The way young black people are systematically seen as more dangerous and more adult than young white people is absolutely an issue. At the same time, it's hard to say a girl of any race or skin color with a knife in her hand lunging at someone isn't a threat. Even if she did not intend to lethally stab anyone, the knife in her hand does not particularly care what her intent is and grievous injury or a lethal outcome absolutely was possible even without her intending to go that far.

Does that justify shooting her four times? No, there were almost certainly better ways to handle it. At the same time, this actually is one of those times where the cop had to make a snap-second decision. Unless and until cops get proper training, this kind of utterly shitty situation will keep happening (and yes, the way black people are systematically perceived as more threatening than a white person in the exact same circumstances means it will keep happening disproportionately to black people) and people will end up killed by cops for little to no reason--with or without said cops being raging flaming openly-racist shitbags.

I feel this case belongs in the camp "caused by shitty training, with the systemic racism in policing definitely not helping matters" rather than the "caused by openly racist cops, though the shitty training won't have helped any" camp. Both are wrong, both are serious issues, both need fixing. They aren't the exact same issue, though, and need different solutions. (Can't fix openly racist cops by improving training--they plain need to be removed from policing. Can't fix under-trained cops by firing blatant racists--if the primary response to "(perceived) threatening situation" remains "draw gun, open fire, stop firing when threat stops moving", people will keep dying for no good reason)

You're acting like that "verifiably fraudulent paper" was the backbone of that metanalysis when it was barely a footnote.

Perhaps I was too hasty in insisting that glyphosate causes cancer. But definitively stating the opposite is just as reckless. The science is inconclusive and its carcinogenic nature is disputed. But I would urge caution in dismissing any conclusion that would be devastating to Monsanto. They're not exactly known for their rigorous commitment to scientific accuracy.

This is just dealing in hypotheticals. There have been such cases in history and they were wrong. This wasn't one of them and a snap decision had to be made. It's dangerous to feed such hatred for one institution and all of its employees and claim that any violence against a minority is the result of racism. Sometimes its just the situation.



This!

Nah fuck the cops. That guy seemed to have gotten out of his car immediately ready with a gun with no other plan. Another trigger happy pile of garbage.

People will say what I said was a hypothetical while gladly eating up the idea that this 16 year old was some kind of monster who couldn't be handled any other way, and that this was some type of murderous homicidal situation rather than a dumb street fight between children that went off the rails - fucking joke really.

I can't think of any situation where I'd feel alright giving any thumbs up to the police for killing random citizens. Especially 16 year olds or younger. Please note that this isn't saying "stabbing people is OK," just that the cops killing anyone is bad.

Street fights between children going off the rails can still end up with people hospitalized or dead even without murderous homicidal intent. Recognizing that, in that specific moment, she was a threat to another person is not remotely the same thing as "gladly eating up the idea" she was an irredeemable monster that deserved being killed.

She was not a monster. She did not deserve being killed. She should not have been killed. The cop should not have killed her, and had or should have had access to better methods of handling the situation than shooting her four times. That instead, his response was firing multiple bullets at her is not on the girl who was killed, but on the police. This was avoidable, this should have been avoided, and the fact such killings keep happening is utterly unacceptable.

But fixing the widespread racism among police is not enough to avoid more deaths like these. Proper training and screening out people whose immediate response to threats perceived or real remains trigger-happy even with proper training is also a necessity.

It's not like the police don't already have a nearly bottomless arsenal of "less-lethal" weaponry that they gleefully deploy with almost comical ease at large groups of kids anyway. Why the cop had to riddle a child with holes first is anyone's guess.

But at issue here is why the fuck American cops walk around with guns in their holster 24/7. I am 100% behind taking everyone's guns and throwing them into a big fire. But my red line for doing that is that FIRST we disarm the cops. They can still have military hardware available if needed, but the idea that some cop named Kevin is sent to do a wellness check on an 80 year old grandma with a semi-automatic on his belt is absurd.

The whole damn system is guilty as hell.

Are we seriously arguing "why did a cop shoot someone who was about to stab someone else"?

Like, fucking really?

