cp702

Because people with different assumptions bring something interesting to the conversation. If the only input we got was from the Eagleland brigade, it would make the discussion about the moral side worse. In the discussion about the legal side, no one here is qualified: that's a matter for lawyers (even police training on this isn't the last word, which is why police hire lawyers if they're being investigated or sued for it). Furthermore, it is not your place to say that someone isn't contributing anything to a thread. So long as posts contain content, you can only talk about whether they contribute to *you*. Other people may disagree with your view of the posts. The standard for debate isn't "what John34 finds useful".

If you don't want to respond anymore, it's really easy: don't respond. Posting saying "I'm not responding anymore", with no other content, actually contributes nothing whatsoever to the discussion while still taking up the space of a post. Furthermore, gratuitously calling opponents in a debate "morons" is not an argument.

AFAIK, Steam itself doesn't ban mods. I think it's at the discretion of the developer - Valve doesn't allow mods on their own titles, but I don't think they restrict it for others.

When articles and titles are edited, the URL generally doesn't change.

Out of curiosity, at what point are onscene EMTs allowed to declare someone dead? I assume they can declare a death in cases of decapitation or the absence of some other life-critical organ, but is there a rule for when you have to keep trying to help them and when you can say "they're dead, nothing we can do"? (I mean outside mass casualty triage settings, where I'd assume it's easier to say "you're going to die anyway, we're allocating our limited resources to people who it'll actually help")

How about this? Whether or not guns are normal is a cultural thing. TheMoneyMan, you're wrong when you say having guns is norma: In the UK it is very much NOT normal to have guns. Hell, in places in the US, it is not normal to have guns. The statement that no one in the UK has experienced freedom because they can't carry firearms is frankly a strawman for your own side (Ineffective Argument Technique #21: Invoke Poe's Law). Cool down, and stop assuming that every other person brings the same cultural assumptions as you do - that would be a very boring world. At the same time, Urbane: In many places in the US, it is perfectly normal to have guns. I first fired a rifle when I was 10, at a summer camp. It's not a rare thing almost anywhere in the US to go to a range; where I live, it is unusual to carry, but firearms are not considered mystical things. You could never make the US a gun-free zone, any more than you could make the UK a tea-free zone.

Claiming it won't make it so. Coming from the person who literally said that it was justified because of "facts and events" (which is actually the precise ABSENCE of an argument), you might want to start reconsidering your authoritative "this conversation is over, we all agree" sum-ups. They're wrong.

What I particularly don't get is that British police have never been routinely armed, not even when firearms were generally much more legal in the UK. I can see how it works now, but I'm really, really impressed at the officers who got being unarmed to work when criminals were free to arm themselves.

Right, it's the holidays. Why is a teacher telling a 14-year-old that "no, you can't be Santa because you're the wrong color". Santa's traditional depiction as white is at least partly due to the fact that for a very long time (and to some degree, even today), "white" was the default race. Saying that a race assigned by default matters is stupid. Telling a 14-year-old that their costume is not acceptable due to their skin color is the sort of thing that makes me wonder how they got to be a teacher. The student didn't decide "Oh, I'll be a black Santa". The student decided "Oh, I'll be Santa". The teacher brought race into it. If you don't care and think it's a waste of time, why are YOU wasting your time with this? (by the way, for a character whose modern depiction is at most 200 years old, saying "through the course of human history" is just a teensy bit grandiose)

@rushlink: Wrong. That's the standard for arrest, not use of force. The use of lethal force for non-policemen is generally some variant of "reasonable belief that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or grievous bodily harm". There need not be any actual threat to your life; it is enough that you hold a reasonable belief that the force is necessary. If Alice tells Bob that Mr. McMafia is going to kill him (and would have some good reason to know that McMafia intends to do so, like, say, if she's friendly with him), and McMafia walks up to Bob, pulling something from his pocket, and saying "I've got something for you", then Bob would likely be justified in shooting to kill. This is true even if McMafia was pulling out a bar of chocolate to give Bob - even though Bob's life was not in fact at risk, a reasonable person under the circumstances would likely conclude that McMafia was going to shoot Bob, and so would be justified in shooting first.

You can dress as Santa, but won't be Santa, not because of race, but because Santa is a fictional character (and if you think the character has anything to do with St. Nicholas, he may have at some point, but not anymore). And saying "No, your race disqualifies you from being this fictional character" is pretty much grade-A racism. There's no reason for the character to have to be white. Skin color is not an important attribute of the character. It actually pretty much never is. Sometimes, it might matter - portraying a Southern slaveowner? A black character would be making a big statement. But that's because race actually *matters* there; it has no relevance to "guy, lives at the North Pole, gives everyone presents".

