Comments

1
If some cops had just shot my mom, i highly doubt i would consider being cradled by police officers "protective custody".
2
But hey, maybe she was an abusive shit, so maybe it is protective.

I guess I'll wait and see how this pans out.

Please strike my first comment from the record.
3
We know she was black, poor, had "mental health issues, the state has her children. We know zero about the pig except for the fact he/she works out of the notoriously brutal, DOJ suing North Precinct.
Why have adequate mental health services when the cops can jail/kill for far cheaper. Fuck the police.
5
"she showed a knife and they both shot her." ...let's hope this is not the whole story.
6
@3: The correct term is police.
7
condolences and there's got to be a better way.
8
Big strong police man, so frightened of a small woman with a knife? Fucking coward. I broke up a knife fight when I was a little girl. The fuck outta here. Lock him up. SPD looks like review of your guidelines are in deep order.
11
"The shooting victim made the call." What the fuck, SPD?
12
Isn't that complex technically IN Magnuson Park and not just "near" it?
13
This is why 911 is a white invention.
14
I don't get the whole shooting someone with a knife. Surely there's a way to disarm them. Pepper spray? Taser?
15
So sad
16
Fuck's sake. Cops have got to be a little less scared and a little less hair-trigger. You can't ​have zero risk to cops bought with the lives of the people they supposedly serve.

My thoughts go out to her family.
17
All of you disgust me. Arm chair quarterbacks....all of you! Why don't you become police officers if you could of done it better or safer? Hypocrites! Fuck the whiny POS do nothing complaining ult leftists!
18
@17, the only disgusting thing here is violent racism, yours included.
19
New headline, though the Stranger is okay, however, ST sucked!
'SPD Kill Pregnant Woman on San Point, After She Requests Help'
“She was not a person you would fear or feel intimidated by”
#BLM

20
"Officer-involved shooting"? Why hide the nature of the officer's involvement? Was there any question about whether the officer(s) who was or were involved was perpetrator(s) or victim of the shooting?
21
Double murder...she was pregnant. This is insane. Is the only way to make cops stop killing black people for a white person to stand in front of every black person whenever they are in public? Maybe that's the solution, every person of color needs a white bodyguard.
22
@14 - ask people in Portland how dangerous it is to go up against somebody with a knife. I'm assuming you read about it? There was just a little bit of publicity.
23
PS There are video cameras on the site...they could show those cops executing her point blank and they'd get away with it...and you know it's true.
24
@ #17 - l already know your an ignorant racist, but what I want to know is why does your white, male privilage in this country make you so angry?
25
Calm yourself socialistseattle dear. After all, we pay the police' salaries. We have a right to comment and question what seems to be a very cowardly act in a series of cowardly acts.

And, as always, you are cordially invited to move someplace where cop fetishism is the norm.
26
@6 Actually the correct term is murderer. When there are other ways of handling a situation, but one chooses lethal force... that's murder. BLUE LIVES MURDER.
27
@24 Because we should be sucking his tiny lil' cock at every turn as sexually liberal liberals and we're not... soooooooo, pent up sexually fueled angry explosion at the ult-life he wish he had.
29
Being a cop makes cops into this. You can't reform police because policing itself is what creates the these attitudes and this behavior. De-fund the police. Fund all the other agencies that can peacefully address the real issues behind so much of what the police try to deal with by yelling orders and taking people down. Keep a few of these guys with their guns around in a barracks somewhere, under heavy supervision. Let them out when we absolutely must.

The police we have don't want to deal with mental illness anyway. They don't want to deal with domestic conflict. They don't want to make traffic stops. They know they suck at all these things, so stop sending them. Send professionals armed with appropriate training, not bullets.

Every society has problems that require some kind of intervention. We send heavily armed trained killers, and pointless death is what we get. It's not working, so quit it. Shift our resources into things that can work, without shooting people.
30
@14 it depends on the situation. Lool at what happened in Portland or London, a knife can be very deadly very fast. If the cops already had their guns drawn they may not have enough time to switch weapons.

That being said there's probably a lot more training to stay back and de-esculate the situation. Unfortunately because this country doesn't have any sane laws on guns, most cops go in expecting the worst :( in addition to fixing the police force we need to fix our gun laws that are routed in fear and racism.

A person should be able to call the cops without getting shot when they show up :(
31
*look
32
#17 Read all the articles. You are out of line and obviously white. The cops have been taking de-escalation classes at the behest of the DOJ and it's not working.
33
@29 I think there was a time when police understood that a lot of their official job involved those the kinds of issues you mentioned in your second paragraph. Basically "keeping the peace", even a lot of the bad apples understood that these things were their official job. Now, it seems like a lot of police have a twisted idea of what their purpose is, partly due to what Catalina termed "cop fetishism", part their relationship to the wider gun identity culture, and part their alliance with right wing ideology, which denigrates and spits on the less fortunate people in our society, and which keeps getting more and more openly crazy, looking for opportunities to show off their anti-PC chops.

