> Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator
This is why we have the second amendment. And the constitution as the thing to which office-holders swear allegiance to rather than to "the party" or "the president".
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This is why we have the second amendment. And the constitution as the thing to which office-holders swear allegiance to rather than to "the party" or "the president".
2019: Jeremy Connolly, Wallace Wilder, Bobby Ray Moore, Raymond Lewis Williams, Channara Tom Pheap, Dennis Carolino, Chad Michael Breinholt, Riley Eugene Peay, Michael Tuck, James Crowe, Amari Malone, Michael Lopez, Jared R. Nelson, Schaston Theodore Lamarr Hodge, Mike Parsley, Uzzle Jerome, Rashad Cunningham, Jovany Mercado-Bedolla, Jamie Fernandez, William Lloyd Jones, Thomas Michael Reynolds, Cole Steele Jessup, Charles Roy Pearson, Anthony Wayne French, Jerry Orlando Weaver, David Ingle, Scott Souders, Aaron Luther, Cole Steele Jessup, John Michael George, Freddrick Andrews Hadden, Manuel Charles Carter, Mark Johnson, Jose Mendez, Jason Xavier Salas, An unidentified person, Kevin Jenkins, Toussaint Diamon Sims, Detravian Allison, Donald Babbit, Allan George, William Biggs, Kaizen Crossen, Derrick Davidson, Marvin Alexis Urbina, James Lee Kirkwood, Riche Antonio Santiago, Marvin Urbina, Robert Clay Wilsford, Connor Betts, Aigon Andrew Wallace, Cortney Ronald Staley, John Clark, Oscar Ventura-Gonzalez, De'Von Bailey, Deshon Downing, Mario Benjamin, Delano Williams, Lenny Blaine Griffin, David Willoughby, Eric Toon, Margarita Victoria Brooks, Andre Leach, Jamaal Simpson
Jeremy Connolly: Armed with a knife. "The KBI says police shot Connolly after they found his 71-year-old grandmother, Linda Kromer, stabbed to death inside his home in the 2000 block of Harold Avenue. Officers heard noises in the basement and found Connolly in a bedroom with the door closed. He was armed with a knife." https://www.kwch.com/content/news/Man-dies-from-injuries-in-...
Wallace Wilder: Probably not armed. "Wallace Wilder died Wednesday afternoon after being shot at his Gordo apartment in Pickens County. He had long ago been diagnosed as a bipolar schizophrenic and even was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity in a Tuscaloosa County killing in the 1980s..." https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2019/08/man-killed-by-ala...
Bobby Ray Moore: Armed with a gun. "Authorities have identified a man they say was killed after pointing a loaded gun at San Joaquin sheriff's deputies in Stockton." https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/stockton/man-shot-a...
While we do have a terrible problem in the US with police shootings, it's unhelpful when misleading claims like this are made. Where did you get this list of names? Did the source claim that all were unarmed?
Police statements are predictably found to change under a thinnest level of scrutiny.
“Justifiable” use of force varies from department to department, police force to police force, state by state. It does not mean “the only or best option available” as any less controversial action would be equally as justified. US police, in aggregate, are known to escalate situations into something more dangerous or hostile than all of the options available. Of the 17,000 distinct autonomous paramilitary forced in the US, there is no way for a citizen to know what “threat matrix” they are currently being evaluated under, and if there even is a way to no longer be perceived as a threat without being eliminated, especially when the police are already operating under bad information that you are unaware of. Finding police actions “Justified” is a term used to resonate with the preconceptions of citizens, but actually means 17,000+ different things which no citizen knows the details of, only that particular department and scarred prosecutor.
Speaking of fear: Mayors, governors, prosecutors and juries are afraid of their police, just like they were afraid of the Mafia. This is not talked about. Equally dubious “I feared for my life” situations can happen to you and your family and law enforcement can rely on people like you believing the police statement verbatim.
Police are held to a high moral standard culturally, but are not trained in a way that reflects this. In a criminal investigation due to use of force, the person under scrutiny would be convicted of their statements changed so much. Police are able to operate under an abstraction of “justified” which is available at the discretion of the their supervisor, the DA, prosecutor, or a jury under randomly generated prosecutor instructions applicable in that one specific jurisdiction that nobody was aware of before that day in a private grand jury trial, before continuing to a less private jury trial with the same issues.
FBI has analysis of police in nationalist groups. There is no way for a citizen to differentiate any officer from another.
With this in mind, there is a lot less latitude to accept the deaths as stated. Cherry picking a few of the deaths and concluding so easily that its “justified” from description alone just neglects the inefficiency of the system. There are limitations in any of our abilities to judge the outcome. There are imperfections in our system of checks and balances.
Other developed countries have many people with knives and guns and the US is a total aberration in how these situations are handled.
My point though (and I hope yours) is that giving a long list of people killed by the police under the apparent header of "unarmed" is counterproductive if the people who were killed were not in fact unarmed. Misleading approaches like this (unintentional or not) turn off people who would otherwise support your cause.