Comments

1
What reason for Gonzalez to hold "meeting"?
Ah..,election campaign.
2
The officers did what they had to do given the situation to save themselves from being stabbed. The questions about tasers are still very pertinent and one wasn't working. That's very bad. But given that, what choice did our policeman have?

Just because the taser wasn't working doesn't prohibit them from using a gun when their lives are under attack.
3
@2:

How about: "the same choice LEO's have made in other similar situations where they confronted someone wielding a knife - or gun or baseball bat or hammer or what-have-you - and yet somehow still managed to not shoot and kill the person"?
4
@3: To answer your question one would obviously say that they employed skills that avoided lethal force. Here, we can also say that these offices should have employed those same skills.

But because, in this case, they did not. The officers will have to account for that, and maybe do time for that. Nevertheless, the officers apparently had do do what they did to prevent being stabbed. These facts have to be reconciled or at least evaluated orthogonally.
5
@3 Except in this situation the aggressor was only 3 feet away, and had already attempted to stab one officer in the abdomen at close range. You're comparing apples to bowling balls.
6
Someone is dead because officer Anderson "stopped carrying his Taser for a week and a half to two weeks because the battery had died. He hadn't contacted anyone about replacing the battery yet.

You can bet your ass that if the officer Anderson had discovered his gun wasn't working he would have taken care of that ASAP. How long does anyone think he would have continued his duties without a gun strapped on his hip?

I do believe that, if everything we're hearing is correct and complete info, that those two officers ended up in a situation where they had to shoot. But that situation was created by officer Anderson's willful negligence: he knew he was required to have a taser when he went on duty, and he chose to go on duty without one.

It seems like officer McNew was caught in a situation - created in part by the willful negligence of his partner - where he had no choice. Monday-morning quarterbacking notwithstanding, he was on-the-spot in a situation where his training (however insufficient it might be) and department policy (however ill-concieved) called for the use of deadly force.
7
LEOs being stabbed to death is a remote possibility: 12 in the last 10 years versus 537 shot.
http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fata… ://www.google.com/

in addition to tasers, don't all officers carry nightsticks?
8
Presumably these officers were wearing vests that could have stopped bullets, let alone a knife inexpertly thrown at ont of the officers. Sheesh.

https://www.google.com/search?q=bullet%2…
9
Why did this troubled young woman with three kids, one on the way and living in public housing have custody of her children if she wasn't mentally capable of following the directions of uniformed police officers?
10
The misadventures of Lyles is grossly over reported because, notwithstanding the facts (prior violence, weapon threat to a child, carrying a concealed weapon), it fits a tidy Lefty narrative of police misdeeds.

Meanwhile Thursday's random knife murder of a young man at the Lower QA Dick's has, as of yet, gone completely unreported by Stranger/Slog,

In the silence, we can guess the a) innocent stabbing victim, and the; b) all-too-clearly guilty assailant would be considered, respectively a) unsympathetic to the needs of the lefty political agenda, and b) inconvenient to their grievance narrative.

Orwell.
11
@10:

The difference being of course that LEO's are supposed to be TRAINED and therefore CAPABLE of dealing with such situations, not to mention expected to carry the equipment necessary to safely and effectively exercise appropriate levels of non-lethal force in order to subdue and detain those they encounter; random civilians, not so much.
12

Oh, and in case you're wondering: The victim, after singing a little karaoke with friends over at Ozzie's, strolled over to Dicks. He was 26-years old, white and married. And killed. The random murderer is black, recently released from jail, with prior convictions for assault, robbery, and drugs. And THAT's why the Stranger/Slog couldn't be bothered to report it.

http://narrative-collapse.com/2017/06/24…
13
@11
Subsequent reporting on this story has oscillated in emphasis between racism, and police use-of-force.

If its a story of racist policing leading to vast numbers of shootings among POC, where is the weekly footage of the police shooting Asians and Indians? hmmmmmm... You see, personal conduct, even among those who have diminished faculties, has consequences. And its time to start asking how both parties in a police encounter have responsibilities to assure their mutual safety.

If this story is about use of force: The police also had batons and pepper spray as non-lethal options. Their judgment (simultaneous) was that the situation warranted deadly force. You see very keen to inspect the details of the police, but less inclined to examine the responsibility of Lyles.

- She didn't just pick-up an knife. She was ALSO carrying another 8" knife in the pocket of her coat.
- She was just released from custody for menacing police and threatening a 4-year old with a pair of shears.
- She wasn't a victim of a failed mental health system. She was housed by Solid Ground, and offered extensive support services.

So the facts don't fit your storyline of one-sided victimhood.

When someone is 3-feet from you and comes at you with a large knife, urging or daring you to shoot them ("Do it. Do it." on recording), the decision whether to shoot or attempt to stun is entirely your own, and entirely justifiable.

The police are here to serve and protect, with due restraint, not needlessly, recklessly gamble with their own lives. That situation was a mess, but Lyles (and her family) appeared to do nothing – at all – to avoid an eventual violent end to her life, or to someone else's (including her children).

For dealing with these messes, the police should be thanked, not derided.
14
Or presumably if these officers did not shoot, they had no other choice than to remain stationary and immobile
15
So KUOW had a very good interview with former SPD head, Norm Stamper, and a current SPD officer. This article says this:

"He claimed that the situation in Lyles' apartment amounted to a “lethal force encounter,” and that his training taught him to “rid of your Taser and go to your firearm” in such situations."

But the SPD officer on KUOW said they couldn't have used Tasers if they had them because the distance was took short for it to work. So which is it? Are they not trained the same way? And, Stamper said some might laugh but they could have run.

@3 has it right - there was NOTHING else they could do but shoot this small pregnant woman? No talking her down, reminding her that her children were there? Nothing?

They went in - knowing - she had mental health issues AND had previously had a weapon. And they were shocked when something happened?

@5 you are going with the officers said - there is no evidence she was going to stab anyone in the stomach and I wonder if her older children might have something to say on that point.
17
@16: What shooting (in your reference to @12)?

Looks like you didn't read that link, clearly.
18
@15

1) Officer's statements are evidence, you shitheel. And the audio tape corroborates the abruptness and the threatening manner with which Ms. Lyles produced the weapon;

2) Her older kid was in his room and only came out after the sound of gunshots;

3) One of the officers DID consider running away, but he was trapped in the corner of the kitchen. It's likely the other officer (in the doorway) would have ran, too, had his partner not been cornered w/o any clear egress.
19
So the police never lie? To cover their asses?
How many people have to die by police bullets for some people to wake up? This is not going away.
This was murder 1. No excuses. This was racist and the system is. DISARM the POLICE.
21
@18:

Clear egress = exit the way they came in. Was there someone preventing him from doing that? Oh, right. It was probably the other officer. How convenient. "I had to shoot her, because I had no clear egress, because my partner was blocking my way."
22
@20: Well, you can read the exact same account of the incident from King5.

I assume you don't consider NBC and its affiliates an arm of white-supremisit propaganda.
24
@21: How do you know exactly where the officers were, where the residents were, and the exact layout of the room, hallways, exits, and furniture/obstructions? Was this reported somewhere, or are you just making stuff up?
25
@24 its linked right at the beginning of the article you're commenting on.
26
@21
The forensic evidence is consistent with the officer's account, that the officer retreated from the first swipe with a knife, into a kitchen, surrounded on three sides, -- two exterior walls and a counter with overhead cabinets. So, surrounded, with an assailant carrying a large knife -- 4-feet away -- screaming 'Do it motherfucker. Do it.' (She was later found to be carrying another large knife in her coat pocket. And the prior weeks she has threatened police and endangered a 4-year old, menacing and refusing to put-down a large pair of shears.

Citizens and police share a mutual responsibility to each other for safety during an encounter. You seem to think its only the cops responsible for deescalation and discretion with weapons. She made shitty choices. Those choices have consequences.

And If this is about race -- not culture, and the consequences of conduct -- where are the large numbers of Asian- and Indo-Americans meeting their ends at the hands of white cops?

27
Don't have kids if you can't care for them. Don't charge police officers with deadly weapons. I know we are all victims of something but these aren't radical ideas.

28
@27: I agree with your second sentence, and only philosophically your first. But we realistically know that too many women are forced into pregnancies, unable to get contraception, don't care, or for other reasons we can think of find themselves mothering children.

Nevertheless, mental illness is the culprit here. I would hazard a guess that Charlenna Lyles was never one to play the victim card.
29
@25: No, that is the state of the apartment after the event occurred. #21 asserted way more than that diagram shows, or could show.
30
So he stopped carrying the tazer because the battery died? Would he stop carrying his gun if he ran out of bullets? Part of every job is making sure you have the tools to do your job. I guess the question is did he ask for a new battery? If he did why wasn't he provided with one?
31
@23:

Which further calls into question the judgement of the officers: among all the other lapses already cited, apparently they also went into an environment with limited egress, and then at least one of them consciously elected to move into the least safe position they could find, instead of, oh, I don't know, backing straight out the same door they came in. One would imagine that "don't allow yourself to be trapped without an escape route" would be one of the first topics covered in police academy "Enhanced Tactical Situational Awareness… training.
32
If you can't fairly consider the compilation of audio, video, and accounts of everyone involved

Please don't tell me you also went to the March For Science.

Please don't tell me that you know anything about critical thinking.

Please don't tell me your a progressive. You're just selfish.

Please wait...

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