Police opened fire on a subway platform in Brooklyn during a confrontation with an alleged fare-beater, striking the man cops said was armed with a knife, two straphangers caught in the fray, and one of the firing officers, NYPD officials said Sunday.

One of those two passengers hit by the cops’ bullets, a 49-year-old man, was hospitalized in critical condition after he was hit struck in the head, according to the NYPD.

The two officers who opened fire were assigned to patrol the Sutter Avenue subway stop in the 73rd precinct when they spotted a man skip the station turnstile and walk through an open gate toward the train platform, Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey explained at an evening press conference from Brookdale Hospital.

  • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Ahh yes. Nothing like killing a perp and a few bystanders for a few dollars’ worth of fare. USA! USA!

    • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee
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      I think if people had even more guns this could have been avoided. What if there was a six year old with a 22 there to respond to the gunshots with some of his own? maybe less people would be dead.

      Guns make everyone way safer. We need to start providing them in utero.

    • superkret@feddit.org
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      They stopped him for a few dollars’ worth of fare.
      They shot him for charging at them with a knife.

        • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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          The statement by the Department Chief literally references that there is body cam footage, that is the source of information for the statement.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            No no no. They mean the footage being released for public scrutiny. The police have lied about the body camera footage before.

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        The uniformed duo followed the alleged fare-beater up the stairs to the elevated L train platform around 3 p.m., when they gave him commands to stop and turn around. Maddrey said during a verbal altercation, they “became aware of a knife.”

        Body-worn camera footage, which Maddrey said he reviewed before the press conference, allegedly showed the man make a verbal threat to the officers. He told the cops, “I’m going to kill you if you don’t stop following me,” the chief said.

        As the encounter continued to escalate, a northbound L train pulled into the station. The train cars opened and the man jumped inside, according to police.

        Where is this knife charge mentioned?

        • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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          Maddrey said the officers followed the man, each firing a Taser which proved ineffective in subduing the man. He then exited the train while it was still at the station and charged the officers with the knife, the chief said.

          it was the next sentence from what you copied lol

    • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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      This has been an ongoing problem in the city. Fuckin Mayor Officer Landlord has been dumping millions into multiple cops sitting on platforms, on their phones, watching for people jumping the 2.90 fare. Which they just raised from 2.70. They’re more than spending what they’re hypothetically losing on fare jumpers. Neoliberal capitalist bullshit in action.

      • Cenzorrll@lemmy.world
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        Meanwhile in Albuquerque we’ve made buses free because the fare infrastructure costs more than to run the buses.

    • bean@lemmy.world
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      I know it’s like that by headline, but they repeatedly tried to subdue him and eventually he charged at them with a knife after having said “I’ll kill you”. I don’t know I would hesitate to stop him without my gun if he suddenly ran at me with a knife. I’m just thinking survival, instinctively, and not about bystanders around me in that moment.

      • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
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        I’m just thinking survival, instinctively, and not about bystanders around me in that moment.

        Kind of fair point for yourself.

        However I expect more of a trained professional who has repeated firarms training. They should be sesitized to controlling their direction of fire even in an emergency.

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          It really is bizarre how many people seem to just accept lower standards for police than for random Joe gun owner off the street. It’s not confusing though; it’s just another facet of the great team sport of society for many people.

          If we’re supposed to value and respect our police, maybe we should actually expect good things from them!

        • Rinox@feddit.it
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          That’s not even the point. The training should have taught them how to de-escalate the situation, or even let it go. They transformed a 3$ fare skipped into a massacre, how’s that normal?

          It’s 3$, if he has a knife, just let him go, it’s not worth the risk. You’ll track him down later and get him without killing him, passerbys and other cops.

          You don’t need to drop a nuke because there’s a pickpocketer somewhere in the city

      • kralk@lemm.ee
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        Ok, so these people are too incompetent to win a 4v1 against an untrained opponent? Is this better somehow?

    • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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      They shot because the guy charged at them with a knife, not because of the fare. OP’s thread title is deliberately misleading, in a desperate attempt to twist this into ACAB fuel.

      Any bystander injuries are to be blamed on the aggressor Mr. Knifey.

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        The knife that mysteriously doesn’t show up on any footage and couldn’t be located after the fact?

