwhoyouare

Better the lives of zero cops and zero innocents.

Life is not cheap!

originally posted by: ketsuko
You failed to list the stats on how many of those officer related deaths were people who were clearly attempting to do serious harm to the officer before the officer shot him. You know like those idiots who tried to execute two cops in Missouri not so long ago. They were asking for trouble. They had their guns drawn, and if they hadn't been shot, they would have shot the cops, so you could have added two more to your officer fatalities.

So, where is the division on those who were armed and dangerous and those who should maybe have not been shot?

I would go out on a limb and hazard a guess of probably a sizable chunk. I bet it is less than half though.

originally posted by: lonesomerimbaud
a reply to: theyknowwhoyouare

Better the lives of zero cops and zero innocents.

Life is not cheap!

great point but unrealistic

a reply to: theyknowwhoyouare

I think all lives matter.

originally posted by: theyknowwhoyouare

I believe police are necessary.

Herein lies the problem.

Necessary for what, exactly? The only function I see law enforcement performing is the maintenance and protection of the establishment status quo through fear, intimidation, and outright violence. If coercion is what's necessary to ensure social cohesion, the society simply isn't worth defending.

I don't believe it's like that, though. Are the police really necessary? If you want to look at it from a cost-benefit perspective, do they do more good than harm?

I'm not sure that they do, although my perspective is skewed: I'm not heavily vested in the system the police exist to protect.

I think that blaming the police is often an acceptable response, but the police officers themselves are usually not the ones making decisions that have a broader effect. For instance, the militarization of the police is not something the individual officers are responsible for. The police are definitely responsible for their actions however, especially when they make incorrect decisions. But if they do something that they were trained to do, they are not really the ones to blame in my opinion. The bigger issue is why they were trained in such a manner. So we need to ensure that we separate actions that were perpetrated by an officer themselves, from actions that the officer was told to use. Of course they are not trained for every possible situation, and must use their own common sense, but I'm just saying we should make it a point to place the blame where it lies. And it only lies with the police when they make a decision that is wrong, and for which they were not trained.

The first thought I had when reading your title is that police officers are people, and are often just as innocent as the "innocent" that you describe. They are all citizens and thus have certain rights. It is not as if it is somehow more tragic for an innocent civilian to be killed than it is for an innocent police officer to be killed. No life is worth more than any other. Just because police perform a dangerous job does not somehow make their lives less valuable. That is just wrong. Then there is the fact that there are few situations in which the outcome would result in either the death of a police officer or an innocent civilian. If the police kill an innocent person, the police are still alive, and even if the officer was executed you do not have either the innocent or the officer being killed, but both. One of the only instances I can think of would be if the cops served a no-knock warrant at the wrong house, or didn't announce themselves properly at the wrong house, and an officer was killed by an innocent civilian, and that civilian was arrested without being killed. In such a scenario it definitely would be right to say that the civilian is more justified in killing the officer than the officer would have been in killing the civilian, although this says nothing of the value of their lives. The fault would lie with the police in that instance. There are also situations in which the police would be more justified, but those are few and far between, but not impossible.
Another important thing is the rights I mentioned earlier. A police officer can have their rights infringed upon by a civilian. What you were essentially saying though is that the police are agents of the government, and because of that they should be held to a higher standard. This is absolutely true. But again, this does not make their lives worth less than a civilian.

a reply to: xuenchen

Same here, but we all make our choices. And some people do not make smart ones.

originally posted by: th2356
Ironic that the OP has the name Einstein in the signature line.

It is a quote

Please explain the Irony...

I find it ironic that there are so many new members flocking to this post pretending to not be cops while they troll

I work in the construction trade and we probably get paid better than the cops.

Maybe it would be better to say 10 law breaking thugs die instead of 1 LEO.

You say 320 people killed by LEO in 2013 and 34 LEO killed. We are a nation of 300 million so 320 is like what? 1% or .1

Of 320 killed how many were productive members of society?

Of the 34 Officers killed how many of those were productive members of society? I guess all of them.

Personally I would rather have a cop as a neighbor than some law breaking thug that is going to find his demise at the end of a gun barrell....
Wouldn't you?

a reply to: NthOther


Maybe the police of a large city, say chicago, should not show up to work for one week.
We should know by the end of that week if the cops do more harm than good.

originally posted by: NthOther

originally posted by: theyknowwhoyouare

I believe police are necessary.

Herein lies the problem.

Necessary for what, exactly? The only function I see law enforcement performing is the maintenance and protection of the establishment status quo through fear, intimidation, and outright violence. If coercion is what's necessary to ensure social cohesion, the society simply isn't worth defending.

I don't believe it's like that, though. Are the police really necessary? If you want to look at it from a cost-benefit perspective, do they do more good than harm?

I'm not sure that they do, although my perspective is skewed: I'm not heavily vested in the system the police exist to protect.

Although I get the sentiment groups of vigilantes "keeping the peace" will be far worse. There would be a lot of gang wars and such