Comment by CMay

Comment by CMay 4 days ago

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It's not clear from any of the videos that he did not pose any immediate threat, even though people keep saying that. Saying it doesn't make it true. Even if your honest perspective is that this is the case from the camera angles you've seen, that isn't necessarily what the officers see. What the officers see matters in cases like this. They can only make decisions based on the information they have.

It may very well be an accident, miscommunication, or people even misinterpreting some of the things shown in the video. We'll find out eventually.

It could be argued that both the activists and the officers contributed to the situation getting to where it was. The activists shouldn't be following them around and harassing them, even if it is legal to do so up to a limit. The officers should have kept their cool, even with the whistles. The activists shouldn't have broken the law, whether the officers broke their protocol first or not.

Do not harass anyone who has a gun if you aren't willing to accept the risk that it could escalate into you losing your life. If he went in knowing that risk and accepted it, then he went out doing what he believed in. If he was misinformed that he was entering a safe situation where his life wasn't at risk, then he was lied to.

It's not rich to blame Alex at all. That doesn't mean it's entirely his fault or that his own mistakes justify his death, only that if you're going to make a string of mistakes don't choose that moment to be when you are harassing people who have guns. If anything good comes from this being so public, it'll be that if people do choose to harass law enforcement at least they can learn to be safer about it.

These officers know that the second they kill someone they will be unmasked. They don't get to kill people and remain anonymous. Each officer has a gun assigned to them and they know which bullets came from what gun. Generally, if an officer kills someone, it's because they felt justified in making the decision. They'll have to sort out what that justification was, even if it involved a chain of mistakes by the officer or other officers that created a cascade.

> What confidence do you have in DHS to lead an independent investigation of their own people?

I do not have any particular positive or negative opinion about DHS or their capacity to investigate. It has to be better than the local justice system there.

What I do know based on past performance is that Minneapolis courts have severely underserved justice. I think JD Vance referred to them as kangaroo courts. Not sure if that's precise or accurate by whatever definition, but I would never trust their court system.

spacechild1 4 days ago

> It's not clear from any of the videos that he did not pose any immediate threat, even though people keep saying that.

So where do you see the potential threatening behavior? When the agent shoots Alex in the back, he is kneeling on the ground and being restrained by several agents. He has not acted in a threatening manner before the shooting nor did he physically attack the agents. The DHS report does not mention any threat either and they have already reviewed bodycam footage.

> Do not harass anyone who has a gun if you aren't willing to accept the risk that it could escalate into you losing your life.

As long as you're not attacking an officer/agent with a weapon, that risk should be very close to zero. Otherwise you're sending a very chill message to the general public.

> I do not have any particular positive or negative opinion about DHS

So you have no issues with the initial statements by Kristi Noem, Greg Bovino and Stephen Miller?

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  • CMay 3 days ago

    > So where do you see the potential threatening behavior?

    If you are laying hands on officers, leaning your weight against them, not obeying their commands, asking them to assault you (verbally, potentially), resisting arrest and struggling on the ground, that string of behavior should concern anyone. Imagine you AREN'T a police officer and someone is behaving that way to you. Of course you'll be on guard more than if it was just someone walking down the sidewalk with their bag of groceries.

    Being on the ground does not mean you can't be a threat. As far as an officer might know, he could have a second gun holstered under his jacket that he could reach for. When someone is that uncooperative, it is very reasonable to throw away assumptions that they aren't a threat to you.

    Whether what the officers experienced justifies escalating to lethal force I don't know, but that is what they'll have to find out.

    > As long as you're not attacking an officer/agent with a weapon, that risk should be very close to zero. Otherwise you're sending a very chill message to the general public.

    So, if an officer hasn't been shot in the head first, they shouldn't react? Guns can come out quick and kill a person almost instantly. There's very little time to react. That is why officers request people to listen to what they say and respond reasonably so you don't put them in a situation where they miscalculate your threat level. This is true even if you're not dealing with an officer. Someone doesn't have to be a threat and they don't even have to have a weapon, but if you have sufficiently justifiable reason to believe based on their behavior and actions that they are posing an imminent threat to you or others, you can often justify shooting them. You don't have to like that, but if you ever do need to defend yourself, you would be glad the laws are like that. Otherwise people who defend themselves end up becoming a victim twice where they survive an attack and then end up in prison just for legitimately defending themselves.

    > So you have no issues with the initial statements by Kristi Noem, Greg Bovino and Stephen Miller?