Look, I'm 100% for police reform, 100% happy with Chauvin's verdict, but if the information that she was about to stab someone is correct... Like fuck, I don't think I would have done any different. There are few situations where lethal options are warranted, and saving someone else's life is definitely one of them. We can go into hypotheticals all day, that the cop could have talked her out, that he could have used a taser or some other less lethal weapon... But those weapons are usually shorter ranged and less efficient, and when someone else's life is in jeopardy, I don't think it's warranted to take any fucking chance. It's a shame she died from it, especially so young, but come the FUCK on, she was about to kill someone. We're not talking about a guy who was running from the cops unarmed, someone who was having a panic attack or who was argumentative, or someone who was holding a cellphone here. And look, maybe some information will come and show the cops could and should have used a non-lethal option (I don't trust cops to tell the truth about events, so it's possible we'll learn she wasn't actually attacking anyone, or she was holding a spoon or whatever), but I think it's absolutely bonkers that people are up in arms about a cop trying to save someone else.

I think some people's hatred for the cops is blinding them that they're willing to see any use of deadly force as wrong.

Force in the hands of an unjust system will always be unjust.

Defending the cops in any of these instances just seems like a bad way to go to me. But you're right about the fact that it should've been avoided, sure.

The problem is that there is no way to fix the issues in American policing with more training and screening. There's too much corruption and they protect their own a lot of the time. Every day you can find stories of how rotten to the core this is, even in spite of whatever ones people might know who seem personally OK. You will see some stories about cops getting fired now, but that's only after years of bad press for racism really.

There'd need to be total abolition and rebuilding it from the ground up without the cronyism, militarism, etc. Put in people who aren't like the ones there now, straight up to the top leadership.



Like I said, I don't know that I'd ever be OK with deadly force from the cops or the state. That's just giving them more power to kill wantonly.

I used to report on daily crime in numerous cities. There were always random violent things that happened. Most don't become homicides and I never reported on cop murders for every bar fight or violent tussle between random individuals. People take these police stories as fucking gospel, I swear.

I really don't think the cop is a murderer or anything for doing what he did. But if, as you say, the non-lethal options that cops are provided with are not reliable or quick enough to stop somebody with a knife, a weapon almost everyone in the country has easy access to, then it just proves there is a major problem. Cops have to make split-second decisions in situations like this, and if their gun is the most easy, most sure, and most efficient option, to the point where ending a life is worth using it instead, then it is inevitably going to be used way more than it needs to be. Even if the cop had no other real choice, this death is still unacceptable; it just means that the blame falls onto the way police are trained and equipped.

Of course, that's assuming that the non-lethal options actually aren't good enough. I'd have to do more research on the subject to come to a real conclusion. But the point is, even this wasn't the officer's fault, unnecessary deaths like this happen far too often, and are a symptom of a broken system.

That being said, this case is nowhere near comparable to the murder of people who actually weren't threats. It's absurd to act like it is.



Something about banning guns from civilian populations and still allowing law enforcement access to them, even if it's not constant access, doesn't sit well with me. Logically, the idea that we need guns to protect ourselves from an evil oppressive government is a completely laughable one, as if the balance of power between the government and its people are anywhere near equal with the access to guns we have. Maybe it's just the stupid revolutionary in me saying that's a step too far.

A man was shot in North Carolina while police served a warrant. Drug charges and misdemeanor drug-related offenses. The guy was supposedly fleeing, they riddled his car with bullets. I'm sure they're going to go with "car as a weapon" or some other bullshit.

Oh, he was black, of course.

I think its more important that we disarm the criminals and make guns less easy to access in society at large. People dead from regular people using deadly force is a far bigger problem. That is not to say the US police has problems with being overly violent as well but that isn't the biggest problem if we judge by the amount of dead people the two cause.

This reminds me of Swedish army politics from a couple of decades ago. The reasoning was that since we hadn't been in a conflict in several hundreds years and since we didn't want to fight a war we should disassemble the army. Well, us not having an army sure doesn't stop other from having it. Thankfully, we've started building it back up again.



In this case the victim wasn't a random citizen though. I don't think anyone here has said deadly force was the only solution only that if someone attacks another person so violently they risk killing them its probably not the time to blame the cop who stopped said violence. To me its much worse if an innocent person looses his/her life to another citizen by brutal force than for a person to loose his/her life while trying to kill someone else. Much the same way I think anyone who had shot another person (be it in US-style mass shootings or just the one time) has only himself to blame if he's shot dead by the police.



Yep!

It just goes to show that for some the hate towards the police, in any situation, overshadows when they actually protected someone from getting killed.

