This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I mean, yes, but also no, a person wielding a weapon can charge in and close distance before the bullets put them down.
If she was holding a kitchen knife it would still be dangerous at that range.
As seen on Surviving Edged Weapons (on Red Letter Media).
More options
Context Copy link
I’m not clear how that makes advancing seem tactically sensible.
If you're not going to run and escape the situation (which would be my advice for that scenario, shes not a danger to others) then you damn well better make sure you have the clearest shot possible.
If the opponent is behind a barrier like a kitchen counter, guess what you gotta move in to make sure you have a shot.
Being stuck in close quarters with a melee attacker is nightmarish, even if you have a pistol.
If escape isn't viable, then tactically speaking advancing on the opponent is a "sound" choice. Something about how meeting danger head on can nearly halve it, or whatever.
Again, I'm just pointing out how the presence of the weapon is a larger factor than people give credit for. Not praising the cop's reaction.
One thing about the George Floyd case, the guy was unarmed and completely restrained when he died. That's what really made it stand out.
This... ain't quite that.
The cops had a standoff weapon. She had a pot of boiling water. Not a knife. An awkward-as-hell, single-use pot of boiling water. Make it so she has to turn a corner to get to you and the weapon is neutralized. She comes running towards that corner with the water, THEN you can shoot her.
My dude if you want to get in a fight with someone that has a pot of boiling water, and then wait until the person is actually closing on you swinging the pot before acting, be my guest.
I'll just say, if somebody I don't know shows up at my house holding a pot of obviously boiling liquid, I ain't opening the door. If they attempt to throw the liquid at me, I'm assuming hostile intent. If they are still wielding the pot and try to come into my house, I AM shooting them at that point. And living in a Castle Doctrine state, the law will likely absolve me of guilt.
The situations aren't directly analogous, but that's how I'm interpreting the presence/use of the weapon in this case.
If I'm faced with the situation in the video, I will have tried to extricate from the scenario as soon as the pot comes into play, in hopes of not being forced into a split-second decision with someone's life, even if its not mine, hanging in the balance.
Yeah, I can't just kill someone for holding a pot of boiling water in her own house.
It was her castle.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
My guess would be that once you've concluded that the subject is armed and dangerous, your job becomes securing them and ending the confrontation. If they're willing to threaten you with a pot of boiling water, how do you know they don't have a gun on them or nearby, and will escalate as soon as you turn your back? Once they've initiated a confrontation, it seems that police policy is to end that confrontation as decisively as possible, not to back off and give the suspect space to maneuver, escape, or arm themselves better.
I guess there's a question of reasonableness. Could you assume they have a cache of grenades in the cabinet? Are they hiding trained attack tigers in the attic?
Whole problem for me is that most of the danger was avoidable if they don't let the lady get off the couch. If they thought she was dangerous at the outset, then don't let her get the boiling water.
Once she does, maybe exit the house and see if she escalates further.
I don't buy that they feared for their safety up until a second or two before she threw that water.
Did they, though? I haven't watched the video, mostly just skimmed some of the comments here. But I could imagine them not even thinking about her possibly threatening them with a pot of water; who does that?! Instead, just give her a moment to turn the stove off, then she's not worried about it or whatever, and they can continue doing whatever they need to do. It's only after she grabs the pot and appears threatening with it that they might think, "Oh shit, that can be a weapon; what did we get ourselves into?"
What I'm really thinking is that this is something I could totally see myself doing (the not thinking about a pot of boiling water being a potential weapon bit, not various other things). I'm not sure if it would cross my mind until some sort of threatening action was taken with the pot in hand. It's too ingrained in my classification circuits as "just cooking".
Right, but its simultaneously hard to understand why their immediate response to seeing the boiling water in her hand is "I'm will shoot you in the face."
I guess I'm suggesting that their failure to control the scene was a problem. Okay, they don't see the boiling water as a danger until she's holding it. Maybe that's a training flaw in itself.
If they didn't think she was posing any danger prior to that point, I'm confused as to why that escalated to "I'm going to shoot" you nigh instantaneously. If they DID think she was a possible danger, then just keep her on the couch and shut off the stove off yourself, don't let her roam around to, e.g. grab a knife or set something on fire.
Why they made the actual choices they made, what was wrong with their training, and what they could have done better is above my pay grade. I just think that if one of the questions is why did they seem to not take a pot of water as a threat at the beginning, but did immediately after she grabbed it, a plausible answer would be that they're almost as dumb as me and just mentally binned it in a completely different bin, just thinking about turning a stove off rather than it being a possible weapon. I could also see myself being able to read someone's face/body language as they pick up a pot like that and immediately think, "Oh shit, I guess that can be a weapon, and they might be wanting to use it."
