Icheoku says when is a force too excessive or does it not matter if the person at the receiving end of the force is considered to be a society's pariah and deserving of any amount of deadly force whatsoever to put him out of commission? Does the gravity of the person's action, somewhat justifies whatever amount of deadly force that was deployed to take him out and end whatever disruption he was causing? If it was not right for an individual to explode an IED on a society; why is it then proper or acceptable for the government to explode and kill an individual with an IED?
What message was sent by the government when they decided to blow the Dallas shooter to smithereens, especially in this day and age when terrorists' bombings is saturating the airwaves and people are overly conscious and afraid of such bombings going off. Why use bomb when there are so many other less explosive deadly force alternative that could have been first deployed and which are very effective? Even drones could have been deployed to stagger him and force him out. Why such an excessive use of brute force, bombing; to terminate a man's life who was already cornered and who could have been waited down until he finally breaks down and surrenders. But no, he killed police men and hence his life has to be summarily terminated.
Icheoku says such a tit for tat can only make any would be future actor more vicious, knowing fully well that the end will not be kosher but violently reached. Query, did the Dallas police authorities act too quickly to bring the standoff to an abrupt terrible end? Was their action a result of their jittery and the need to bring the situation under control fast and without prolonging what proved to be a very bloody violent day in Dallas. Icheoku does not know the answer to some of these posed questions, but believes that other less violent ways would have been first deployed and used to end the standoff. The government must not be seen as being pharisaic in his method; preaching no terrorism and acting like terrorists. Why kill an American with a bomb and right here inside America? It does not make sense and it is very callous.
Instances abound where holdout individuals have been waited out for days until they are worn down and out. Instances abound where such individuals were swarmed by police dogs and then overpowered by officers and arrested to face trial? Instances abound where such individuals were bombed with tear gas and pepper spray, their hold out so saturated with gaseous irritants that they had no choice but to crawl out with their hands in the air? Instances abound where such people had negotiators talk them down and out, negotiations which sometimes last for several hours and days? Instances abound where such people were stunned by flash bang grenades to put them temporarily out of their mind while the police swarm them and arrest them? Why did the police not try to smoke him out of his hold up or even start a fire to force him out? But no; they did not try hard enough to arrest him nor did they even want to take him alive? They had to end it quickly and it has to be through bombing him to pieces with a C4?
Icheoku says what is done is done but certainly it looks too excessive a force as other less lethal or less devastating options were not first fully explored before the robot bearing the deadly payload crawled into his hold up area and the rest became history. Anyway, Micah Xavier Johnson is dead, bombed to pieces after killing five police officers and wounding seven. His death did not a thing solve and instead, has now cemented his name in history and future generations will hear and read about him; how he single handedly held Dallas hostage and caused so much panic within its police community. That he alone acted out the mayhem is also something to ponder about because he set a new precedent that just one person is capable of causing such grievous harm and damage. It is quite unfortunate that these five police officers have to die due to the provocations of other police officers, many of whom are thousands of miles away from Dallas.
Icheoku prays that the situation, especially the underlying conditions festering such lack of trust and hatred between some communities and the police, could be brought under control. If the fallout from the Dallas executions succeeded in stopping more of the Minnesota and Baton Rouge incidents, as well as several hundreds others which take place throughout America, then those officers did not die in vain. But should the nation and the police later revert to the same statuesque ante, then we as a people did not or rather failed to learn a thing from the ugliness of the Dallas shooting. Once again, Icheoku prays for the repose of all the souls lost in Dallas - the five police officers, the shooter that was blown to pieces; as well as the two black men from Baton Rouge and Minnesota whose deaths probably pushed the Dallas shooter over the edge. Adieu.
WHEN CAN A POLICE USE A BOMB T0 KILL A SUSPECT? - Haley Sweatband Edwards July 8, 2016
ReplyDeleteLate Thursday night, Dallas police attached an explosive device to what’s known as a “bomb-disposal robot,” rolled it into an area where one of the suspected shooters was holed up, and detonated the bomb, killing him on the spot.
The move marked the first time that civilian police have used a robot to kill an American suspect on American soil, according to several legal and robotics scholars, raising major questions about the use of such machines in domestic stand-offs.
“The situation definitely raises interesting questions,” said Peter Asaro, an assistant professor at the New School for Public Engagement in New York City and a co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control. “Who was controlling the bomb? Who was controlling the robot?”
Not to mention: Was this the best use of force in this case? What does it mean for the use of robots in future instances?
At a Friday morning press conference, Dallas Police Chief Brown said that a hostage negotiator had been in touch by phone with the suspect in question, but it was apparent that the shooter remained dangerous and officers were in danger. Brown also said the suspect mentioned the placement of IEDs, improvised explosive devices, in the city. “We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was,” Brown said. “Other options would have exposed our officers to great danger. The suspect is deceased as a result of detonating the bomb.”
Several legal and robotics scholars told TIME that, given those circumstances, the use of the robot in this case was no different, from a legal or moral position, than killing an active shooter in another way. “From a utilitarian perspective, if the officers on the scene have already decided that they need to kill this person, how they do it doesn’t matter,” Ansaro said.
Dan Montgomery, a former police chief and expert on police practice, agreed that the officers acted according to agreed-upon rules of engagement. “Admittedly, I’ve never heard of that tactic being used before in civilian law enforcement, but it makes sense,” he told TIME. “You’ve got to look at the facts, the totality of the circumstances. You’ve got officers killed, civilians in jeopardy, and an active shooter scenarios. You know that you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to neutralize that threat. So whether you do it with a sniper getting a shot through the window or a robot carrying an explosive device? It’s legally the same.”
ReplyDeleteCynthia Lum, director of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University, also noted the Dallas police force’s “highly unusual use of a robot,” but said the situation merited it. The use of robots can be an effective way to avoid harm to police officers or bystanders, she said.
Others scholars said the situation seemed a little murkier. Keith Abney, a professor of ethics and emerging sciences at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, said that while the police officers’ decision to use the robot to kill the suspect in this case “doesn’t seem fundamentally ethically different from another distance weapon, like a sniper rifle, used to take out suspects in an active shooter situation,” there is still the question of why the suspect had to die.
“One can wonder why, if they could send in a teleoperated robot with C4 to kill the suspect,” he told TIME, “why they couldn’t instead equip the robot with knockout gas or some other nonlethal agent to capture the suspect, instead of killing him.”
Gloria Browne-Marshall, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the incident was most concerning because of what it means for future cases: What are the parameters surrounding the use of such technology on civilian soil? “If we’re going to start using—as a country—this kind of drone technology and robots on a civilian population, then we’re easing into a civil war,” she told TIME. “We’re easing into one because we have civilians who believe that the government is not protecting them, and we have a government who believes that civilians are armed enough that they have to use military tactics.”
Thomas J. Aveni, the executive director of the Police Policy Studies Council, told TIME that the events in Dallas should not be taken lightly. Given the precise circumstances in this case, the police were justified in their decision to use the robot to kill, he said. “But some will say it’s a slippery slope—that this remote way of killing people that we’ve accepted and embraced in the military realm, it is something that should be more closely examined, and I would concur,” he said.