@rosered55 in some cases departments are lowering the entry requirements to encourage more women/minorities to apply and they may not get the same experience and training that is traditionally needed (as noted in the MN case that was “fast tracked”). This is not to say that minorities/women can’t do the same job as white males but the problem is that they may not be given the same level of training that they need to do their job which in turn could lead to more potentionally life threatening mistakes.
However, what is the evidence that any such thing occurred in the Dallas Police Department with respect to Guyger? Or is it being assumed that, because she is female, she must have been hired to lower standards? Indeed, she must have done well enough to have been selected to be on an “elite crime response team of about 10 officers who make high-risk arrests in the division’s crime hot spots.”
Also, it is not like officers who are not minorities or women do not make gross errors or worse.
There has been tons of research about how police forces have lowered standards in order to hire and promote women and minorities. It’s not hard to find. I would link to some but I don’t want to go off topic.
Note that it is not always the women and minorities who were hired under the lowered standards that cause the problems. Lowered standards results in poorer quality hires across the board, as it is difficult to apply lower standards to one group and not another (this is slightly less of a problem as regards females, as usually only the strength and fitness requirements are lowered for them).
Getting back to this thread, I speculated above (post #23) that this was likely a struggle at the threshold of the door once the rightful occupant opened the door, and it looks like that is what it was. I’m just speculating, but what if the victim, who had only been in the United States for 6 years or so (college and working for the last two years), believed the constant media drumbeat that the police are out to murder black men? If you believed that the police were really out to kill people who looked like you and there was one at your door jimmying with the lock would you just sit there and call 911?
From the pictures at heavy.com it looks like the female officer was all of about 5’3" and weighed maybe 115 pounds. She couldn’t control a male suspect just last year when he became combative and so she shot him. It’s easy to imagine how this encounter in Dallas could have gone sideways. No excuse at all for the officer; as I said above, I think she is an incompetent and should never have been on the force. Just trying to understand how this could have happened, because I find it hard to believe that even a preference female hire would just blast a man like that if there had been no contact at all (maybe she ordered him to put his hands up and she tried to arrest him on the mistaken belief that he was burglarizing her apartment). Reading the story of just what a great guy this victim seemed to be, I think this is just tragic. She won’t be wearing the badge much longer, and I do hope that she gets prison time.
Again, what is the evidence that the Dallas Police Department in particular hired Guyger in particular to lower standards? (Of course, it could also be the case that standards were too low generally.)
Whatever media he may have seen over six years is less exposure to that concept than that of those who actually lived their whole lives here and have personally encountered or had close friends or relatives encounter police misconduct or racial profiling (generally non-lethal, but common, according to https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/black-americans-discrimination-work-police/ ). Granted, not all cases of racial profiling are the fault of the police, because they are due to racial profiling by those who call the police, but such incidents still leave a bad impression of the police among those who were racially profiled for no good reason.
She’s been only been on the force for 5 years and is assinged to an “elite” division and she shot someone else just last year. I have no idea what it takes to get to be the only women on an “elite” division in Dallas but I would think that there are many other officers with more experience that don’t have a prior history of shooting people.
The issue is really not women/minorities - they are just part of the first wave, it’s lack of experience and training and the way I see it it’s going to get worse and isn’t limited to women/minorities, departments are going to hire anyone they can to fill vacant slots.
@3scoutsmom You seem to intimate that by hiring by women and minorities police departments are lowering their standards. How are they lowering their standards when there is nothing to show that POC/women have more issues than white male officers?
MODERATOR’S NOTE: This is not a thread about hiring women and minorities. Please get back or track on the thread will be closed.
It seems the victim didn’t have time to even speak. She needs to be charged and put on trial.
Let’s say she had been entering her own apartment, and she encountered someone inside. Would the right action then been to shoot first and ask questions later? I think not.
I’m trying to imagine how I’d feel if I entered “my” house to find the lights on and someone there. If I had a gun would my first instinct be to shoot?
I’m seeing reports that she had only been employed by Dallas PD for four years.
I do think the officer is guilty, as I’ve said a number of times above. However, people shouldn’t immediately jump to conclusions about how this went down. We already know from reports that this did not happen in the apartment; it apparently happened at the threshold of the door, perhaps just inside, perhaps just outside. It certainly could be that the officer was startled as she was confused why the lock wasn’t turning, and as the victim was simultaneously opening the door, and that she instinctively went for her weapon. Remember that she mistakenly thought she was entering her own apartment; this was not a normal situation. And also note that just a year earlier she had apparently been overpowered by a much older male suspect who had grabbed her Taser - in other words, she had already lost her weapon once to a suspect. She actually wound up shooting that suspect (nonfatally).
I don’t believe that it is impossible that the victim, upon seeing the officer going for her gun in a mistaken belief that she was confronting an intruder in her apartment, also instinctively went to grab the gun and try to control the situation. She’s still guilty - as a trained police officer she should have been able to control the situation without resort to going for her weapon - but it’s a far cry from walking in and blasting away.
Whether or not it is the right action in the above hypothetical circumstance (depends a lot on the details), note that almost all states have “castle doctrine” where use of deadly force to resist a crime by an intruder to one’s home is legally justified in most cases.
@Cardinal Fang , We came home about 27 years ago to a burglary in progress in our home. We opened the front door (they had entered from the back door), went inside, and lights were on, our dog was acting funny (they drugged him), basement door was open (which never was). We had our young children with us. It took only seconds to realize something was wrong. We backed out of the house quickly, went to a neighbor and called the police. The criminals had fled out the back door when they knew we were arriving but police dogs were brought in to make sure they were not still hiding somewhere. Scary. We don’t have guns though!
They stole things but would have gotten more if we had not interrupted them.They left our refrigerator open and got a bottle of wine out of it. But they missed a diamond necklace (the diamond given to me by my MIL ) that was hanging on a cabinet knob nearby. I put the necklace on that night and have not taken it off since! It is such an invasion to have someone in your home like this. But, this case is strange and it will be interesting to see what kind of explanation/defense she/her lawyers come up with.
@SatchelSF I don’t expect that as the details of the incident are released, we will be hearing that the victim made a move for her weapon.
But isn’t the shooter first supposed to ascertain whether the intruder is in fact committing a crime? Also, let’s say I surprise a burglar in my house, and the burglar immediately stops burgling and puts his hands up. Can I still shoot him, even though there is now no crime in progress?
A press release noted that the victim’s unit had a bright red carpet in front of his door. This should have alerted the officer that she was at the wrong apartment.
Also, the police officer lived right below the victim.
Hard to tell why the Texas Rangers delayed the arrest for further investigation. One possibility is that they want to upgrade the anticipated charge of manslaughter–advocated by Dallas PD–to second degree murder (which would include manslaughter as a lesser included offense).
A simple key or fob operated lock is not enough once inside your own apartment or home. Better to have slide bar locks and/or chain locks in addition to the regular lock. This permits an opening of a couple of inches so that identity & purpose can be verified.
It might also help to place a welcome sign on one’s door stating “Welcome to the Smith Home” to further reduce the chance of one entering the wrong apartment.
It didn’t, though. And a welcome mat probably wouldn’t have, either.
Not a welcome mat, a welcome sign hung on the door at eye level.
Again, we do not know why the Texas Rangers delayed arrest. The stated purpose was for further investigation supposedly based on the police officer’s statements. Could be an upgraded charge, could be an investigation as to whether this was a hate crime, or investigating prior contact or complaints between the two as the officer lived right beneath the deceased. We just don’t know.
@3scoutsmom , you say
But what the article actually says is that the Minnesota program is for candidates WHO ALREADY HAVE A COLLEGE DEGREE.
There is absolutely no evidence of “lowering standards,” quite the reverse.
I see no difference between this and teacher training programs that bring in people who already have college degrees, often at the master’s level, and “fast track” them into teaching with intensive, focused programs. The person quoted says this brings in people with diverse life experience, not women and minorities.
@Consolation the mods have asked that we not discuss qualifications for being a cop. Several of us did it earlier and a warning was posted. I don’t want my thread closed.
@partyof5 Yes, I’m sorry, I saw that after I posted. I hadn’t read all the way through. I won’t do it again!
On another aspect of this sad story that someone suggested above, let us say that the officer was traumatized by having a person take her taser away from her, so that she ultimately resorted to shooting him. Non-fatally, thankfully.
If that incident caused her to lose the ability to act rationally and coolly in situations going forward, she should not be on that or any other police force. In this situation, presumably she did have a taser. That would have been plenty of force to deal with even an intruder in her own apartment.
I bet she was drunk. But drunk or not, she’s a murderer who took the life of a fine young man because she had a gun and a badge.