From: robear@access.digex.com (Robear)
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts
Subject: Re: SEALs
Followup-To: rec.martial-arts
Date: 27 Jan 1993 08:36:42 -0500
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: access.digex.com

In article <1993Jan20.205947.17810@cbfsb.cb.att.com> osan@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (Mr. X) writes:
>> is Robear:
>>It's a sad mistake, but I am sure that if you were raiding a house
>>which you *believed* to be full of armed drug dealers, and someone came
>>at you with a gun, probably yelling in Spanish, you just might shoot
>>him.  Or would you let him shoot you?
>
>	I would not BE in the wrong house to begin with.  There is ABSOLUTELY
>	ZERO valid excuse for busting the wrong house, just as there is not
>	a SINGLE valid excuse to kill or maim innocent bystanders.  When one
>	is doing this kind of work, you do NOT work based on belief, but rather
>	on ABSOLUTE certainty.  If you have to wait for a month or a year to
>	obtain the necessary certainty, then that is what you do.  Here we speak
>	of people possibly dying.  The police or any other Guv. instrument
>	have ZERO right to kill anyone that is not actually threatening them.
>	Cops/etc. also have absolutely ZERO right to put people into a position
>	that will force them into a threatening posture against the police
>	when they are not ABSOLUTELY certain that the persons in question have
>	been or are presently in the process of committing criminal acts.  Any
>	cop that kills an innocent person in a botched raid should be
>	executed publicly.

In Andy's world, cops never make mistakes.  They don't have the right to.
If they do, the should be killed.  Because lives are involved.  Further,
cops cannot kill people threatening them with deadly force unless
those people are known to be threatening them for criminal reasons.

Andy, how do you feel about drivers?  Some of them get drunk and kill people.
That involves lives, people who were not thereatening them.  Would you kill people
for drunk driving?

You are arguing here that *any* person who makes a mistake involving a life
should be killed, publically, are you not?  Or just the folks who are hired 
to protect us?  jAnd if we don't hire people to protect us, we forgo the
rule of law, as a practical consequence.

So okay, only perfect cops can be involved with arrests.
>	
>	I'm afraid that your apologetic tone holds no water.  Such actions
>	cannot, under ANY circumstances, be be justified or explained away.
>	If these lousy PIGS were not so anxious to confiscate houses and
>	boats and cars etc., and if the penalty for carelessness were death
>	or life getting butt fucked by Bubba, they might have cause to actually
>	do their jobs correctly.  They have ZERO accountability in the vast
>	majority of cases that I have seen.  This is vile and utterly repugnant
>	to the  ideas upon which this once great Republic was, and is still
>	supposedly, based.

Police man and federal agents go to jail for proven violations of the law. 
They end up dead or in solitary, of course.  But again, you show us that there is no
mistake allowed when dealing with criminals, no forgiveness, no humanity.  
Your policeman is a mechanistic enforcer of the True Law, an automaton
capable of action only when presented with Absolute Certainty.

Luckily for us, Absolute Certainty is a fact of everyday life.  I'm sure
none of us have ever acted in a way which irresponsibly endangers another, for 
reasons of say, drunkenness, tiredness, or carelessness.  Anyone
constrained by the realities of real-world investigations can easily
determine facts, to the nth degree.
>
>>Sam, in cases like these, things are almost always more complicated
>>than they appear.  
>
>	This is irrelevant.  The fact is that there are ways of safely
>	apprehending persons without unnecessarily endangering innocent
>	parties.  Such strategies, when properly executed will work virtually
>	every time such that no innocent third parties need be injured due to
>	violent exchange.  If what the target is doing is so damned serious and
>	wrong, then the authorities should spend the time and effort on doing it
>	right, otherwise leave people alone.  People die in these cases for 
>	reasons of expediency on the part of the authorities involved.  I say 
>	such authorities ought to be tried and upon conviction summarily 
>	executed.


Oh, wait a minute!  *now* you propose that operations can be safely done
*virtually* every time?  But before there was *no* excuse for *any* failure.
Which is it?  Must cops be perfect, or *nearly* perfect?  What is *nearly*
perfect?

Tell me, do the principles this country was founded upon include
public executions of civil servants who make fatal mistakes?  Do they
include the inability to act against criminals, *unless* and until 100%
certainty of their crimes is achieved?  Andy, your world is one of
true fascism.  In your world, the police could answer this charge
that Sam brought up by saying that they *were* sure, that it
was all a lie, that the people were not
innocent - because the police are not allowed to make mistakes, everyone 
knows *that*, golly they'd be risking their lives, wouldn't they?  Unless
of course you propose that we *never trust our police*.  Then boom, 
no law enforcement at all - is that a founding principle?

>	The various enforcement branches of the various governments are in many
>	cases out of control.  If they will not control themselves, WE should
>	control them.  Of course, being that it is Stupor Droll time again, I
>	guess we'll have to put off the start for another couple of months...
>	sheesh, Amerika.

I wish you could see what it is like in the real world.  My cousin is on
a SWAT team.  He is a person who has saved many lives, who takes
low pay to be shot at and abused.  The one thing that comes up again
and again when talking to him is the speed with which decisions are
made - have to be made - on the scene.  In those conditions, MISTAKES
HAPPEN.  You would make them, under those conditions.  Anyone could.

My cousin was on over 100 raids, often as point man, and NEVER KILLED
ANYBODY.  He is no slavering deathmonger, nor does he always act
with complete certainty, *just like the rest of us*.  That was my 
point.  You can't hold the police to impossibly high standards.
they are people just like us.  Mistakes occur infrequently, compared
to the number of actions that take place.  But they do get a lot of 
publicity, and frequently the information given by the news media is mistaken.

I'll leave you with a real story.  My cousin stopped a car for 65 in
a 55 zone.  He spoke with the driver and went back to his car for
a license check.  While he waited, on a whim, he went back to the stopped
car to chat with the driver, who was a pleasant person.  As he approached the
car, he could see over the drivers shoulder.  He held an Uzi, into the
clip of which he was pushing bullets.

Under your rules, he had certainty.  He could now act.  What did he do, Andy?
What would you do, alone on a small highway in the middle of the day?

	David Pipes

Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts