Warren’s police commissioner defended his department’s decision to pursue a fleeing vehicle for nearly three minutes the day after Christmas, ending in the 24-year-old suspect’s death.
That guy chose to gamble - running and maybe escaping (but also maybe getting seriously injured/die) instead of doing 5-10 for possession of a stolen firearm.
Attempting to evade the police can’t be allowed to be a blank cheque to get away with crime.
That’s the thing, you throw out 5-10 like it’s nothing. Not to mention what going to jail and having a felony on your record do to your life.
That’s a significant amount of your life, which you don’t get back. We can only speculate what led to him being in that position, but once there, consequences that steep strongly incentivize evasion. I have a similar thought experiment that tends to piss some people off:
You’re guilty of something (imagine) and you’re evading and a law enforcement dog is chasing you. You’re far enough away from the actual officers and the only way you’re getting connected to the crime is that dog. It catches up to you, you have a weapon (baseball bat). Do you surrender to it knowing you’re facing charges of 5-10 years?
In this imaginative situation, and assuming I were (beyond any doubt) certain that the dog were the only thing, I’d probably kill the dog with the bat. That doesn’t mean it would be the right thing to do.
In reality however, I’d avoid making the choices to get into that situation in the first place (and there are a lot of other options).
Completely agree, I can’t hardly imagine a series of choices I would actually make that could lead me to such a situation. And it definitely wouldn’t be the right thing to do, just the subjectively imperative choice given circumstances. Just a what if, that naturally gets under the skin of many, especially (in my experience) those that equate animal life with human life, but that’s a different rabbit hole.
If you’re being chased, then no, you didn’t drive yourself into something all by yourself. There was an extremely significant external factor.
That guy chose to gamble - running and maybe escaping (but also maybe getting seriously injured/die) instead of doing 5-10 for possession of a stolen firearm.
Attempting to evade the police can’t be allowed to be a blank cheque to get away with crime.
That’s the thing, you throw out 5-10 like it’s nothing. Not to mention what going to jail and having a felony on your record do to your life. That’s a significant amount of your life, which you don’t get back. We can only speculate what led to him being in that position, but once there, consequences that steep strongly incentivize evasion. I have a similar thought experiment that tends to piss some people off: You’re guilty of something (imagine) and you’re evading and a law enforcement dog is chasing you. You’re far enough away from the actual officers and the only way you’re getting connected to the crime is that dog. It catches up to you, you have a weapon (baseball bat). Do you surrender to it knowing you’re facing charges of 5-10 years?
In this imaginative situation, and assuming I were (beyond any doubt) certain that the dog were the only thing, I’d probably kill the dog with the bat. That doesn’t mean it would be the right thing to do.
In reality however, I’d avoid making the choices to get into that situation in the first place (and there are a lot of other options).
Completely agree, I can’t hardly imagine a series of choices I would actually make that could lead me to such a situation. And it definitely wouldn’t be the right thing to do, just the subjectively imperative choice given circumstances. Just a what if, that naturally gets under the skin of many, especially (in my experience) those that equate animal life with human life, but that’s a different rabbit hole.