I must be pretty short, ‘cuz you just went over my head.

Lets be clear here. It would only be a true double standard if the runner could shoot the police (assuming he didn’t absolutely know they were police and not imposters) and get away with doing that scot free.

I have no problem with officers drawing guns on fleeing felons. However, firing that gun requires the police to absolutely know that the suspet absolutely know that it is police that she is running from. When the policeman don’t know that for sure who the runner thinks the policeman might be, then there is a big problem with the policetriggersqueeze.

Running from the police is perfectly okay if you are not absolutely sure they are police. better safe than sorry!

rambrainiac, what do you mean left it out? I read it right there in the article. Lay off the sauce, you’re not making sense. But, you accidentally make a good point here: How were they to know about the warrant, etc. How do you think most dumba** criminals get caught? They get stopped for a minor infraction and upon further review, the cop finds the history, the warrant, etc. THEN they go to jail. Knowing this, our misguided upstanding example for the community DECIDED to run, rather than be made accountable for his actions. When you put yourself in the position of having police point guns at you, it’s time to move extremely slowly and do exactly what they tell you to. He didn’t. It’s over. Thank you officers. You see, all you cop haters expect the cops to know he didn’t have a gun, on the run in the dark chasing a gangbanger, but they aren’t expected to know he’s got a warrant? I’d call you on Double Standard, but ram, I wouldn”t want you to strain that pea brain of yours.”

This kind of commenter makes me nauseous.

Claims of reaching for the waistband are problematic. I mean, I don’t even think reaching for the waistband is partiularly probative of reaching for a gun, and that is especially true when a suspect is merely reaching “toward” the waistband without actually putting a hand in the waistband. There are simply too many innocent explanations regarding reaching toward a waistband (for example, runners appear to momentarily reach toward their waistband with each stride). Putting your hands down by your sides generally involves reaching toward yr waistband.

Eventually somebody is going to have to count up police claims that someone was reaching for a waistband, and then determine what percentage of reachers actually had a weapon in their waistbands. I am going to speculate that it is a low correlation, and that courts will be embarasssed to entertain “reaching for the waistband claims” after it is quantitatively determined how few of these shootings saved anybody from any weapons.

* Suspect jumps off bike with officers in persuit.
* No reason to assume suspect is armed, so police have not drawn their own weapons.
* Suspect reaches into waistband.
* Officers unholster their weapons and shoot.

There has to have been some time elapsed between, “Fuck, he’s reaching into his waistband!” and “let me see if I can get my own weapon out.” During that time there must have been some opportunity to evaluate the situation to assertain no weapon was present. Or are we to understand the officers were in persuit with their weapons drawn? In persuit of a bicylist guilty of riding without a light at night. If their weapons were not drawn, how can can we believe they made a split second deciasion?

…or maybe he didn’t reach into his waistband at all.

The article casually mentions that a certain alliance of doctors / city councilmen want healthy restraunts to out-number fast food restraunts. The goal of the city council is not to prohibit fast food in the town, it is to prevent McDonalds, and only McDonalds, from building in a specific lot.

This isn’t a health issue even though the obstructionists are trying to frame it as such. They are selectively prohibiting fast food in a way completely different from the blanket bans on smoking and liqour products (which for very small communities I have less of a problem with than national or state-wide bans).

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a signifigant financial intrest with the existing fast food and “healthy” restruants among some of these people behind the ban.

And then when people did that and you opposed it, peopel would properly call you a hypocrite. Then, you’d reply by going “well, it’s different see, cuz, like food and health are … people are dying!!!” But really the only difference would be that YOU liked your regulations and OTHERS liked theirs.

Freedom means literally zero if you’re not free to make BAD decisions, even decisions that cause you to die and others to be ever-so-slightly, indirectly inconvenienced and expensed. Freedom is an end in itself, it’s not just some notion we embraced until someone comes along with a bunch of assumptions and tells everyone how to have a better society.

Nicely summed up!

The action was held in opposition to the Stop Online Privacy Act

Best.

Typo.

Evar.

Can I zone things so that politicians can find no place to live? I find much of what politicians say to be a “constant onslaught of garbage”.

I don’t care what you say, you’re wrong. It is not ok to boss other people around. Ever. You’re a dick and just because you think you’re doing everyone else a favor by being a dick doesn’t make you less of a dick.

Freedom is paramount.

Yup. You could use that sentence, word-for-freakin-word, changing only the names and dates, in 90% of the cop shootings in Vegas. “Thought I saw the suspect make a furtive move towards his waistband – so I emptied my mag at him just to be on the safe side.”

TELL me they’re not teaching that phrase in the cop academies, presumably as Lesson 1 on Day 1. It’s like a magic spell – say it and no harm can befall you, Officer!

At the same time, the scope of these policies is quite restrained by American standards. Loma Linda’s residents may freely cross the city limits to get as much junk food, liquor and tobacco as they’d care to consume, but city officials have put restrictions or bans on the sale of these items within the city limits. The result is that Loma Lindans are exposed to fewer temptations to ruin their health and more temptations to improve their health. It’s effective incentivization at the local level, but without the stupidity and moral panic of the war on drugs.

And let’s not pretend that the eating, smoking and drinking habits of Americans at large aren’t ruinous. They are. So are our excessively sedentary lifestyles. The combination of sitting around and consuming such unbalanced diets is doubly ruinous, and extremely common in the United States. It’s no wonder that we have high and rising incidences of diabetes, heart disease, morbid obesity and high blood pressure. Loma Linda’s regulatory regime is much more reasonable than the American standard of letting developers build as much car-centered exurban sprawl as they wish and saturate the market with outlets selling foods that are known to wreck the health of a notoriously sedentary population.

There should be some room for common prudence in a regulatory regime. As a nation, we’re fat, out-of-shape and in ill health. Regardless of what libertarian zealots say, I say there’s a place for zoning restrictions, municipal ordinances and similar local regulations to shield the public from the constant onslaught of garbage that they’d otherwise face. In the end, I’m not taking the side of the major distillers, tobacconists and junk food peddlers in this fight.

Regarding the suggestion that Loma Lindans are groupthink zombies, I’ve never visited Loma Linda, but I suspect I’ve seen worse in Ashland, OR, where I’ve lived off and on for five years. I have to give Loma Lindans props for believing in the health sciences, because Ashlanders believe in the “healing arts” and every nutty conspiracy theory about vaccinations. Ashland is dominated by a medieval vanguard, which is really scary on examination. I’m not kidding that the country would devolve to a medieval existence if these fools had their way. If I have to sooner trust my health in the hands of the offshoots of an apocalyptic sect, so be it, because they appear to actually believe in science.