The Law Enforcement Officer Thread

Replying to a couple people I missed above:

Please re-read what I wrote above. I agree that the first officer’s actions could were not objectively reasonable. The “toy gun” metaphor applies to the second officer, who was made aware that the suspect might have a suppressed handgun, then moments later, after the suspect was taken out of their sight to be placed in a vehicle, saw the first officer fall back to the ground and call out that he’d been shot.

What about someone who isn’t committing a crime currently, but is known to have recently committed one? What about someone who has a bench warrant out? What about someone who is being placed in temporary custody while a red flag order is executed after they threatened to kill their wife? Should police be charged with a crime when they place cuffs on someone in one of those scenarios?

The problem is that the appropriate level of validity has to be balanced against allowing officers to respond to violence in a timely manner. Say this suspect did have a gun: is it your position that the second officer should have been required to remain in cover checking every possible avenue of attack while the suspect continued to fire, possibly injuring or killing a bystander?

Excessive force, which the first officer was found to have used, is considered a “moral character violation” in the Florida LE hiring process. What that means is that the officer in question was stripped of their certifications upon resigning, which alone makes them extremely difficult to rehire. Most Florida agencies as far as I’m aware also prohibit on policy the rehiring of officers with these types of violations after a report came out in the 2010s that specifically called out Florida for rehiring bad cops.

The law’s position isn’t that shooting people and missing is okay, but the law also has caveats for the only type of employee authorized to shoot someone preemptively as part of their work responsibilities.

As for the final question, no, I don’t believe that would be a crime. At least in the US, prosecution has to prove that a culpable mental state [1] exists as well as that the crime was physically committed. If the criminal act was done fully unknowingly with zero malice or intent I don’t believe it could be legally prosecuted as a crime, though obviously that sort of thing doesn’t happen often.

About 15% of teachers report that they have dealt with physical violence from students. [2] Police collectively arrest 7 to 10 million people [3] every year in the US, of which about 20% [4] involve the use of physical force. I don’t see how any convincing argument could be made that teachers or nurses are equally likely to have to use physical force on the job as police and that’s without even factoring in the nature of the situations either, for example that a teacher will be dealing exclusively with children.

This is an extremely poor characterization of my argument and I’m disappointed to see that kind of strawmanning coming from you. We are both in agreement that police should know they are shooting at something that should be shot at, where we disagree is on whether the totality of evidence in this situation would qualify the suspect within the vehicle as something that needs to be shot at. My argument is yes, it does. Officer two was aware that the suspect may have a concealed handgun, and after officer one took the suspect out of officer two’s field of view they then saw officer one fall backwards from where they had apparently been placing the suspect in the car and call out that they’d been shot. It is commonly taught in police academies to search a suspect thoroughly before putting them in a car even if they are in handcuffs, as a handcuffed person can easily still fire a handgun. As far as officer two was aware in the moment, officer one had just been shot by the suspect, who was now armed and dangerous, and presumably hiding in or behind officer one’s vehicle. They were not aware that the suspect had been fully searched and placed in the vehicle, as that happened outside their field of view, and they were not aware that officer one hadn’t actually been shot, as officer one crawled into cover some distance away from officer two. While there were no other indicators of gunfire, officer two believed that the suspect was in possession of a weapon fitted with a suppressor, which would significantly reduce those traces.

Was there a bystander potentially at risk? If so that’s certainly a reason for officer two to have acted to engage in suppressing fire against what they believed was a shooter, but that’s not something that’s been mentioned so far. You’ve mentioned that officer two was speaking with a witness but I’m presuming that they were out of any potential line of fire due to being out of sight alongside officer two.

To be clear, I don’t think every possible avenue of attack needs to be checked, but avenues should be checked until the presence of an active threat is validated by the officer who shoots.

That’s very valuable additional information, everything so far had indicated that the officer had not lost anything in the way of certification and had simply had to resign their job the same way one would if deciding to change career.

