Posts by Morgan Nichol
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memo to RNZ: Most people are not interested in listening to middle aged men wallowing through the nostalgic deitritus of their salad days.
I cannot stress enough how strongly I agree with this.
I thought that Noelle was great value though - but I turned it off when she wrapped up for the day.
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Giles someone.
Timothy Giles. Bloody great show.
Full disclosure: Timothy is one of my favourite ever drinking mates.
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Pretty much the same principle though.
You might be right.
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Regarding Cactus Kate's comments, one has to say... wow.
I can't say I know anything about her, and hadn't visited her site before clicking through your link - but it seems she probably has a similar audience to DPF's, my solution to the problem is to use RSS and never visit the site for fear of ever being tempted to click through "because it can't really have been as bad as I remember".
(I actually like David - though I disagree with a lot of his politics - but I find his community to be quite repellant.)
Not like this place, where there aren't too many screaming shitcocks. People can seem obtuse, but I think that's just because we're all clever buggers arguing subtle points. But then I would think that.
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What, for police killing someone as they were doing their job? Don't tell me that has no precedence.
I'm sure they've killed a bunch with car crashes and such, but yes it's unprecedented to shoot Innocent Bystander to death while trying to shoot Criminal Nutter.
And for some strange reason use of firearms tends to be treated much more seriously than use of cars.
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Well, if we're after something everyone can disagree with, Danyl links to Cactus Kate's thoughts on the matter.
If you think you're going to get universal (dis)agreement on anything with this crowd, you're out of your mind. ;)
Incidentally "thoughts" is pretty generous of you.
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Why?
Because there's no precedent for this type of incident, but the IPCA is still expected to make the decision on how to deal with it. I suggest that a court should be the body that decides if the accidental killing of a bystander is a breach or not.
Whatever the case, the report is going to be quite a read - they do tend towards a certain fascinating thoroughness.
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If the IPCA decides that, as best as possible, the shooter fulfilled their legal and professional duties, then that should be acceptable to the public at large.
This is an unprecented circumstance, I'm not sure that they're qualified to make the decision - unless the facts make it incredibly bleeding obvious that the officer in question really had no other choice.
"Meh, it's a hard job, *shrug*." is not a valid finding.
Once the courts make their decision known, then the IPCA can move forward applying that understanding to any future incidents of this nature.
It sucks to be the test case.
But it could (and I hope this is the outcome of the various investigations) well be that this case is so open and shut that the worst the officer should ever expect from anyone is a quiet nod and a doleful look.
If that's true, then presenting the facts to the public (on conclusion of all of the investigations) should be sufficient for the reasonable majority.
There's nothing you can do about the nutters - whether of the "the police can do no wrong" or the "fucking pigs deserve whatever they get" ilk.
But if there's any doubt, it has to be up to the courts to decide.
Do we hold surgeons accountable? The stakes are the same (life or death) and they kill a lot more people than the police do.
I'm not sure that this is a good analogy. Leaving aside informed consent, and so on. It's not that surgeons kill people, it's that surgeons fail to save people.
In the very limited cases where they go rogue, well there you might have a point. Catching a rogue surgeon must be about one of the most difficult things to do - much more difficult than identifying a bad shooting.
Probably irrelevent aside:
I used to train with a couple of police (great guys, very friendly & genuine), but the stories they'd sometimes tell about their fellow officers - particularly the inbred fuckwits that get shunted into team policing - made my toes curl. And they'd tell them with a chuckle. They know that these police are thuggish idiots, but they protect them all the same.Those guys should never be allowed firearms under any circumstance. (Barring zombie uprising.)
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It should be possible, in reasonable discourse, to make mention of the outcome of the Nuremburg Trials without it immediately being taken as comparing whatever is under discussion with the actions of the Nazis. Or am I alone in that belief?
Well we do actually agree on that point.
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If the investigation determines the AOS acted in a careless manner then I'm all for the officer being prosecuted, but we also have to accept that if we give police the right to shoot at people in public things are occasionally going to go wrong and horrible things will happen as a result.
So do we hold them accountable when things go wrong or not? I think we should, and we should hold them to a high standard, because things can go so terribly awfully pear shaped.
It's almost certain that it won't be manslaughter. They don't usually charge hunters who kill another person with manslaughter, and that's a far less defensible act than this.
I'm sure you're right. Whatever the charge is, the important part to me is that justice is seen to be done, by being done in open court - not in a backroom.
Doubts and excessive consideration for their own well-being could cost an innocent person their life.
An apparent lack of care cost an innocent person their life in this instance. So it looks like we must be fucked whatever happens.
If we want expert shots in the police, we should pay for more of their time to go on shooting practice. We don't, so we get police officers who are average shots.
I'm completely happy to do that. We're not talking about a lot of staff, so the cost won't be great - even if we end up sending them off to train in the States (or whichever country produces the most skilled AOS type officers).
My point with the paintball analogy was that just because Ben wasn't very good at hitting a motionless paper target the first time he ever fired a pistol, doesn't mean it's actually an impossible feat - with practice you can learn to do that, and with more practice still you can learn to shoot a moving target (it's just harder, not impossible). My point was that more training, as you have also now mentioned, is necessary.
The law allows police officers to use lethal force under certain conditions.
And I've never argued against this. The law allows me to use lethal force as well.
Just never against, you know, innocent bystanders.
The public needs to get their head around the fact that sometimes the police are going to have to shoot people, and that's the end of it.
That's not the problem. The problem is they shot the wrong guy. Which ISN'T one of the powers we let them have.
The police (and you, apparently) need to get their head around the fact that when they get it sufficiently wrong, they answer to us.