lucky760 said:

My final thought: One mitigating factor with this specific happenstance in lieu of your general point is that this guy very obviously wanted to die and wanted those cops to kill him. He was apparently doing whatever he had to to get the cops to kill him.

Bottom line we can all agree on: it sucks.

lucky760 said:

Side note: I've just realized you're in Australia, and a very salient point worth mentioning is that you're probably thinking about how awful and "uncivilized" we are in America because you're comparing our police to yours, considering how much better your cops would be in a situation like this and how a fellow Australian criminal wouldn't deserve what these cops did.

It's possible you're just comparing our blood-thirsty cops to your more sensible, contemplative cops, but that you're forgetting to compare our blood-thirsty, cold-blooded, murderous cop-killer criminals with your more sensible, reasonable criminals. The cops here do things Australian cops might not do, but it may be because your cops don't have to.

Yes, it might help as it has in places like Australia for us to outlaw guns, however that won't ever happen because it's part of the inextricable bedrock used to found this great nation, so we have to do the best we can with what we have.

lucky760 said:

The problem is you're talking out of both sides of your mouth.

On the one hand you're saying you know how dangerous a guy with a knife is. That being the case, you know that as close as he was to one of the officers, he could have murdered the officer if the officer attempted anything other than to completely stop him (by killing him).

And on the other hand you're saying the officer should consider the guy's mental well-being. Okay, and do what about it, try to talk him into seeking counseling?

There is no such thing as "containing the situation" when "the situation" is a guy standing a very close distance to you with a knife and approaching. There's no talking to him, no tasing him, no tossing a net over him... there's nothing that will guarantee he won't stab you except shooting him.

Still on a third hand you're staying it's part of an officer's job to risk his life to deal with the threat instead of neutralizing it, but that you feel officers shouldn't gamble with their lives. Those two concepts are completely contradictory.

It's quite a thing to realize he's dead within 20 seconds of the police arriving, but everything about that has zero bearing on his killing. When a guy is approaching an officer with a knife within seconds of their arrival, he's not going to call out to the guy and bystanders to ask them if the guy was showing aggression to anyone else because why in the fuck would that matter. He's directly showing aggressive intent towards the officers themselves for goodness' sake! Nothing that happened before that matters.

If as a cop your life is in imminent danger, the guy's mental state, what he did before you arrived, what alternatives to a gun *might* stop him or "contain" him... NONE of that matters because THERE IS A GUY COMING TOWARDS YOU WITH A KNIFE. That's all the cops were thinking and that's all they needed to be thinking when they decided they had to to shoot him to have as close to a 100% chance of survival as possible.

To summarize: Guy approaches you menacingly with a knife, you. must. shoot. him, if you want to attempt to guarantee you're not going to die.

BUT

we can agree to disagree.

lucky760 said:

Finally a voice of reason. So very glad I'm not all alone on this. Thanks for chiming in.

It's such an obvious thing, but maybe only to people who are aware how dangerous a guy with a knife can be that nearby.

(But still, @ChaosEngine seems to be aware of that and still thinks the officers should be obligated to gamble with their lives.)

lucky760 said:

It's homemade because it's just some guy who bought a drone and flew it around composing professional-looking videos.

I wouldn't imagine he'd have to build a drone from spare parts and only record video inside his home for it to be validly considered homemade.

newtboy said:

Really. Seemed a simple question of which side of this you're on, one that you can't answer (apparently because to be on the side of what's obviously 'right' you have to be against the anti-Obama sentiment, which seems to be quite a quandary)
Really, you can't even take a position on the constitution? I just find that odd. I'll state clearly I'm for it, as the alternative is terrible.
I'm guessing the ' I don't know that the cop was anti-Obama.' is the 'joking' part of your reply? I'll just hope you aren't really that insanely intentionally dense.
It's totally a 'one against the other' here, the cop, angry at Obama, uses the misinformation talking heads gave him (that Obama has destroyed the constitution) as an excuse to not perform his duties and to actually do the opposite by breaking the laws and flaunting it on video.
Not everything is pro-this or against-that...but when you base your argument on ridiculous right wing pro-anger anti-Obama talking points and then use that false argument to shirk your legal duty and/or break the law, it is.

oritteropo said:

Greetings, sir. As you have upvoted Slayer vids in the past, it occurs to me you might like this rather odd banjo cover by Rob Scallon:

oritteropo said:

Thanks for the *quality

oritteropo said:

Someone else saw your comment too

oritteropo said:

Congrats on the shiny gold star. It suits you

newtboy said:

ChaosEngine,
Just a side note after reading your comments...I visited NZ in the late 80's. You have the most beautiful country and nicest, most polite people of any place I've ever visited. Just thought I'd complement you and yours.
-Newtboy

Mordhaus said:

*quality

TheGenk said:

@EMPIRE @ChaosEngine: What you want is Deltron 3030, nerdy, socially critical sci-fi hip-hop