        I know better than to believe police lies. It’s all they do. ACAB, no exceptions.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        They chased someone into a train over 3 dollars. There is now hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills, possibly over a million. Because someone “stole” a 3 dollar fare.

        How the police react to stuff is absolutely up for debate. This is why we stopped doing car chases.

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          If someone runs a red light, and a cop tries to pull them over to give them a ticket, and instead the guy jumps out of the car and tries to attack the cop with a knife and gets shot in self-defense, it is absolutely not accurate to frame that as “cop shot that guy for running a red light”.

          But this is what exactly the OP is trying to do. And that’s bullshit.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            Police don’t chase for red lights anymore specifically because the damage car chases were doing was out of line with the civil infraction.

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              Don’t see how that’s relevant to anything. A police officer walking after another person, on foot, doesn’t have the potential for collateral damage that a car chase does.

              It is completely ridiculous to frame this as “police shot a man over $2.90”, when the shooting only happened after a verbal death threat, brandishing a lethal weapon, followed by an overt attempt to make good on that threat with that weapon.

              Only the most ACAB-addled mind would think it appropriate to frame the events that way.

              • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                A police officer walking after another person, on foot, doesn’t have the potential for collateral damage that a car chase does.

                Looks at the number of people that got shot.

                Obviously that’s not true.

                And all of that stuff with the weapon is based only on the police claims. The same police that won’t release the body camera footage.

                • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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                  Looks at the number of people that got shot.

                  Obviously that’s not true.

                  Not as a result of two people walking, but as a result of someone brandishing a knife and attempting murder in a public place. Cringe goalpost move.

                  And all of that stuff with the weapon is based only on the police claims.

                  And all of what you’re saying is based on literally nothing but your hate boner for police, lmao.

                  The image released shows a knife clutched in the criminal’s hand. I’m sure he was strolling around like that very innocently and cops just opened fire on him for a laugh, right?

                  The straw-grasping is incredible.

                  The same police that won’t release the body camera footage.

                  Like it’d matter to your type. We have extensive hard video evidence of what happened with Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, all put online publicly mere days after the event, and there are still innumerable imbeciles claiming shit it directly contradicts happened, lol.

      • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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        Until cops prove themselves trustworthy, I will assume they’re lying. They have a long way to go.

  • Tiefling IRL@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    NYPD goes HARD on toll jumpers, but there’s virtually zero enforcement on traffic and cars. Everywhere I go I see assholes with illegally modified vehicles, degenerates speeding down shoulders and medians, motorcycles on crowded sidewalks and pedestrian paths, and too many drunk drivers to count. There are so many cases where one pig parked on the shoulder during rush hour would fund the city budget for a year.

    Instead we get whole families of pigs loitering by the turnstiles

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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      The NYPD also loves to go after jaywalkers and vagrants, particularly when they’re interfering with the flow of street traffic.

      Cars are King, baby.

      • Gimpydude@lemmynsfw.com
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        I totally agree about the vagrancy thing. I have never seen nor heard of anyone in NYC getting a ticket for jaywalking but I only lived there for 50 years.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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          I have never seen nor heard of anyone in NYC getting a ticket for jaywalking

          I had a friend who got grabbed by a police officer and thrown against a wall by a NYPD officer, then arrested on the spot, for crossing outside of a designated crosswalk.

          But that was during OWS, so maybe a few other political winds were involved.

    • Moneo@lemmy.world
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      Apparently we’re calling commuters “straphangers” now too. I wonder if the NYPD will shoot at speeding wheelgrippers next.

      • Gimpydude@lemmynsfw.com
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        The subways used to have straps on the bars to hold on to during the ride. They’ve been called straphangers for a very long time. In the 80’s one of my brothers was part of the Straphangers Campaign.

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          Fair enough, my ignorance/age is showing.

          I’ve taken public transit all my life so I understood what it meant. Never heard the term in Canada before though.

        • clif@lemmy.world
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          So now can we call them “pole hangers”? “Pole grabbers”? “Pole holders”? If they’re listening to music and swaying in time, perhaps “pole dancers”?

          I’m sure there are better terms but I’m not very creative.

    • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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      The reason is the same reason why bullies go after vulnerable and/or isolated kids. The type of person who has a car and has the money and means to illegally modify it is also the type of person who would give the police absolute hell if they so much as dared to look at them the wrong way. A person jumping a small toll is someone who is poor and will never attract the sympathies of any judge who will treat them very harshly.

      • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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        Yeah I just can’t help but think of all that sweet sweet money that we absolutely used to get by charging the rich assholes being bad with their fancy toy cars to the point of it being the main funding force for police for decades and wonder…

        Why not take?

        • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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          I want that. I really do. The major problem is that throughout most of history the wealthy have always gotten away with the most incredibly blatant shit and the general attitude of the legal system has been to comfort the comfortable and grieve the aggrieved. The times where the people on the top got their comeuppance and where the wealthy were forced to comply with some level of propriety towards the average person are both rare and brief.

          In the US, the New Deal era was by far the most prosperous era in US history, and many of the wealthy people HATED it. The whole modern anti-politics as politics started shortly after WW2 as a response to the whole thing. The video I linked has more information on it… and it is far from the whole story. What I am saying is that it is really fucked just how powerful the propaganda apparatus of capitalism has grown. This isn’t to say that it was somehow unbiased in the past. Prior to WW2 the liberal media basically aided fascists gain power even when fascists were killing many of the same liberal journalists and shutting down their newspapers.

          It isn’t impossible. It is just fucked is what I am saying, and things will get a lot worse before things get better… and the sad reality is any recovery will be very brief since that is the way how humans work.

    • barsquid@lemmy.world
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      Once I was in NYC and saw a little pack of motorcycles doing wheelies and running red lights.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      Just having them there on detail probably costs more than they recover from fare evaders.

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        Legitimately. It’s not even a joke. Millions have been spent on defending 100k in fare evasion.

        The NYPD budget is in the ballpark of 11 billion

    • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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      Proposed reform measure: Just like teachers have to buy classroom supplies out-of-pocket, have police officers buy their own ammo.

    • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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      They shot because the guy charged at them with a knife, not because of the fare. OP’s thread title is deliberately misleading, in a desperate attempt to twist this into ACAB fuel.

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            Until they release the body cam footage, all we have is a blurry photo of someone on the ground holding a knife. As nice as that image is, it does nothing to support the claim that they were “charged at with a knife” and that is the claim people are holding you to task over (and assuming that is true, just allowing this situation to escalate to that point was inexcusably incompetent). The NYPD has been caught intentionally misleading the public with bodycam footage many times before and thus lack the credibility to be believed without evidence, especially when they are being this cagey over releasing the footage. This may very well have been the case, but until they prove it we can’t reasonably take them at their word and you damn well know it.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            They have a picture of a knife

            That they cannot produce.

            The police lie. We’ve caught them lying so many times now that they don’t get the benefit of the doubt much less some higher credibility.

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    “We will be working through the timeline of today, but make no mistake, the events that occurred on the Sutter Avenue station platform are the results of an armed perpetrator who was confronted by our officers doing the job we asked them to do," Donlon said.

    Could we maybe not ask police officers to escalate minor and petty conflicts all the way up to shooting everyone in the immediate vicinity?

    • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      doing the job we asked them to do

      Ah, so we should pursue this ‘we’ who are asking cops to kill innocent people. Thanks, Donlon!

    • Mac@mander.xyz
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      “armed perpetrator” ah, so any american that commits a crime, then?

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    NYPD pays $126,000 annual salary, that’s about $60 an hour or $1 a minute, 4 cops respond to the fair jumper, if they spent more than 45 seconds on this it costs the city more than the fair was worth.

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      The point is not how much it costs.

      The point is that a poor person needs punishment, and if they’re lucky, they might get to shoot somebody.

    • Fuzzy_Red_Panda@lemm.ee
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      No way would I do that job at that pay in NYC, especially as long as pretty much any idiot in the USA can own a gun.

  • Grimy@lemmy.world
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    Schrodingers pig.

    The cop shot an innocent bystander in the head but also shot another cop. Until trial, he is both a bad guy with a gun and a good guy with a gun.

  • Sgt_choke_n_stroke@lemmy.world
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    Imagine the 2 by standards suing the department getting and 6 million dollars. Because shooting a guy for jumping a turn style worth 2.90.

