Okay, just got in and gone through the views offered.
Originally Posted by scroobal
Nothing to do with sensitivity or anything to hide. More like common sense. Sounds bizarre that he prefers to allow his own countryman to stab him rather than shoot him. The guy already stabbed someone. When you are in danger, you must be mad to look for colour to make a decision.
If it was a Chinese officer, he too would have done the same thing if the chap was black, brown or yellow.
I thought that the Threatstarter was off from his title and I think more or less agreed on that..
I will assume that there is a typo in the highlighted statement above with "most" as in "I think [most] more or less agree on that."
I detect thus, disapproval of my stance in a hypothetical role. The gist of my intent has nothing at all to do with the right of a police officer instinct for self defense to protect his own life nor the perception or suspicion that race had colored his decision to take down the perp. In that kind of situation, it would and should never ever be even taken into consideration.
Why then am I casting a shadow of doubt over whether it was justifiable, the gunning down of a murderer.
I am no liberal bleeding heart, but I am questioning the Police Command's handling of the situation from the time information was received from the public about the stabbing in Jalan Kukoh hawker center, the description of the perp given and the orders given that led to the fatal confrontation in Outram MRT station.
Bear in mind according to the testimonies given in the Coroner's inquiry so far, a member of the public had tailed the perp all the way from the scene of the crime right up to the pointing out of the perp to the two officers at the scene who had initially gone to China Town MRT station to search for him.
Now, let's consider these points.
a) The Police knew they were looking for a man armed with a knife who had just stabbed someone with it.
b) They had real time information on his whereabouts courtesy of a chivalrous
member of the public.
c) Why were two uniformed officers sent to confront him on a crowded train platform? Where was the necessity of speed to apprehend at the first opportunity? He was presenting a danger to the commuters on the train?
d) The Police side of the story that the officer had acted in self defence, I'll grant that. But shooting in a crowded public area? Perhaps they were told in training that a .38 bullet will not pass through a body at the range of two meters and continue on to lodge into another solid mass. I certainly wasn't.
e) How many times over the past twenty years had the Police shot someone in public? I can recall a few, mostly the mentally disturbed. Maybe that's the reason the local distributor of the Taser gun saw the need and was successful in selling both the idea and the hardware to them. Sadly the deceased did not benefit from such a brilliant foresight.
My thread header may be a bit off tangent but that was my instant response to another bad PR handling on the part of the authorities. At the very least, show a photo of a sad or pensive looking man instead of one with arms across his chest, a body language that speaks of being defensive. He did his duty but he was led into the way he executed that duty!
