Canadian debate over police shooting

Did the police in Canada have the right to kill the man with the knife?

  • Yes

    Votes: 25 89.3%

  • No

    Votes: 1 3.6%

  • Undecided

    Votes: 2 7.1%
  • Total voters
    28
M

mr00jimbo

New member
So some Canadians (Liberals, mostly) have this crazy idea that guns are bad, only bad people own guns and that a gun owner's favorite hobby is to run around robbing people and shooting at everything he sees. :rolleyes:

In Edmonton, Canada, about a month or two ago a man in Edmonton threatened cops with a knife. They pulled their guns and told him to drop the knife, to which he woudln't comply. Eventually after he started to threaten them with it they shot him dead.

Now there was a huge debate, people saying "Why did they shoot him! OMG! Couldn't they just shoot him in the leg?" Or "He only had a knife! It wasn't fair for them to use guns!" Or my favorite, "If they just left him alone this wouldn't have happened."

People here in Canada often say that if a theif breaks into your house with a knife, it's not grounds to shoot them. Their reasoning is because "all houses have knives. Just grab one from the kitchen."

Haha I'd love to see that, knife fight with a criminal in the dark.

I'd like to make a poll to see your opinions to this situation and see who thinks they should and should not have shot him.
 
At this point in my life I couldn't care less what the Canuckistanians do. Just so long as they stay away from me. Unless they are one of the rare (almost exstinct) ones with their head on straight.

Canada disgusts me.
 
Police are right on this one

Since he advanced and threatened him, they were in the right.

I could see possibly a continum of force; verbal (they tried that, didnt work), pepper spray or baton (IIRC the story didnt mention them trying this), and then shooting him.

jeff
 
OK. One I have been to Canada. Two, I have met with the RCMP and CSIS. Three, they all say that Canadian laws suck. That is not me, but the people that protect Canada. So, until you change your laws and the knuckleheads that vote for them, you share their folly. Sorry, but there it is. Your cops have to deal with your BS.
 
I was the only one to write undecided because I would need more info. If he was in close proximity to them, then I would say yes. I would also need to know how much time the standoff was. A few seconds? A few minutes.

If the guy was charging towards them trying to stab them, then of course they had the right to defend themselves with gunfire.
 
Additionally, even if he hdan't "advanced" on them, he is still a life danger. Ever time a person from 10' to see how fast they can close the gap between you and them. Now, understand that a pistol round WILL NOT drop them in their tracks. So if they are somewhere between 10-15', they are easily within striking distance and will make your large instestine see the light of day. So, hell yes. They shot that SOB and he deserved it. However, Canadian laws still favor the subject and not the citizen or the cop.
 
I agree with Snacktrack. We need more information. We had a similar incident in Australia a couple of years ago and it lead to the Police being issued with mace as well as Glocks.

Now they seem to want to pepper spray everyone....
 
You get the government you deserve...
whether you deserve it, or not.
Click to expand...

did you author that catchy phrase? pretty true i think.

also, i would like to ask for those LEO's out there, how would you get a guy to drop a knife if he refused to drop it, without shooting him? can you use tear gas? or something like that? whats the best way, theres gotta be a better way than firing at him.
 
whats the best way, theres gotta be a better way than firing at him.
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Well if asking him nicely didn't work maybe they could just explain that they, the police, are the bad guys, and that he, the murderous psychotic, is the victim. Or maybe they could trick him into dropping it with one of those giant cardboard Publisher's Clearinghouse checks. Yeah! Every cop could be issued an inflatable Ed McMahon complete with check and balloons.


It's not the knife weilding nut's fault... it's like society's.
 
20 years ago. Mental subject cut his landlord. Respond to scene. Officers responding find bleeding landlord. EMS notified, back up units requested. The knifewielding mental subject charges officers. An officer attempts to physically subdue mental subject. Officer is stabbed in eye and knife penetrates to brain. Officer down and endangered. Back up units shoot mental subject. Officer survives and disability retired. After that nightmare, I have favoured shooting. Another incident that I was witness to was a mental subject who beat himself to death with a hammer. Events unfold quickly. An officer should be trained to respond to deadly force with deadly force. SWAT, SERT, SRT and other alphabet groups are able and capable of handling a situation IF there is time. I feel time was not on the constables side. Appropriate response to threat. Chemical agents are often ineffective. I have been affected more by the use of chemical agents than those I have used them on. A beanbag round may have been effective if that option was available immediately. A shield and swarm effort resulted in a LASO deputys death about three years ago. That is not the desired outcome. Tasers are not always effective, I have seen it anger some when it was used on them. The best use of resources and equipment is going to result in death at times. The moral is simple, comply or become a statistic. The best option would have been to keep the mental subject locked away and not in society. The police deal with nature and societys failures. The reluctance to stigmatize the mentally ill, homeless and depressed with placement in a secure environment is at fault. I strongly believe in locking away the acutely insane. Treatment, drug therapy and behaviour modification can help the mentally ill. When they go off, arm themselves and fail to act in a rational manner, the police are the thin line. I doubt anyone is having a after action review of the failure of the doctors, the mental subjects delusions or the failure to protect the public from the menally ill. We could what if this for a century. The fact is that a mental subject went out in society, failed to adjust and died as a result of his individual actions. I don't feel that the police are at fault.
 
Plus, some people can fight through pepper spray.
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Some people can fight their way straight through Tasers too. Just as they can through bullets.

Somewhere along the way our society has warped people into thinking that the pathetic lives of violent deviants are more valuable than people who suit up, show up, and try to protect the rest of us each and every day. Quite frankly I just don't get that. In fact I'll go so far as to say that the Sun will burn out of the friggin' sky before I'll ever get that. :mad:
 
Sounds like a justified shooting to me.

I was watching Cops the other night and there was a call to respond to a man who was acting crazy. The suspect was punching the first cop to arrive so he stood off and waited for backup. The second cop arrived (the cameraman with him) and he got his taser out and used it on the suspect. It didn't work. The suspect just started screaming like a madman, literally, and running down the street. It took about six or seven cops just to restrain him on the ground to get the cuffs on. Another cop had his taser going while he was on the ground and it wasn't doing anything but make the guy scream. And the suspect wasn't a big guy -- he looked quite scrawny, actually.
 
Hard to judge the police action one way or the other, but I would say that a belligerant assailant with a knife is potentially very lethal.....there are some studies which show that a man with a knife who is 21' away (seven yards) can be on you and kill you within one second which is not much reaction time. And since it was in Canada, seems to me that the coppers had no choice but to kill him, as opposed to merely shooting him in the foot or the kneecap. I mean, face it, since the average citizen up there is barred by the government from adequately defending himself/herself with a legal firearm, and since they don't have the death-penalty either, a knife-wielding assailant could constitute a major threat/menace to society, and since the police are charged with protecting everyone so that they don't have to protect themselves, it only stands to reason that they must, in order to do their jobs effectively, kill nutcases like that. Am I right?
 
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