Here's the thing: From what I can tell, you guys don't generally trust your cops that much right off the bat (pretty sure I've read that some agencies don't even allow all officers to respond to emergency calls with emergency equipment). The US *cannot* generally follow that sort of model in many places: almost half of all agencies employ 10 or fewer officers. Every officer there needs to be armed. In big cities, many, many crimes involve the use of firearms, either threatened use or actual use. Again, you need to be armed to handle that. The culture in the US just would not work with unarmed cops (indeed, this is a case where the US is in the majority, even among countries where guns are uncommon - almost all countries at least put firearms in police cars, and most put them on individual police officers).

@drdetroit: No, the Gestapo was "shoot first, ask qu-*BLAM* MERELY ASKING IS TREASON" (or, I suppose, they might send you off to a camp to be gassed instead). Very little rises to the point where comparison to the Nazis is justified; this is not such a case. @Dayton: Correct me if I'm wrong, but merely trying to escape is never enough, right? Isn't the rule in all cases still that lethal force is *necessary* to catch them? For example, if police are entirely surrounding a bank robber in a parking lot when they turn and start to run (assume there aren't cars in the area, so they never pass out of the direct sight of police officers), I'm pretty sure that police can't shoot. In that case, no officer could conclude they had to shoot - if they're surrounded by a circle of cops, they're not going to escape. Don't tell me the police can't arrest someone who tries to run while surrounded by officers without killing the suspect. I'm SURE there are techniques (maybe as simple as "most guys point guns and order them to get down, if they don't, have a few cops close and tase, shoot if they grab for something").

Yup. That's the one.

Nope, you still uploaded the old version. Try changing the file name to, say, vpCallouts 1.1.zip, upload THAT, then delete vpCallouts.zip.

What's this debate about? Is it about the legality of the shooting, or the morality of it? I don't think it was ever made clear.

c13, I will now quote the same definition to you that I quoted to Dayton. The standard for use of force is that a reasonable officer could find it necessary. The standard isn't what is necessary, in retrospect; it takes into account imperfect info, the fact that an officer onscene does not have a birds-eye view, the fact that decisions have to be made quickly, and so on. To Dayton, I emphasized "necessary" - if any reasonable officer would think that using less force would have accomplished the same goal (e.g. if any reasonable officer would think tackling would be enough), then you must use the lesser force. To you, I'm emphasizing "could". If reasonable officers could disagree about what force is needed, the standard is the highest one. Courts generally give police the benefit of the doubt, unless it's objectively unreasonable (no reasonable officer could think it was needed) - and just like with non-cops, the burden of proof is on the accuser, not on the person being accused. This came up in the Zimmerman trial as well: in criminal cases, it's possible that there isn't enough evidence to say either side was in the wrong. Sometimes it's unclear who was in the right, so there's not enough evidence to damn anybody.

The idea that only police get to have a say in the government use of force goes against the whole concept of a democracy. While police have to make tough split-second decisions, deciding what ultimately is and isn't acceptable force is not ultimately their call. Police may have more experience, and have a decent understanding of the law involved (though judges ultimately have more say as to what the law actually is), but trying to cut off a debate by saying "I'm a cop, you aren't, your opinion is irrelevant" is ultimately the single worst idea that could EVER get into the minds of a group of people who are generally allowed to legally use lethal force. When armies think that way, you get coups.

MODERATOR NOTICE Cool it with the personal attacks.

Luck had nothing to do with it. Really, it didn't. Alerting clean-up squads. Paging MIB LCPDFR division. You may see some black helicopters soon; this is a natural disease caused by excessive knowledge.

They were convicted in federal court. They were acquitted in state court. Now, add in that the feds very very rarely press charges when the state acquitted...

Read Tennessee v. Garner. In law, there's no such thing as "no ifs, ands, or buts". In that case, the Supreme Court specifically overturned the "fleeing felon" rule. Now, it might be justified in the case of someone suspected of violent crimes (their example was, IIRC, if a serial killer is escaping you can shoot to stop them), but the mere fact that a felony was committed is not in and of itself reason to use lethal force. Furthermore, there is always the rule that a reasonable officer could think that the force was necessary to serve the government interest. If the police could easily catch up on foot, shooting isn't necessary. You could argue whether that was the case or not, but it isn't clear-cut.

Nice. Do you plan on revising it to take advantage of the API after 1.0 is released?

These are cars. The 2015 model is released mid-2014. So, not unreasonable to unveil it now.

@Michael V: as far as I can tell, they aren't.