Comment by vel0city
10 hours ago
Incredible people are taking the position it's ok for law enforcement to execute you in the streets because you're blowing a whistle.
10 hours ago
Incredible people are taking the position it's ok for law enforcement to execute you in the streets because you're blowing a whistle.
That is clearly not the position being taken.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
People are arguing the actions of ICE officers is warranted because they're being obstructed and harassed, blowing whistles is obstruction and harassment, their actions include shooting murdering people in the streets.
QED.
I don't know how else to read it. Inform me.
If anything the actions ICE is taking is even worse, Pretti didn't even have a terrorist assault whistle.
> I don't know how else to read it.
None of the argument has to do with "harassment", although of course that is not okay.
I mentioned the whistles specifically because it impedes communication between officers. Better communication between officers might, for example, have led to Pretti not getting shot, because they might have been able to understand better that he had already been disarmed. Hence "Can you imagine how this level of noise interferes with a job that involves verbal communication with both coworkers and civilians?", which was omitted from a reply that quoted the rest of the paragraph.
There is speculation that the first shot may have come from an accidental discharge of Pretti's gun, as it was carried by the officer who took it away. That could reasonably have spooked other officers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagious_shooting is a relevant concept here) who didn't have a clear view of everything that was going on. (There is also footage where Pretti appears to be reaching for where the gun would be, after it had been taken. Someone might not have realized it had in fact been taken.)
Refusing to comply with orders, and obstructing officers, justifies arrest. Presenting threats of death or serious injury during the arrest is what justifies self-defense actions. "Murder" is definitionally an unjustified killing; the entire point of a self-defense argument (and LEO do have some legal protections here that civilians don't, along with their responsibilities) is to establish that a killing was not murder. To call it "murder" is therefore assuming that which is to be established.
I am not asserting that a self-defense action is justified in Pretti's case. But I am saying that people are making the argument, and that there is a clear basis for it.
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