Out of curiosity Empyreal (and I'm not trying to be a smartass or anything, I'm genuinely curious about your thoughts), if it were you who were being attacked and potentially poked up with a knife in this situation, would you feel the same way about how the coppers reacted? Or if they'd first tried to use their taser and missed the target, and you received a fatal wound as a result?

Wasn't there recently just another case of a cop "accidentally" using a gun instead of a taser? I'd say that sounds like an alternative option might well be available.

Police tasers actually have two shots, so if the cop missed they would still get another shot.

If you can't hit twice with a taser at close range maybe you shouldn't be cleared for a firearm.

"BuT sHe HaD a KnIfE!!!"

Shut the fuck up you bootlicking fucks.

Now there's a trial I'm really not looking forward to.

A genocide denier calling everyone bootlickers. Rich.

The guy in the photo definitely does look like one

She sure did.



Maybe the cop should have assumed it was one of those prop knives used during plays.



She'd call anyone not in favor of the complete collapse of liberal democracy bootlickers so it's not like her use of the word means anything outside of extremely left, extremely insignificant political circles.

She was being assaulted and had the right to self-defense, including armed self-defense. The cops did not have a right to shoot her for protecting herself. The cops have tasers. They have extensive training in unarmed combat and restraint techniques, and they wear body armor. They're supposed to have training in conflict resolution. They are equipped to handle a situation like this without killing, but instead, they arrived and chose to shoot down the child who called for their assistance when she was attacked. The violence of the agents of an unjust system can never be just.

So openly recognizing that there are multiple, massive problems with cops, that this situation was handled utterly wrong, that this death should not have happened and is squarely on the police is being a "bootlicking fuck" if one dares to also recognize that maybe there is a bit of a difference--at least in so far as the underlying cause of the unjust death and thus which of the multiple issues with cops is at play--between the myriad of cases where cops murder unarmed, non-resisting black men and women for zero fucking reason on one hand and a case where the person shot was actively lunging at someone with a knife?

Suppose we have wildly different opinions on what's bootlicking, then.

I would expect a police force to be adequately trained in how to deal with a situation rather than turn up with an itchy trigger finger. Then again, I'm in the UK where knife crime is their bread and butter and deaths in such confrontations with police are rare. You know, because a knife is less deadly than a gun and because police have other options and decent training for the most part.

Beyond anything else though, bringing a gun to a knife fight is disproportionate, which is obviously something the US police are never accused of!

If you uphold a system that kills millions every single year so that a tiny, ghoulish minority can own everything while doing nothing, you're a bootlicking fuck.

If you make excuses for an institution born out of chattel slavery that exists solely for the protection of property and the enforcement of oppression and exploitation, you're a bootlicking fuck.

If you believe that the agents of injustice have a license to kill in the name of a travesty of "justice," you're a bootlicking fuck.

Sorry, I don't make the rules; I just report the facts.

TIL trying to stab someone who just walked away from you is self-defense.

https://youtu.be/-mbBvNTlpMg?t=25

Ohio is a 'Stand your Ground' state; she was under no legal obligation to retreat or cease defending herself. But that's to quibble over irrelevant details. The system that placed her in that situation is guilty as hell. The system that could not keep her safe where she lived is guilty as hell. The cops—who exist to enforce the injustice of that system—are guilty as hell of the crimes of the system they chose to become agents of, and they must be held to account.

Ah, so that's why I systematically vote for a socialist party, flyer for said party, have done several stints delivering said party's newsletter and have been involved in two attempts at setting up a municipal branch of said party. Because I'm a bootlicking fuck upholding the very system that hates my disabled LGBT+ socialist arse. Yup. You absolutely pegged me right.

Just an fyi, but not every form of socialism believes in preaching the party line to the denial of everything else including reality where inconvenient. It's possible to recognize capitalism for the massively unjust and problematic system it is, while simultaneously recognizing some issues have a significantly broader foundation than capitalism alone. Similarly, it's possible to recognize that, if we're not going to be in a position to fully abolish capitalism anytime soon, there are ways to limit at least some of its excesses. Which requires looking deeper into existing issues to peg their specific cause beyond a nebulous "capitalism". That's not "making excuses", that's recognizing that some issues can't be solved simply by abolishing capitalism, while some other issues can be solved or at least significantly reduced even without fully abolishing capitalism.

