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Bodycam video shows Illinois cop shooting unarmed 14-year-old suspected of breaking a window
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this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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THE POLICE PROBLEM
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The police problem is that police are policed by the police. Cops are accountable only to other cops, which is no accountability at all.
99.9999% of police brutality, corruption, and misconduct is never investigated, never punished, never makes the news, so it's not on this page.
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Cops can and do get away with lawlessness, because cops protect other cops. If they don't, they aren't cops for long.
The legal doctrine of "qualified immunity" renders police officers invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do. In practice, getting past 'qualified immunity' is so unlikely, it makes headlines when it happens.
All this is a path to a police state.
In a free society, police must always be under serious and skeptical public oversight, with non-cops and non-cronies in charge, issuing genuine punishment when warranted.
Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.
That's the solution.
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Tell the story for what it. A police officer shot a child. What they were or weren't suspected of, whether they had a weapon or not, doesn't matter.
I mean, yes it does. Like it or not, in the US it's not unheard of for a 14 year old to have a gun. The fact that he was unarmed is very relevant.
It's not illegal to be armed. It's also not a death sentence. It's only relevant if they're armed AND shooting.
You'd think gun right activists would more concerned with this reality. But I can assume the skin color without reading the article and that is a more uncomfortable reality for them to acknowledge; the reason some of them need to be armed.
Spot on. The sad fact is, the best gun reform we ever got was when the black panthers decided to arm themselves.
I think it's relevant because it's evidence the teen was not a threat. I don't think it's implying an armed individual would automatically be a threat.
There are articles that do draw that false equivalence, and they deserve being called out. I don't think this is one of them.
Also, do you believe that a suspect needs to shoot first before being considered a threat by police? I would say "armed and brandishing" would make the individual a legitimate threat.
That's fair. I'd read an article titled with that.