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burying the lede
Since this is national news -- I just saw an LA Times story that omits this very important fact entirely,1 though most just bury it -- let me add an important detail from here in Pittsburgh:
Antwon Rose was fleeing the scene of a shooting when he was shot by a police officer. While we have major problems with racism in this country, including disgusting, senseless violence without remedy from white police officers against everybody who's not white, in this case there was a clear and present danger to the community.
I'm sad that the man died and I feel bad for his family. I wish the officer been able to stop the fleeing man without it being fatal (which is hard). But convicting the police officer would have been a triumph of revenge over justice. We're better than that. We've all seen videos of police officers beating, tasing, and shooting people who were doing nothing to resist, who were cooperating, and yet they were attacked anyway. Those are the police officers we need to convict and remove from our streets. Those are the cases we need to focus on when seeking reform. Counting Antwon Rose's case among them weakens that cause. Don't do it. Sometimes the police officer is actually right; let's focus on the many cases where they're wrong as we pursue justice in our broken country.
[1] The article I just saw said that police shot him at a traffic stop, making it sound like the guy was sitting in the car when it happened.
no subject
That's what Rosfeld reportedly said. Was he wrong?
I guess a question is, what probability do you want to have that somebody poses imminent harm to the public, to kill them? And then what probability estimate would you have made here?
I won't speak to the criminal charge itself because I have not looked up the criteria for what he was charged with, but as a matter of public policy it is hard for me to see how I'd recommend shooting people who are running away (with no gun we see) from a car from which some unknown person shot.