I’m not a fan of it being “extremely difficult” instead of “impossible” for him to get a law enforcement job again (or that difficulty being seemingly bound to Florida) but I’m happy to call that a significant win regardless.

Thanks for answering. I think US law is failing to properly cover situations in that case, but that’s a US legal code general issue as opposed to a US policing issue.

15% to 20% is a difference but it’s far from huge, it also means that by how averages work there will be teachers at rough schools who experience violence more frequently than an average police officer. The same with medical staff on secure medical units.

Though I do recognise that I’m somewhat more making an argument for the better treatment of teachers and medical staff than I am making an argument that police get to much leeway.

My intention was not to strawman, that’s genuinely how your argument is coming across to me.

I think that’s a fair summarisation of where we disagree.

This raises two question from me.

• Why the hell is it not standard practise to keep multiple officers on suspects who are suspected of having a firearm until such a time as they have been searched and if necessary deprived of said firearm? It seems like having one officer solo handle a hostile and potentially armed suspect is a great way to get said officer shot. It also leads to situations where that solo officer is in a heightened fear state and more liable to make mistakes.
• Has the firing pattern of officer two been detailed in the report? As the target in their head (a free and armed suspect taking shots) would have been moving and located differently from the target in reality (a cuffed individual in the back of a car) and I’m curious if officer two’s shooting pattern in any way accounted for that.

Edited by Silasw on Feb 21st 2024 at 7:26:10 PM

"I disagree there. If we’re going to blame insufficient training then the people who should be resigning are the supervisors and the training team."

That depends on the budget the city government gave them. Ultimately, the voters are responsible for making sure that their local police department has sufficient resources. And if the local economy is depressed, even that may not be practical.

I’d argue that the police departments under such restrictions should focus on providing officers trained to the necessary standard rather than trying to hit their officer headcount target by having sub-standard training/recruitment.

I’m also firmly of the belief that state and federal government also have a responsability to support local government in paying to get police to said standards.

x3 The thing was, when the suspect was searched, there were fours officers at the scene. During the interaction, the 4 officers were Hernandez, Reyna, Roberts, and Riley. When the suspect showed up, under instruction from Roberts, Hernandez and Reyna performed a cursory search, which included a pat down. Afterwards, Hernandez and Reyna handcuffed and detained the suspect and Reyna did a more thorough search while Hernandez was present and while he was locked in the car, Hernandez and Roberts were left with the suspect, while Riley and Reyna left the scene to search for the missing car. So the suspect was searched, twice, both times with Hernandez (the acorn officer) present. After all that, it should be considered reasonable that he did not have a weapon, and if a noise was heard, it should be weighed more that he didn't have a gun, than he did.

And excessive force is not grounds for automatic revocation of certification. The main way to get an automatic revocation according to the FDLE is to be convicted of a felony, or to be convicted of a misdemeanor that involves perjury or making false statements. Failure of moral character can result in discipline of a certification according to the FDLE, but it does not guarantee a loss of certification. According to the FDLE, excessive force is set to a range from suspension to revocation. There was this article about Florida excessive force cases from 1985 - 2021, which reviewed 1776 cases. Only 436 reached conclusion. Of those, only 158 ended in revocation of their certification. So unless someone has some corroborating evidence that he has lost his certification, I'm not just going to accept it at face value.

And even if he did lose his certification, again, the allowance to pre-emptively use deadly force does not mean it can be deployed without good reason and I still maintain it should be a crime to do so unreasonably. Paranoid cops firing at shadows should not be let off the hook, legally.

Edited by HeyMikey on Feb 21st 2024 at 2:17:03 AM

158/1776 = 8.9% of cases.

Yeah, not taking it at face value either.

Here’s the relevant portion of the report:

Across various conversations in this thread I have now seen you advocate for punishing cops who were too alert, insufficiently alert and pretty much everything in between. Your intense dislike of police regardless of the details is clear. I don’t think that’s a productive stance to take if we’re trying to have an intelligent debate about these issues, though.

Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 22nd 2024 at 4:23:11 AM

That is actually why, despite a few comments here and there, I've mostly stayed out of the conversation.

I admit, I just have no patience for police for the most part. With all the shit the they've pulled, and even with the point that the second cop acted off bad info from his partner, I just want to see them punished because I'm sick of these stories.

It's not the least bit productive, but it's how I feel at this point.

You do realize arguments on how people screwup and the degree of the screwup, as well as the consequences they should face for said screwup is contextual. If there was an active shooter and cops did nothing (Uvalde), we would consider that a screwup. If no shots were fired and the person was unarmed and detained and police overreact (this situation), we would consider that a screwup. To say I don't care about details, when the reason we're having this conversation is specifically about the details involved is pot calling the kettle black. The details of this were clear, there was no reasonable circumstance in this situation to employ lethal force.

You are making this weird equivalence that because I think in certain situations a cop overreacts and in other different contextual situations that cops underreact, that's me being inconsistent, when that's me considering that the cops were being screwups for different reasons, and having little tolerance for the type of screwups that officers get a relative slap on the wrist. Like if a doctor has a patient dying in the waiting room and they do nothing, I would say they were underreacting and a screwup and they should be fired. But if the doctor decides a broken leg needed to be amputated, I would considered that an overreaction, and that would be a screwup and they should be in jail for medical malpractice. Your argument is basically because I called both doctors a screwup for different reasons, I'm being intellectually dishonest. And at least for underreactions (Uvalde), I would call them cowards who should never work in law enforcement ever, but I never called for them to face legal consequences.

You know who I didn't think screwed up, the police who took care of the Nashville school shooter. It was a similar situation to the Uvalde shooting, mass shooter came in and started firing. If you did a play-by-play, I'm sure you could say they could of done things better. But I say they did exemplary work. Because from time of call, to time of response, they were in and engaged in 13 minutes and didn't stop moving until they took down the shooter smoothly.

And in both the Uvalde shooting and this case, there is one common element.

The cops prioritized their own safety over the safety of others. It's just that in the former that meant cops standing by while children were being shot while in the latter that meant cops shooting at an unarmed handcuffed man thanks to an acorn.

Edited by M84 on Feb 22nd 2024 at 9:53:22 PM

That’s really helpful. So in my mind that effectively abridges into the following.

• Roberts: “What the fuck is going on?”
• Hernandez: “I am being shot at”
• R: “Where from?”
• H: “In the car”.

If I’m reading that right I can’t fault Roberts, as they did get clear identification from Hernandez as to what had happened and where the (non-existent) hostile was.

But then we come to the explicitly false statments that Hernandez made and that they were made in the context of Hernandez having witnessed both a pat-down search and a full search of the suspect. Either Hernandez is mentally competent and malice is the only answer (which would mean attempted murder charges) or Hernandez is not mentally competent and needs to be under secure psychiatric care.

Either way Hernandez is clearly an active threat to the public that should not be allowed to roam free.

Edited by Silasw on Feb 22nd 2024 at 7:09:39 PM

With regards to Roberts, some of us take issue with the process, even if some of us doesn't consider it rising to the level of legal culpability, it should change the process by which law enforcement should determine when and where to fire at. If this is their standard procedure, the procedure should change.

Basically from what we saw, Hernandez call out shots fired and the general location of where the shots fired were coming from (the car). Without verifying where exactly the target was and actual shots fired, Roberts mag dumps into the car. It is a heard of behavior that police upon engaging a situation, will fire at a general target with the only information being that another officer is firing at that target and a few of us consider that bad practice. Just as a hypothetical example, say there was an active shooter in a parking lot, a set of police engage and the shooter hid behind a parked car, that had civilians in it. Another set of police officers come onto the scene, see's the first set firing at the general direction of the car, and then open fires without seeing taking into account the situational awareness of where the shooter is and whether there is anyone else in the vicinity, and starts firing into the car. We won't fault the first set of officers, because they had visual on the shooter, and could take into account anything around them. The second set just started firing without any situational awareness, and that's what some of us take issue with. If Roberts is not legally negligent, it at least warrants changing procedures, if that's the Okaloosa Sheriff Department's actual policy.

