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Consider the argument we just heard from the mental health specialist: a person who does not respond to the direct command of a police officer to drop a knife is, by definition, a person who is mentally ill?  All manner of criminals with felonious intent to not respond to commands to drop their weapons.  Does this automatically make them mentally ill and therefore give them a pass to attack the officer, at their whim?

Get real!

posted 3 years, 2 months ago
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When a person is moving quickly, even an A+ certified sniper marksman would have trouble nicking an arm or leg.  That stuff happens on TV as when Matt Dillon shots the gun out of the hand of the masked bad man.  It doesn't happen in real life because it can't.  Police are trained to aim for the target a forward-moving assailant presents, and that's the trunk, not the flailing or displacing limbs of someone coming at you.

posted 3 years, 2 months ago
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Yesterday before sunrise I came down my driveway to find a homeless man rummaging through my garbage can.  When he saw me, he began speaking in a slurred incoherent manner.  He was clearly someone with "mental health issues."  Had he run at me, I would have reserved the right to run away if I could, or struggle with him to defend myself if I had to. There is no requirement that I let him touch me or harm me just because he's some sad sack high on stuff.

That said, I was not a policeman charged with protecting others.

Based on the accounts I am hearing, the homeless man in the Arboretum had menaced others and was running at the policeman with a knife in his hand.

In such a heightened moment, there is no time to call in psychologists to assess the danger to the cop over and against the civil rights of the attacker and the cop is not required to be sliced up in order to protect the life of an assailant who may actually be crazed enough to do the cop harm.

I heard someone yesterday on OPB claim that this episode should have been dealt with in a more democratic and peace loving manner.  I do wonder, if someone jumped his wife on a dark street, would he call his friends and discuss what to do next or would he dial 911 and shout "Help!"

posted 3 years, 2 months ago
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