News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
Sure, OK, you have found a corner case. Bravo, I guess? We can pretend I was using the modern definition of the word "literally." 😉
It doesn't change the overall point.
Here's a hypothetical for you, which is far more likely than your own for an autistic kid. My son doesn't even have the concept of holding someone hostage, and I venture to guess this is true for lots of others on the spectrum.
Let's say he has a knife in his hand because that's what he happened to have in his hand (somehow) when his fight or flight mechanism was triggered, and now he's massively overstimulated, and in a meltdown. He's not trying to hurt anyone (I'm not convinced he knows stabbing someone is an option a knife provides), but he's waving it around because he is very active with his arms when he's overstimulated, and he might even try to grapple with someone while holding it, again not really recognizing the potential for great harm. It's going to be a real challenge to get it from him safely, and someone could get badly injured.
Do I call the cops in that circumstance? Not if I want to see him sans-bulletholes again. (Not a direct example of what I described, but close enough for these purposes.)
Edited to add - I read the story in OP, or I read about Linden Cameron, or I read about Elijah McClain (and others) and that's my son there, or may as well be. Elijah McClain especially - heartbreaking. Nothing about any of those circumstances seems like an outcome I couldn't imagine with any given group of police. I have no faith that more than a vanishingly small percentage would even see the problem with how these situations were handled, let alone try to do it differently.
I kinda took it as a bit of a strawman, even if unintentional. That's why I contrasted with a more reasonable one.
I appreciate that your intent is not to defend police regarding OP or in general. However, as I said elsewhere, are there actually other circumstances where I’d call police? Probably. My original statement was (slightly) hyperbolic.
However, is it MY fault that I need to do this calculus about whether the folks paid to help might kill my child instead? No, it’s not, and I won’t apologize for it.
Police have earned their reputation.
If I can't count on them to help without killing me or people I love needlessly, I'm not going to call them. I would think anyone, even a cop, would understand this fundamental requirement.
I'm sorry for the sad ending to your story, but glad that there were opportunities for joy along the way. These situations are tough, I get it.