    This is a joke they need to take that money out of the police officers pension.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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      If they start doing that, and only that, no police officer will ever see a pension ever again within a month

      Start giving police officers actual training. You know, teach them how to deescalate, how to actually use a gun (because they don’t even know that part) but also teach them to let go.

      High speed chases may look cool but they endanger the innocent until found guilty suspect and hundreds of innocent bastards, none of those chases are worth it. Let them go, catch them later safely using actual police investigation work.

      Guns may look cool but they kill at a distance and are a high risk for all bystanders, they should be a last resort, not a first resort.

      Also,mgive police officers a mandatory psychological evaluation, filter out the psychopaths and the racists. Those you don’t want in a force that needs to protect and serve.

      A lot more improvements can be and should be made, but you get the picture

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        If they start doing that, and only that, no police officer will ever see a pension ever again within a month

        Seems like it’s a whole lot of not my problem.

        Garnish their wages too. Fuck these fucking bastard pigs.

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      qualified immunity says there’s no specific law or statute saying you can’t fire indiscriminately into a crowd of people whilst attempting to “apprehend” someone suspected of not paying their $2.90 subway fare… so they’ll be let off with a warning and a nice long paid vacation. Maybe the victims will get some token amount…

      Oh wait, you didn’t even mention the cops getting punished, I guess it’s just a given at this point that they won’t be. We see a headline these days about cops shooting innocent people and we can’t suspend disbelief long enough to even imagine the cops getting punished.

      America!

    • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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      They would never win. The police were just doing their jobs after all. So what if a couple of innocent people get shot? After all, just because they are currently innocent, doesn’t mean they aren’t future criminals. So really, by shooting them they make it less likely that they’ll commit future crimes!

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    This obviously has in part to do with the toxic American gun culture and it’s corrupt and untrained police, but alsonwoth it’s misguided need for what it thinks is justice, and revenge for real or imagined crimes.

    Shoplift something small? In you go with hardened criminals to punish punish punish, fuck you for daring to do that! No rehabilitation, just punish

    A lot of Americans complain about low prison sentences in Europe, not understanding that the focus there is on actually solving the problem of crime, instead of revenge, revenge, revenge.

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      It makes more sense if you start from the premise that there are “good people” and “bad people”, and bad people need to be punished to protect good people. The people who do the protections–like Joe Arpaio–can do no wrong. Even if they seem to do bad things, that’s just in the service of protecting good people.

      This premise is bullshit, but everything follows from there.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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      The problem is rooted in prison spending moving from a social cost to a private revenue stream.

      It’s the classic Cobra Effect of economics. Monetizing the solution to a problem creates an incentive to increase the instances of said problem.

      In this case, we have criminalized the free use of public transportation in order to justify more spending on policing.

      • RumorsOfLove@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        it seems like you are assuming it wasnt always this way. but perhaps this has always been the function of prison. CIP: Australia

    • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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      The same thing in Canada. Despite the reputation of Canadians being polite wusses by Americans the Canadian legal system is much harsher than the American system.

    • BluesF@lemmy.world
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      Yes! I can’t tell you how many arguments I’ve had with people who genuinely think that burglars deserve to be shot and killed.

        • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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          Sorry but I’m not going to take the city or cops at their word because we’ve seen multiple similar incidents in the past where they spun their story then when forced to release the footage it’s a completely different story.

          • capital@lemmy.world
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            I’m responding to a comment that said there was no knife in the footage.

            I linked a still of the footage showing a knife.

            But we know whether there was a knife or not isn’t what you or most people on Lemmy care about. You don’t like cops so therefore they were wrong. Facts be damned.

            • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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              You’re right that a still image of a knife matters little to me, I understand you were responding to a post specifically about a knife being present, and I’m adding that whether a knife is present or not doesn’t change the fact that the city and police are releasing statements and withholding evidence to manipulate public opinion. Why should I have to trust the cops at all if there is video evidence of the events that I can use to form my own judgements from? Why hide the facts from public view?

        • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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          Since when are stills taken from video that clear? Especially during a scuffle, and with questionable lighting… Something doesn’t add up.

          • capital@lemmy.world
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            There’s no arguing with you if there’s no sources you believe.

            You could say the same if I linked the whole damn video.

            • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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              While they’re being excessively conspiratorial (For fuck’s sake, stills from an uncompressed video are that clear), that image doesn’t tell us anything. We don’t know who the person in that image even was, and it could just as easily have been a bystander, the alleged fare jumper or the cop who got shot that was wearing plain clothes. They could easily answer this question by just releasing the bodycam footage, but they haven’t done that, and time and time again we’ve seen the NYPD refuse to release any of the footage except some juicy still images to cover up gross misconduct of an officer. Personally I doubt this is the case, but the time when I could blindly accept that has long passed.

              • capital@lemmy.world
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                that image doesn’t tell us anything.

                The comment I responded to says,

                Probably because there was no knife in the footage.

                So, I provided a still of the footage showing a knife.

                Sure, we don’t know for sure who it is but I have a pretty good guess.

                I too await the full footage.

                • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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                  In the most pedantic and exacting way, you might be right!

                  The topic here (and my original point) is that the image you’ve linked doesn’t tell us anything except that the NYPD have claimed it’s a still from the bodycam footage. We don’t have any of the context it occurs within, so while yes that is an image of a knife, we don’t actually know that it’s a still taken from bodycam footage of the incident. The original poster’s point was that at the time we didn’t (and as of writing, still don’t) have any evidence that they aren’t just making shit up. We still don’t. And as much as I’d love for the NYPD not to be pulling the same bullshit they always always try to pull, we have no reason to believe that right now. They have earned zero of the credibility you’re affording them.

                  And, really, a personal appeal: Is it a reasonable use of your time to try and nickle-and-dime the issue until an incident where the NYPD escalated a $2.90 situation to the point that two innocent bystanders were shot somehow becomes palatable? Who cares if he had a knife, even according to them he did not pose a present threat until he was provoked. The NYPD is a goddamn army with the most advanced surveillance system in the entire world and that dude was on a train. They absolutely could have just mailed the ticket to his house like they do with 90% of farejumpers, or if they wanted to be bastards, they could have followed him via surveillance, isolated and then arrested him safely elsewhere. They do that all the time in other cities. Engaging a potentially violent subject on a fucking subway train is beyond inexcusable no matter what the guy did, because while he’s a shithead for (in all likelihood) trying to stab the cops, the cops should not have allowed themselves to be in that situation in the first place. It’s basic shit, volunteers at comic-con can do it, why can’t these inept SOBs?

              • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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                3 months ago

                stills from an uncompressed video are that clear

                All video is compressed, it’s just a question of how much. That said, they released the video, someone linked it, it is remarkably clear, so I concede that he did have a knife. However, it doesn’t look like he “charged at the cops” with it, rather he was running away, but didn’t realize one of the cops had gotten on the other side of him. You can really see his oh shit moment when he realizes the person he’s running toward is another cop, and he stops, but they’re already shooting him (and each other, and several passengers) by then. What was the rush? The train wasn’t going anywhere.

            • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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              3 months ago

              Ok, fair enough, he had a knife. I’ll still criticize the cops for fucking shooting each other and bystanders over it as motherfucker tries to run away.

              • capital@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                Go ahead. I responded to comments suggesting there wasn’t a knife and your ridiculous suggestion that the images were fabricated.

        • belathus@bookwormstory.social
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          3 months ago

          Fair enough. However, they should release the footage regardless. Especially since 4 people got shot, 2 of which were bystanders, and that this was over a cheap fare. Cops are pretty untrustworthy.

  • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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    3 months ago

    Can we just go back to having a legitimate conductor who also has a protected union job that is properly staffed so that they can do occasional walks through the train to be able to offer ticketing services that allow for rapid and mass transit for the masses that connect us in a way that allows for fucking easy travel.

    Please! Or can we at least stop treating trains like an old existing extension of the singularly for profit monopolies paid by the government they were and just straight up have been allowed to become again!

    • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Not even just conductors, these trains need staff period. One of the things about crime in general is that people are less likely to do it if they feel like the area presents itself as safe. Even things down to cleanliness, lighting, staff presence, and noise level will affect crime.

      It seems like the city just doesn’t care at all about their transit because it’s extremely dirty, staff are basically nonexistent, the stations are loud and have no boundaries, and every part of them seems to be decaying infrastructure. Japan knows this well, your passengers will reflect the expectations you put upon them by their environment and staff.

  • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldM
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    3 months ago

    This is like an unfunny onion article. The fact that there can be civilian casualties in NYPDs war on fare jumpers is just shameful. It’s not for the money. They spend $150 million a year to recover $100k. Beyond an embarrassment.

  • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    This is an age old American tradition of shooting people who try to stow on train cars. There is an image in American culture of the freighthopping hobo who is trying to find a better place to live and work despite not having a dime to his name. Of course in reality many people have been shot for doing that. Property and a few dollars is worth much, much more than a poor person’s life.

  • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    I mean according to the article, technically they just tried to stop him over the $2.90 fare.

    Then because of that he threatened to kill them and they realized he had a knife so they tasered him.

    Then when that didn’t work and he ran at them with the knife they opened fire.

    Multiple people are still dead because they brought guns into a disagreement over $2.90, but the headline implies a lot more unreasonableness on the individual cops’ parts as opposed to the overall policy.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 months ago

      Then because of that he threatened to kill them

      They claim he made a threat. The article failed to print his side of the story for some curious reason. It isn’t printing any testimony from the bystanders, either.

      Multiple people are still dead because they brought guns into a disagreement over $2.90, but the headline implies a lot more unreasonableness on the individual cops’ parts as opposed to the overall policy.

      Cops will often lie about the danger of a suspect in order to justify elevating their use-of-force. That said, they weren’t that concerned by his unreasonableness when they deployed tasers into the crowd first. They didn’t switch to guns until they realized the tasers weren’t going to work.

      • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        They claim he made a threat. The article failed to print his side of the story for some curious reason. It isn’t printing any testimony from the bystanders, either.

        Fair enough, supposedly they were wearing body cams so hopefully some of what actually happened can be answered objectively, I’m just pointing out what the article said. If he didn’t make a threat or have a knife, then tasering him is a wild escalation, it’s just that if he did, then the police can’t really just let him get on a train.

        Cops will often lie about the danger of a suspect in order to justify elevating their use-of-force. That said, they weren’t that concerned by his unreasonableness when they deployed tasers into the crowd first. They didn’t switch to guns until they realized the tasers weren’t going to work.

        Again, assuming what the article says is true, which is a big assumption, it’s not that crazy to taser a guy who just got onto a train with a knife and threatened to you. At that point you’re looking at a potential mass stabbing incident if you do nothing.

        Again, who knows, maybe the cops are blowing his behaviour wildly out of proportion, I’m just saying that, based on the article, it sounds like he wasn’t just gunned down for jumping a turnstile.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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          3 months ago

          the police can’t really just let him get on a train

          If they had, three people would have avoided bullet wounds and one of them wouldn’t be in the ER right now.

          it’s not that crazy to taser a guy who just got onto a train

          If you’ve ever ridden the subway in NYC, particularly during rush hour, the idea of firing a taser into a train full of people is absolutely crazy.

          • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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            3 months ago

            If they had, three people would have avoided bullet wounds and one of them wouldn’t be in the ER right now.

            And maybe a bunch of people would have been stabbed by the guy with a knife who just threatened to kill someone.

            If you’ve ever ridden the subway in NYC, particularly during rush hour, the idea of firing a taser into a train full of people is absolutely crazy.

            Again, they could be lying about the knife and the threat, but if he did have a knife and just threaten to kill someone it would be absolutely crazy to let him get on a subway train full of people.

              • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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                3 months ago

                Oooh what a cool edge lord. You’ve definitely thought this through.

                The public praises the police when they stand around and let an armed man be well enough alone in a group of civilians! Everyone loves it when police do that right?

                Like Jesus fucking Christ, what would you do? Leave a guy with a knife getting onto a crowded train and have two dozen people stabbed? It is naiive to think that there was a good outcome possible once you start making police bust fare skipping, but it is also absurdly naiive to think that the police can let a man with a knife get onto a New York train with just a ‘hey, try not to stab anyone’.

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Then because of that he threatened to kill them and they realized he had a knife so they tasered him.

      Then when that didn’t work and he ran at them with the knife they opened fire.

      Is the version of what’s the killers are saying. I’ll believe it when I see the camera footage. Good thing they have bodycams, so they can instantly prove their story.