When I was younger, I worked at a daycare for a bit. I had one troubled kid kind of try to attack me with a pair of scissors. I knew that he caused a variety of problems and that one of my main long-term goals was to try to improve his behavior, since he was one of the biggest trouble spots, but I hadn't really thought that he might actually try to attack me up to that point. The attempt was kinda pathetic, really, but it was also a moment where I very suddenly went from not thinking about him having scissors, because we had scissors and the kids used them for various things, to, "Oh shit, this fucking punk might actually try to stab me with a pair of scissors!" I'm also glad that I didn't have millions of people on the internet scrutinizing my reaction; I think I did okay, but I could definitely imagine hyper-critics going overboard on silly stuff.
I have a slight sense that there's a Schrodinger's Cop problem here. People want cops to stop being overly paranoid about possible threats, especially when they're more hypothetical than real, but when a hypothetical threat becomes a real threat, they want to complain that they weren't paranoid enough about the hypothetical threat before it became a real threat.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You are correct, and the phrase you're looking for is "Tueller Drill".
More options
Context Copy link
Except she wasn’t charging, she was cowering in the ground in her own home while somebody pointed a gun at her after theatening to shoot her in the fucking face.
I wouldn't get into the mechanics of it all, but a person "cowering" with a weapon can very quickly turn into a person "charging" with a weapon. They are not neutralized/incapacitated merely by laying on the floor.
The greater context of the situation very much weighs against shooting her, but I really think people don't get how the presence of a weapon, ANY weapon, escalates the nature of the threat.
Here's a 2020 incident where the perp surprises and slashes one officer, who doesn't immediately shoot her, perp drops the knife and appears to comply for a moment, then suddenly swoops down to pick it up again and charges another officer.
https://nypost.com/2020/09/03/bodycam-footage-florida-woman-stabs-cop-ahead-of-fatal-shooting/
Until the person is either fully restrained or, unfortunately, poked full of holes, they are posing a danger.
The weapon in the current case being boiling water is a really unique twist, but the principle is the same.
These cops are also posing a danger to her.
Well yeah they came into her house and started making demands and bossing her around. I wouldn't blame her for feeling threatened.
It is unclear how her actions improved on the situation though.
To be clear, my presumption whenever a standard police encounter results in a death is to assume the cops fucked up royally. That seems to be the case here. It is a rebuttable presumption, though.
She acted irrationally, but if people have to walk on eggshells around police to avoid being shot, then people (especially mentally unstable people) will tend to avoid the police at all costs, which is not good for law enforcement. (Not suggesting you disagree.)
Right. I think the whole problem with judging these situations is that they tend to be interactions between cops, who are already edgy about being ambushed, and less-than-rational types who are edgy because they know they might be arrested or they're just suffering from a mental condition that affects judgment. Cops are more likely to encounter those types than the average citizen. So these interactions come with some extra hostility/tension built in.
(there's valid debate as to how much of this cops bring upon themselves when they have a very aggressive approach to policing and the fact that they have less accountability)
For example, here are a couple other semi-recent police encounters:
One where the cops take out a dude who is directly threatening another person's life:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zi4Lw981G9w?si=E5riO0NlRu_KEIq4
Obvious good shoot, with plenty of time to set up, take aim, attempt de-escalation, and act at the most opportune moment.
And another where holy shit a 'standard' traffic stop IMMEDIATELY results in automatic gunfire their way:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=6UzsEvst1MI?si=a2bokSAmX2vJGAct
These are the two extremes of the sort of situations cops can find themselves in.
We'd all love for every police shooting to look like the first: obvious justification, attempts at de-escalation, and minimal force employed (one bullet, in that case). But cops have a general (not entirely rational, odds are they'll never face such a situation) concern about suddenly being confronted with the second situation.
So I dunno, I don't blame police for treating suspicious characters with a vague sense of hostility, but some subset of those characters are going to respond very badly to their presence, and if they're truly irrational, then we should be scrutinizing the cop's actions harder, overall.
I was expecting this to be a typical "people call a semi-auto weapon 'automatic' to sound scarier" situation, but I was at least responsible enough to click on the video before jumping in with "ACKSHUALLY," and wow.
This was less than a month ago? How frequent are machine gun attacks in LA?
At first I assumed it was one of those glock switches, but apparently it was an actual rifle and those cops are just obscenely, obscenely lucky.
Situation looks like its from GTA.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link