My personal limited experience interacting with and observing under 30 police officers in Seattle the last couple of years is that a huge percentage are looking for conflict and opportunities to assert their superiority over ordinary citizens, including over supposedly privileged white middle class citizens the second those citizens fail to show their worshipful obedience or membership in the wealthy elite. Far from the new training tamping this mindset down, I think many young cops are getting contrary attitudes and response training drummed into them from older colleagues in the force, except the older ones are more experienced in hiding it. And for those actively engaged with the current right wing media, they have been getting a steady diet of support for the idea the disobedience alone is sufficient to justify violent response. For the committed right wing cop, how can a challenge or hint of challenge not be seen as a threat to their core identity that can only be redeemed by humiliation or violence?
34
@16: This.
Part of the problem is that they didn't get a call from a family member that someone was having a psychotic episode or similar. No, they got a call saying there was an intruder and so they went in expecting to need to use force.
35
Socialist @16 is hereby prohibited from critiquing the work of the Seattle city council unless he shows them how he does it better.
36
Arm chair quarterbacks, eh?
Policing is not in the top 10 most hazardous occupations. None of these professionals get paid leave when they kill someone:
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal…
The cops have a mentality where they see the public, especially poor and people of color, as the enemy.
39
@28: there are no guarantees, you fucking child.
41
Whatever happened to negotiation to defuse the situation?
43
Here's a tip @38, when issuing mild rightish-wing screeds, don't add "all lives matter." For one, people won't instantly ignore everything you just said.

Far more importantly, of course all lives matter. Duh. But Black Lives Matter signifies the basically inarguable truth that all other circumstances being equal, police are, statistically speaking, greatly more likely to pull triggers when the person in the sights is Black. Across reams of data this has been shown to be the case. There is nothing left to attribute this difference to than racism.

Now this racism - it's nearly always not white hood and burning cross racism, but rather double-blind psych study Black man walks into the room and 9 out of 10 people (including many Black people and most ultra-lib SJW-types Whites with nose rings and androgynous hairstyles) experience elevated heart rates racism.

It's a tough problem, this issue of nervous psychology and Black men, not a problem that goes away by us saying oh let's all just be cool to everyone. It require hard driving activism to get people to do some uncomfortable self-exploration. Sure BLM has attracted the expected cadre of dickheads - 1/3 of all activist groups are just recalcitrant assholes. But don't let them inspire you to look like an asshole too by writing the dumbness "all lives matter" which signifies nothing more than your ignorance of the clear truth about systemic racism and your arrogant rejection of the notion that you yourself might need to take a closer look at how your emotions function around Black people.
44
@38 makes sense
45
100% chance this goes down as a "clean shoot". It's barely worth discussing. In the tape, there's 3:45 of essentially civil, just the facts talk. Then they'res some type of scuffle, the police yelling at lyles to get back, lyles yelling back "do it, do it", and "[unintelligble] not going to do that either, mother fucker". In all, the time from when things start to happen and when shots were fired it was 15 seconds.

The only possible thing you can charge the police with here is using deadly force when non-deadly options were available. But the tape seems consistent: Lyles grabbed a knife, menaced the officers, and ignored several calls to "get back". Even if we find out the cops were card carrying klan members (notable: one of them was black), i'd still say it was within the bounds of generally acceptable police conduct.
48
@23

How many shots did the police fire at the man with the knife who had already stabbed several unarmed civilians?
49
@29: Only in a utopian society, do your points have a hint of realistic plausibility.
50
@46, They should have tasered her like mad, kicked the knife away, subdued and handcuffed her.
51
@46 Ideally, as @50 says. But the entire incident took 15 seconds - no time for guessing or second guessing. The nominally attempted to de-escalate - its clear from the tape that Lyles was the aggressor in this case. The solution of course is for them not to have handguns. But otherwise, every officer in the country is pulling the trigger in this scenario; and any civilian with a gun is pulling a trigger in this scenario. There's no combination of armed people in this country that doesn't end up with Ms Lyles either dying or stabbing someone.
52
Who remembers when that homeless dude (Chris I think) had a standoff with like 50 cops downtown because he wouldn't drop his sword? They didn't kill him.
53
@52 world of difference between approaching a known suspect on a public street (the eventually subdued him by pinning him with a ladder) than someone pulling a kitchen knife on you at close range. Not even close to comparable.
54
FIVE KIDS?!
55
@22

Presumably the difference is that LEO's are supposedly trained for these situations and part of that training is also supposed to include de-escalation techniques designed to prevent exactly these sorts of tragic occurrences. One might understandably question their effectiveness however, if LEO's are provided with such tactics, but consistently fail to make use of them. And it goes without saying that LEO's DO in point of fact manage to disarm and subdue knife-wielding people all the time, even after they have fatally attacked others. So, it CAN be done; the question, as it often is in instances such as this is: why didn't they even try?

My deepest condolences to Lyle's family.
58
@57 "now, curve the bullet"
59
Perhaps we should organize a crack team of SLOG commentators the cops can call in to handle all life-threatening situations wherein the perpetrator is not a white male. And for those rare exceptions, keep firing, assholes!

