posted
Story still developing but so far they've confirmed that a passenger claimed to have a bomb in his carry-on while the plane was stopped in Miami for a stop-over. Air Marshals gave him two warnings and took him down in the jetway.
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posted
AP story now showing up in the Chicago Tribune quotes another passenger who said his wife claimed he was bipolar and hadn't taken his meds. CNN audio stream on XM said there was no sign of a bomb in the bag once it had been examined.
All HOmeland Security is saying about him is that he's a 44 year old male US citizen. They won't confirm dead or alive at this point, although several other sources are saying he has died of his injuries.
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posted
Well, I wouldn't have thought a terrorist would advertise, and they were quick to point out the Air Marshals acted in a way that was in line with their training... kind of assumed it was something along those lines
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posted
Ricree, they didn't shoot to kill. The anchor on CNN and teh source she was talking to just after the incident (I never caught names, I was listening on my XM while trying to work) were making a very big deal of that fact. He was reported dead by local news outlets but not yet confirmed by Homeland Security about an hour later. (looking back, I posted at 2:45 about that part, so about 45 minutes to an hour).
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posted
Wait a minute, what "non-lethal fashion" would you like exactly, Ricree?
He said he had a bomb. He did something that looked like he was going for a bomb. That's how you get shot.
Bombs kill large numbers of people. The priority of law-enforcement is not to save the bomber's life, but to save the lives of those around the bomber.
And until they searched him and his possessions, he was a bomber.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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In this case, I fail to see how a taser would have been any less effective than a gun, apart from being nonlethal.
You realize that the air marshals don't wear uniforms, right? It's not like this guy was charging at a group of police officers who he knew full well would be carrying guns.
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posted
They had pulled their guns and ordered him to stop before they fired. Of course, as twinky points out, this alone indicates that they didn't really think he was a bomber.
The difficulty here is that the potential cost of being wrong about his status is, on one hand, the life of someone who's clearly made a huge, suicidal mistake -- and, on the other hand, the lives of hundreds. While a taser would have been helpful in this specific situation, it's impossible to generalize enough in a way that would not be exploited by an actual bomber.
This is the same decision faced by cops on a regular basis. And when a guy reaches for his wallet or his coat pocket or his backpack specifically after you've told him to stand basically immobile, the general rule of thumb is that you have to shoot him.
And if they shot him without actually intending to kill him, I'd imagine that they're being lectured by their superiors right now for making a mistake.Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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A taser may be shot only once before reloading. A taser has a shorter range. A taser might impact some article of clothing or something and be blocked where a bullet would not.
There aren't many Americans who don't know that there are more cops on airplanes than there used to be. I'd say that the amount that don't is a vanishingly small minority. There are a similar number of Americans who cannot predict what would happen in a situation like this when you say, "I've got a bomb!" on a plane or in jetway when you don't actually have it in your hands.
The cops did precisely the right thing in this situation. I am sorry the man is dead because it appears he was a little bit nuts, but that is certainly not the fault of policement, and I'm certainly not going to ask cops to risk the lives of civilians in order to protect the life of a bomb-wielder by using non-lethal force.
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You would be surprised at how many people choose to commit suicide at the hands of "law enforcement". They know that if they pull a gun (or do whatever to trip the authorities into 'I have no choice'mode) they will be shot and killed.
Which is a horrible thing to do to any officer of any kind. Force them to shoot you just because it is a glorious way to go out.
A guy yells he has a bomb, runs from the marshall, pretends to reach into his bag after saying he has a bomb -- he knew they would have no choice but to shoot. FG
(edit: oh - I see Tom already said this. I must not have read carefully enough...)
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quote:I'm certainly not going to ask cops to risk the lives of civilians in order to protect the life of a bomb-wielder by using non-lethal force.
What about the life of a potential bomb-wielder? What about a potential bomb-wielder whose wife is running after him shouting that he's her husband and hasn't taken his medication? It's entirely possible that the air marshals didn't see or hear her, but other people in the airport did. The air marshals were also already keeping a closer eye on him, because on the plane he'd had a loud argument with his wife. He was also running away from the aircraft -- and the air marshals -- when he was shot.
From what I've read, it seems like the air marshals talked to him when the plane landed, tried to detain him, and he freaked out. He said he had a bomb and took off down the jetway. When his wife saw it, she started to run after him, shouting about his medication. The air marshals shouted at him to stop, he didn't, started reaching for his bag, and was shot.
It doesn't really sound like "suicide by cop" to me.
