This is 100% the result of the automatic authority people give a badge If one of the random adults standing around had pulled out a pistol and shot the girl to save the other one's life there's no way they'd be getting this kind of support
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Look, if the officer had refrained from drawing his sidearm and done literally anything else -- *even if* this resulted in the other girl being injured, the odds are very high this ends with no fatalities And that should always be the goal, especially with minors
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All the people going "Cops can't win!" -- what if the cop had tackled the girl and the other girl got a nasty cut across her forearm that needed stitches Do you actually imagine people would still be protesting the cop and his ass would be in the hot seat right now? Seriously?
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Would there be protesters saying "WHY DIDN'T YOU SHOOT?" about a call for a fight between two sixteen-year-olds? Do you really see this as some kind of dilemma
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I think one other psychological thing this reveals is how people extremely quickly try to classify "good guys" and "bad guys" You decide who the "aggressor" is and who the "victim" is -- and any harm done to the aggressor is justified to prevent any harm to the victim
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And so people have jumped in and filled in all the blanks for this brief snippet of video over things you don't know There's a lot of reports saying the girl who got shot *called the cops* because she was being physically threatened
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And she armed herself with a kitchen knife because she felt unsafe I don't know if that's true, sure -- neither do you None of you know, you just have a video of a cop rolling up on a pretty nasty fight already in progress
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If you're that confident that this is a "good shoot" then it remains a good shoot if this is a crazy aggressive attacker lashing out at a friend for no reason, or if this is someone who was terrified in pain after being beaten for ten minutes and barely managing to get away
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I don't think most people *are* that confident -- I think most people weighing in to defend the cop have just settled on the first narrative as the truth, and don't want to think about other possibilities because it upsets their simple worldview
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It's sorta his thing.
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