60
"Police are trained to approach a suspect with a knife with guns drawn and shoot at the slightest hint of aggression."

You ever wonder who the fuck trains cops to take that hair-trigger approach? It's called the "21 foot rule". They are trained to murder anyone with a knife who gets within 21 feet. Rather than say, take one step back.

Why? Because some charlatan made up the 21 foot rule in order to keep cops out of jail for murder. This guy named Dennis Tueller made it up. Now Tueller's half-baked opinions are treated as "science". As legal fact. They use it to justify shooting anyone with a knife. The murder of John T. Williams for example.

Our police don't care whether or not the need to kill people. They care whether or not they can *get away* with killing people. This shit "training" that all the cops get (guess who chooses which training to sign up for? cops) gives them the excuse they want. More sensible training, that teaches alternatives to shooting anybody with a knife at 21 feet or less is of no interest to our police. That kind of training would form the basis of holding cops accountable.

They much prefer the "training" that serves as their get out of jail free card.

61
@59

You say the same stupid fucking thing every time. Every time the police do anything, you're here sucking their cock.

If the SPD really doesn't enjoy having the likes of me telling them how to do their job, maybe they prefer not having the likes of me pay their salary. Quit, fuckers. Quit. Seattle is filled with people who will sit here and tell you after the fact whether it was right or wrong for you to kill. Everybody in Seattle thinks it's their right to tell you how to do your job. Because you work for us. We pay you. We make the laws you are supposed to uphold.

Don't like us doing that? Quit. Go somewhere else where the town is full of cocksuckers who think your shit doesn't stink. Go work for cocksuckers who think cops are all heroes. Go live off the taxes of cocksuckers who worship cops. Seattle doesn't fucking want you.
62
@61, you say the same shit every time, as well. So: sign up to be a cop and show the world how it's done. But nah, you're just another Seattle pantywaist.
64
@62

Right, because signing up to be a cop is how policy-level changes are made.

You have not addressed the larger point that we pay their salaries, ergo, we ARE the boss of them.
And bosses are allowed to have opinions about their employees.

And fuck you with your "pantywaist" ad hominem swinging-your-dick-around bullshit.
65
@62, IS wrote, "you say the same shit every time, as well. So: sign up to be a cop and show the world how it's done. But nah, you're just another Seattle pantywaist."

When some teacher at your kid's school is caught abusing children, and then another is, and another, and another, and then some pantywaist comes along and insists that those teachers should either cut that shit out or get the hell out of his or her city, you tell that snowflake to sign up to be a teacher and show us all how it's done, do you? Because being a teacher without abusing one's position is a hard job, right? Nobody should complain about a pattern of abuse toward kids if he, himself, has never taken the job and shown us how it's done, right?

It's easy to complain about child abuse when you've never had a job working with children, am I right? We get it: You think that unless somebody has bothered to try being a teacher without fucking the occasional teenager or working as a cop without shooting people dead the minute he thinks he can get away with it, he has no business telling those people how to do their jobs.
66
@65 well put !!
67
@54
FIVE KIDS! JUST LIKE HERR TRUMP!!
68
All cops are bastards
69
I'm just gonna say it: If she were white, would she be dead?
70
Less than three months ago, this occurred:

When [SPD] officers arrived, they contacted the man in the street, but he refused to drop his knife. Officers attempted to use a less-lethal Taser to force the man to drop his weapon, but were unsuccessful.

Officers cleared the street of pedestrians and motorists, asked nearby businesses to shelter in place, and erected a temporary fence on the block in an effort to contain the armed man.

Police negotiators contacted the man, who appeared to be in the midst of a mental health crisis and repeatedly asked officers to shoot him.

Officers continued to work with the man in an effort to de-escalate his behavior and, after communicating with police and family members at the scene for several hours, the man finally put down his knife and surrendered just before 4:30 PM.

He was transported to Harborview Medical Center for a medical evaluation.


71
@65, nobody hates teachers. You all hate all cops. So they all need to be replaced; and who better to do the replacing than yall? Don't just talk about it; be about it.

72
@71

Cop cocksucker.

I didn't want to replace any individual cops. I want to replace the institution of a police force as the go-to agency for every kind of problem from actual terrorism to burglary to bar fights to domestic violence to mental crisis to sleeping in the park to motherfucking jaywalking. We expect people trained primarily to fight to deal with all that different shit. Why?

I'm not imagining some far out utopia. The French gendarmes, or Italian caribinari or German 'special' police are heavily armed and rush to rare incidents of extreme violence. The rest of these day-to-day chickenshit hassles are handled either by non-cops like social workers or else by unarmed cops who don't even think of their job as being about asserting authority and control. It's the norm in lots of places. There are well-tested alternatives to our expensive, ineffective, failing system.

Anyone who doesn't spend all day with a mouth full of cop cock can understand that. And the belief that only men in uniform are qualified to make the big decisions in society? We call that fascism, Internet Tough Guy.
73
@53 Yes, everything is different so nothing can ever be compared to something else.

Please wait...

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