[gumballhead]

There was a story a few years ago around my area where a kid who was in trouble with his parents took his father's work truck without asking to get cigarettes. His father called it in as stolen to teach his son a lesson. Well, he ran from the cops and they shot him.

If you're going to send a group of people armed with guns into a harmless but tense situation there's at least a chance that something really bad is going to happen.

And for sure it shouldn't be like that, where cops can and will shoot you given any justification. But "swatting" isn't a funny prank at all and it's sickening that it's even a thing.

[Treegarden]

Why did they shoot him though? Isnt a human life worth more then some car? This behavior from the police is unheard of in Western Europe, and there would be a public outcry if something like that would happen here. I dont understand americans...

[rhino369]

The police cannot shoot someone to save a car, even in America. They would however be allowed to shoot if they had a "reasonable fear" that their lives were in danger.

The question is why are American cops so much more likely to find themselves in these situations?

I think first and foremost Americans are just a more wild and criminal people. Our murder rate is much higher in general. So there are going to be many more situations that really do justify the use of force. You can't change this easily.

But the police take the real threat and hype it up. American cops do have to fear someone shooting them. But the police take that fear and train as if they are going to be under fire at any moment.

I've seen a police training simulator made by a major weapons company. The simulator had a scenario where the office spoke to a homeless man with his hand in a bag. You were supposed to make him show his hands. At the end the man points the bag at the office and shoots a gun hidden in the bag. It's a ridiculous scenario and it is designed to teach the office to fire his weapon because someone MIGHT have a weapon.

The cops are basically taught to shoot first and ask questions later.

The public isn't outraged because most of the people who get killed where already playing with fire. It is taking the publicizing of these instances were innocent people die to get people to notice.

[kazagistar]

Of course the scenario features a homeless man, rather then some well dressed white male in a suit. Gotta teach the police to enforce based on stereotypes, right?

[dTal]

Is "white male" just the catch-all for "privilege" now? You can be white, male, and homeless. In fact men are more likely to be homeless than women.

[renlo]

America is very large, and within it there are disparate groups with very different opinions on the level of force required by police. Sometimes I think that America would be better off if it weren't so large. Then there might be more of a consensus on this kind of thing. As it is, there are just too many different levels of government (local, state, federal) and people with all kinds of backgrounds and viewpoints setting up these enforcement bodies (for example, FBI is federal, there are likely to be many people from out-of-state in that enforcement branch, also, those SWAT police officers were probably trained out-of-state, just a guess on that though).