"But then we come to the explicitly false statments that Hernandez made and that they were made in the context of Hernandez having witnessed both a pat-down search and a full search of the suspect. Either Hernandez is mentally competent and malice is the only answer (which would mean attempted murder charges) or Hernandez is not mentally competent and needs to be under secure psychiatric care."

Nah, this is actually really common and comes from hyper-alertness. You can train people out of this sort of over-reaction (the military knows how to do that) but it's expensive, and few police departments have the budget for that.

That said, Hernandez probably shouldn't be a police officer, he doesn't appear to have the right temperment for this. Firing him is the correct response. Roberts ideally should have waited to identify a specific threat before opening fire on the car, because technically even if Hernandez was correct, she doesn't know that the occupant of the car fired the shots (which he couldn't have, because he was searched prior to this). She should be suspended pending re-training.

The problem facing the city is that what Hernandez did isn't illegal. They can be held legally liable for firing Hernandez unless they meet various stringent legal requirements, including the labor contract. They face similar barriers if they discipline Roberts.

The problem here isn't the individual cops. The problem is we have a legal context that prevents employers from holding police accountable if they use potentially lethal force. Some of this context comes from US Supreme Court decisions that are beyond the ability of local governments to change. Congress could, though.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/2nd-toronto-cop-pleads-guilty-for-unlawful-arrest-of-black-u-of-t-student-mistaken-for-suspect-repeatedly-stunned-1.6785924

Toronto Police Service (TPS) officer pled guilty for unlawfully arresting a black University of Toronto student after he's mistaken for a student during a call.

Thing is that the student didn't resist arrest. His arms were tucked under his body... so they assume that he's fighting back.

His rights weren't read and didn't say why the student was being arrested before and after he's placed in a squad car despite the student providing ID to prove his name.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/video/c2875190-ctv-national-news--a-plea-from-police

Peel Regional Police is asking the public to stop posting films of crimes taking place. Instead they should contact the police ASAP via 911.

Edited by Ominae on Feb 27th 2024 at 11:00:48 AM

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-09/san-francisco-welfare-drug-screening-police-crime-vote

Looks like SFO is having changes with the SFPD given more powers to tackle crime in San Francisco.

I'm sure certain people will be happy about this...

New Orleans Police Superintendent said that the conditions at their headquarters are deplorable, including mice getting high off Marijuana evidence, being unable to be inside the building during hot or cold days, other infestations, including mold and snakes, with conditions being bad since at least 2008.

Wow. That is some shitty conditions. I am somewhat amused about the mice.

There are even possums living there according to that article.

Maybe it'd be best to abandon the place to nature at this point.

How the hell they even managed to get things to that state ? I mean, things get a little messy sometimes, but this...

Simple. Years of underfunding and neglect.

DHS is working (a lot) to stop guns from being shipped illegally to Haiti from US ports.

Another case of lax US gun laws causing problems in nearby countries.

Video shows California police fatally shooting teenager who was reported kidnapped.

Police shot and killed a kidnapping victim despite her following police instruction and one officer telling others to stop shooting her.

It took over for them to finally release footage of it.

Regarding that New Orleans story, wasn't underresourced police forces a major factor in a serial killer in a different city (Houston?) getting away for much longer than he should have?

A question about searches for people: How would police go about searching for a person who might be up a tree, roof or whatever? I've written a story where a 13 year old child who is a very good climber, so if he hypothetically were reported missing his parents would have to warn police to look on trees, roofs etc, even if they seem hard to ascend. And to never try to reach him there.

Drones. They'd just fly a drone around looking for the kid. Especially somewhere like a forest.

Edit: Or a helicopter, with a FLIR camera.

Edited by Hawkeye86 on Apr 8th 2024 at 11:49:10 AM