(And it's absolutely possible to be socialist while recognizing that atrocities can also happen in socialist and communist systems, and that a regime simply calling itself communist is not, in fact, sufficient reason to deny the genocide it is committing.)

Could you please research the actual event before producing an opinion?

https://www.essence.com/news/makiyah-br ... er-police/

tl;dr, the girl who was shot dead was the one who called the police; the other women were intruders and did not live there. The woman had "been jumped" by one of the intruders and grabbed a knife to protect herself. Perhaps the girl she lunged at had threatened her in some way. The police officer seemed to have made no attempts to de-escalate the situation or even yell "drop it or I'll shoot."

This is all alleged, but the idea that a snippet of bodycam footage paints such a complete picture where you can dismiss others' genuine concerns is nausea inducing. Cops are armed to the teeth with less-lethal weapons, shooting a child four times is completely unacceptable.

I know she was the one who called the police and that there apparently was an altercation before the cop arrived. That doesn't matter. The girl in pink removed herself from the situation and walked towards the cop. Ma'Khia then re-engaged and tried to stab girl in pink who at that point posed no danger to her. That's not defending yourself, or deciding "to not retreat". That's attempted assault with a deadly weapon.

I believe in Ohio it's legal to kill someone for intruding in your private property, particularly if they issued violent threats or used violence.

Regardless, the fact that there seems to have been no attempt to diffuse the situation or deployment of less-lethal force or simply yelling "drop the knife or I'll shoot" and immediately resorting to four bullet holes in a 16 year old is not acceptable. The sentence for brandishing a blade on your property should not be death.

You speak in the register of defeatism, of opportunism, of accommodation with that which cannot be accommodated within the framework of justice. I couldn't care less whether you speak that poison in the name of something you call "socialism" or not. I couldn't care less how you identify or who you canvas for; so long as you speak that poison, you are licking the boot. You speak of "reality" as if that were something that could be found in the mere facts of a moment abstracted from the whole society and world which gave birth to that moment, or the system that built and sustains that world, but that reality is simply a construction and artifact of the systems of power which uphold the present order. That you accept it as "real" doesn't change that it is not. I refuse to accept that false "reality." I refuse to bend the knee to the illegitimate power that calls that "reality" into being. I will work, tirelessly and as ruthlessly as I must, to shatter that "reality" and smash that power. I hope you can see your way clear to do the same, but if you don't, that, too, is your prerogative. Just know it makes you a fucking bootlicker.

You sound absolutely batshit insane right now.

I don't know much about us state law so someone can correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I'd imagine there have to be certain conditions for this to be legal, right? Like if the intruder doesn't want to leave after being asked to and is not moving away from you. If not and you can kill someone even if they're in the process of leaving, I think both of us would be against that law.

But I don't think this is very important while considering if the cop had a valid reason to use his gun or not. Taking into account the super short time frame and inability to warn Ma'Khia to back off before she was on the other girl, I think he did. Primarily because I really really don't like the idea of compromising the safety of the person who's being aggressed on by using methods that are less effective and might fail to stop the agressor before she can get a stab in.

I'd be a 100% with you and others on using other methods first if she was further away, but that wasn't the case.

Biden formally recognized the Armenian genocide today. First president since Reagan to do so. As someone with Armenian heritage, as much as it's a massive case of 'about time', it's relieving to finally see a president say those words and recognize the suffering Armenians went through, and continued to go through in the face of a vicious campaign to erase the genocide. Pretty nice to see a president honor their campaign promise and put humanitarianism (and reality) over geopolitics, too.

The same has been said of every person who ever stood up and fought back for a brighter future and a better world. I'm in the best of company.

Why do you hold that the last 15 seconds of a process 500 years in the making is the only thing that counts?

This feels like the very definition of an empty gesture, but also so long in coming that it's a minor "holy shit" moment.

Digital martyrdom: all of the bliss, none of the cost. Sweet deal.

This post is just pure cringe, sounds like an edgy teenager wrote this. The fact that you are a grown-ass adult woman is utterly embarrassing.


You say that now? You must've missed her previous recent posts in which she flirts with racism and antisemitism. And when this was pointed out she hilariously used the excuse of, "oh sorry, I was just having a bad day."

It's strange, S&P behaves like an evangelical: says batshit crazy shit, yet claims martyrdom when called out on her beliefs. Classic Persecution Complex, exactly what you would see from Christian evangelicals.