    I don't really know what any of those people were saying, but whether they are right or wrong doesn't justify everyone else being wrong by making false claims. If you want to be better, then don't try to be better by becoming the very people you disagree with.

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    • spacechild1 3 days ago

      > Being on the ground does not mean you can't be a threat.

      If someone is fixated on the ground, they are not a threat. Alex was fixated by three agents, with four more agents watching from close distance.

      > As far as an officer might know, he could have a second gun holstered under his jacket that he could reach for.

      He wouldn't even have been able to reach for a gun as his hands were fixated at this point. That's the very point of fixating someone!

      > Someone doesn't have to be a threat and they don't even have to have a weapon, but if you have sufficiently justifiable reason to believe based on their behavior and actions that they are posing an imminent threat to you or others, you can often justify shooting them.

      How can you be a posing an imminent threat if you're not behaving in a threating way? At no point did Alex actually try to attack an agent or make any verbal threats against their life.

      > I don't really know what any of those people were saying

      Sorry, I don't believe you. There's no way you could have followed this case without knowing about their statements. You are acting in very bad faith here.

      > but whether they are right or wrong doesn't justify everyone else being wrong by making false claims.

      If several high officials of an agency are spreading obvious lies, it very much hurts the credibility of that agency.

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      • CMay 2 days ago

        > If someone is fixated on the ground, they are not a threat. Alex was fixated by three agents, with four more agents watching from close distance.

        It's not clear from the videos that they have full control of all of his limbs and it seems more like he's keeping his arms tightly tucked in to resist which leaves some range of motion. The moment that he first gets shot, he's not laying flat against the ground under full control of the agents.

        You have way more confidence about the amount of control they have of him than the officers seemed to. There are videos of him being highly uncooperative and violent. In the video of the killing, he's also clearly being uncooperative. It would logically follow based on his past behavior and also the way the officers feel they need to react that he's continuing to be uncooperative on the ground.

        > He wouldn't even have been able to reach for a gun as his hands were fixated at this point. That's the very point of fixating someone!

        You're assuming 2 things here which an officer should know they cannot assume.

        1. That he's fixated. You have high confidence of this, but even watching the video frame by frame this is not fully clear. You are leaping to a conclusion that it does not seem like the video evidence can guarantee.

        2. That's the only gun or weapon he has on him. He could have a gun holstered under his jacket too, which would be within reach. After all, supposedly he reached for his phone, so that is a non-fixated range of motion and they could have believed it to be a gun, reasonably.

        > Sorry, I don't believe you. There's no way you could have followed this case without knowing about their statements. You are acting in very bad faith here.

        I mean, I don't follow this case. I don't even know who Stephen Miller is. What I do know is there are videos and I have seen the videos along with the things people are claiming are obvious based on the videos alone. I also know that even if public statements are made, those are not law and are generally not guaranteed facts of any sort. That's what court cases try to sort out. If public officials are saying things which turn out to be false, why would that surprise anyone? It doesn't mean they lied, but they are suffering from the same kinds of nonsense that a lot of people in these comments are, where they make assumptions that are not always supported by the evidence. When society gets stupid, courts are even more essential.

        > If several high officials of an agency are spreading obvious lies, it very much hurts the credibility of that agency.

        This is true. You are correct. I do not support spreading lies or disinformation or just jumping to statements which have a decent chance of being inaccurate or misinterpreted. They might have said something which has some support, but which is more political language than accurate legal language just like people are invoking the word murder oblivious to its meaning.

        So yes if you become a public official, ideally you don't lie unless it's for some kind of essential national strategy, because public trust has value. Not sure what else you want to know about it.

        At the very same time, just because you are not a public official does not mean you should say anything you want and make any claims you want about videos. It doesn't matter what everyone else is saying. A lot of people are talking with their hearts, which is nice and we need heart, but hearts are dumb. That's not controversial.

        Most of us are contributing to public trust or deteriorating public trust by some measure in daily life and in every comment we write. Do you think your statements within the past week would make people have trust in their society, or would you say in reflection that your statements erode trust in society?

        There are forces at work both from outside our country and within our country that are absolutely encouraging the reduction in trust. They will amplify any opportunity they can find to do so. There's a non-zero chance that Alex was an unwitting participant in that. You don't have to make the mistake by taking the same bait.

        Officers aren't perfect and mistakes were probably made. You don't have to be a Harvard professor to know the video looks bad. That's not the point. Even if it looks bad, a lot of the claims people make about what happened and about what the video shows are not supported by what the video shows. Simple.

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