I love you too, Beffy-poo.

Telan Desaria

Indeed. The classification is deserved - - think of how many people rune away from fire, where we run towards it. Some one robs a bank and people cower in fear, we charge in. Someone gets mugged and bystanders turn away - we stare right at it - - and stop it.

We devote our lives to the pursuit of order and the enforcement of the law, in many cases - including my own - to the detriment of all things personal.

We are all human, yes. But some have abandoned their humanity, defiling the law and their fellow man. We stand up to them and defend humanity, but get quite dirty in the process. We are loathed, berated, cat called, and hated. But we perservere.

We are perhaps not human, after all.

We are law enforcement officers

You are no more or less human than the rest of us. You have a fancy badge, a fancy title and a fancy sense of authority which together combined allow you to exercise a certain degree of "control" over the fates of those around you who commit acts of supposed malevolency. You are vulnerable to misjudgment and corruption, as is everyone else. Morality and "justice" are subjective. Being a law enforcement officer is a job, a career (albeit, perhaps. an "honourable" one) -- not a ticket for instant access to the next notch on the evolutionary ladder.

Indeed not - -but is more than a career. It is a way of life. But you are also wrong. We must be less human at times, and more at others. Ours is not easy and until you have had a child die in your arms, or heard the report of a weapon aimed at you, or fought for your very life, you cannot begin to fathom what we must go through.

Are you saying that this man did not deserve to die after killing three police officers????


What of the man who killed six people in Lanmcaster County, PA this morning? What of him - -he killed innocent women and children? Did the PA State Police not have a right to shoot him had he not shot himself?

Yes,. we are vulnerable to misjudgement - mistakes will always be made. But better one innocent man in prison so that a thousand criminals might pay their debt to society.

Oh, BTW, an autopsy report came back on the killed officer. He was shot a total of eight times. The last two gunshots to impact him were against the side of the head and the temple, and they were both zero contact wounds, or in other words, the muzzle of the gun was touching his skin.

See, that's just excessive. Makes you wonder, what did the police officer do wrong? (aside from getting shot and killed, of course)

And, hey Park... My uncle is a Gendarmerie royale du Canada (that's Royal Canadian Mounted Police for those of you who can't Google). He may be a racist, fascist pig, but he's compotent when it comes to doing the things we pay "cops" to do. Although I find that he, like many others in his line of work, tend to forget that they are, in fact, Civil Servants, and as such serve the Public Trust...

Ahem - - there is nothing wrong with facism....

there is nothing wrong with facism....

You need look no further then that endorsment and, observing its source, understand exactly what is wrong with facism.

One can have a child die in one's arms, and one can have a gunshot aimed and narrowly miss one's head, and not be ubercool.

If the state that the killings took place in had the death penalty and the person was brought in, tried and found guilty, then executed, I'd have no problem with the man dying (well minus the whole I dislike capital punishment, but that's for another day). But to say that "oh, he killed 3 officers, now we have to shoot 120 times at him and hit him with 68 of those", that seems excessive (though so were the man's methods according to the autopsy report that Kraken mentioned, but that doesn't justify them being excessive).

I'm not saying they were wrong to shoot him in the circumstances (if the report is right and not the rumour, that he didn't do what he was told and kept one hand hidden, its reasonable to assume he has a gun given the past violence and therefore better to kill him before he wounds/kills other innocents, per chance with less shots though) but the concept of "he killed 3 people (ignoring your constant qualifier of "officers", that shouldn't make a difference) so he deserves to die without due process of the law as is his constitutional right(I think)" isn't necessarily the best because then an officer might decide to gun him down on the street as he walks to a store or something, which goes against the US court/judicial system. That could even be prone to more anarchy, rather than less as law enforcement officers try to achieve, as law enforcement officers could take it upon themselves to be the judge, jury and executioner, when that is not their place, and vigilante justice (even if its the same as what a judge and jury would have decided) is not right. And I'm not saying the officers in question in this scenario were vigilantes or anything, quite the opposite, they were justified in shooting the man as he could very well have posed a threat to them, but the concept of "he killed someone so he deserves to die, maybe I'll take it upon myself to kill him as he walks to the store rather than first try to arrest him" is not right, its murder (no matter how justified the murder may be).

My thoughts? If the man didn't reveal his second hand than, since he is known to be armed and dangerous, they had to shoot to kill. So. If you're going to kill him anyways, might as well get out some frustration and make a point.

I read an account in the paper from one of the SWAT team members. When the suspect didn't raise his second hand, one of the officers started to walk around the downed tree, and then the suspect raised his second hand. It may have been upwards in a gesture of surrender, but he was still holding Deputy William's gun in that hand, whereupon the SWAT team members immediatley opened fire.

And yes Jan, he would have been put to death if he had gone to trial in this state. Although we have a bit of a problem here right now where you may rot on death row for 15-20 years before you actually die.