Did the air marshals act in accordance with their training? Yes, they did. Did they do what they felt they had to do in the situation? It seems that way. Did they make the right choice? No, I don't think they did. An innocent man is dead and I think that killing is inherently wrong. You can make a decision that's justified based on the information available to you at the time and still learn, later, that it was wrong.
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quote:You would be surprised at how many people choose to commit suicide at the hands of "law enforcement". They know that if they pull a gun (or do whatever to trip the authorities into 'I have no choice'mode) they will be shot and killed.
I was tempted to do this once myself. I was in Wyoming, got caught in a speed trap, and I just happened to have Megatron, a Transformer that turns into a VERY realistic looking Walther P-38 in my console compartment. For some horrible reason I was tempted to take it out and point it at the cop, which of course would have resulted in my being riddled with bullets.
I wouldn't at all say that getting shot by cops is a glorous way to go though. Quite the contrary.
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Says who? Multiple shots were fired from more than one officer. Explain how they were only attempting to maim if they riddled him with bullets?
I think this was a terrible tragedy, but there are some questions that are being raised, interesting ones I think.
I think a red flag should go off whenever someone yells "I have a bomb" and starts running AWAY from a plane. It doesn't make sense, but that in itself doesn't mean that there isn't something sinister afoot. If he is mentally unstable enough to shout that, he might actually be unstable enough to actually have a bomb on him. But from recent reports I've read, his wife was actually following him right down the aisle towards the jetway yelling at the marshals not to shoot him saying he was mentally ill.
Red flag 1: "I have a bomb."
I would think that tells you it isn't a terrorist attack. Terrorists aren't stupid, they don't announce their intentions like that. I'd be cautious at that point, and ready to exercise a little more leniency than usual.
Red flag 2: He is running AWAY from the plane with the bomb.
Sure, he might just be headed towards the terminal to try and get at more people, but he stopped on the jetway. What sense does it make to explode the bomb on the jetway when possibly no one at all will be injured by the bomb, rather than blow it up on the plane itself.
Red flag 3: Wife running down the aisle pleading with you to not fire because he is mentally ill.
You might consider she could be part of whatever plot this is, and that she's just a distraction, but that makes little to no sense, why the ruse? Why the dramatics if you really want to set off the bomb anyway? That should have given them a lot more pause, but instead they fired anyway with the woman directly behind them pleading with them not to fire.
There's too much there that doesn't make sense, and had to immediately stick out as wrong in the heads of the marshalls. In the end, I guess I would rather them err on the side of caution, but still, I wonder if this could have been avoided.
Edit to add: I didn't see twinky's post before I posted mine. Twinky said it better than I did.
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posted
As mentioned before, if they WEREN'T shooting to kill, they were acting against all their training. Law Enforcement 101 says that you only bring out your weapon if absolutely necessary, and once you do so you are expected to shoot to kill, if you pull the trigger. Any deviation from that could result in the injury and death of other innocent lives.
quote:What about the life of a potential bomb-wielder? What about a potential bomb-wielder whose wife is running after him shouting that he's her husband and hasn't taken his medication? It's entirely possible that the air marshals didn't see or hear her, but other people in the airport did. The air marshals were also already keeping a closer eye on him, because on the plane he'd had a loud argument with his wife. He was also running away from the aircraft -- and the air marshals -- when he was shot.
Everyone who claims to have a bomb is a potential bomb-wielder. It is entirely unreasonable for the police to treat people who claim to have bombs as potential bomb-wielders, therefore this should not factor in to whether or not the decision made was right or wrong. Unless he did like Calvin, and stuck some string in the end of a hot dog and called it dynamite and demanded cookies, that is. Unfortunately I'll bet that's not what he did.
I think it's likely that at least one of the sky marshals did hear the wife, but decided they couldn't take that risk. The risk that a) she was telling the truth, but had a bomb, b) she wasn't telling the truth, he wasn't off his meds, c) they were both terrorists and she was his accomplice, d) he was a terrorist and she wasn't, but was off her meds and thus nuts, ad infinitum. It's easy to say after the fact-when we know there wasn't a bomb-to say, "He didn't have a bomb. He shouldn't have been shot. Something should have been done differently."
This is not a case of people claiming victory for the Bush Administration's foreign policies because there hasn't been another terrorist attack on American soil. This isn't a case of the dog that didn't bark going unheard. The dog did bark.
Not to mention the fact that if the sky marshals had heard what the wife said, what were they supposed to think? A crazy bomb-wielder? A crazy non-bomb wielder?
quote:An innocent man is dead and I think that killing is inherently wrong. You can make a decision that's justified based on the information available to you at the time and still learn, later, that it was wrong.
He was not innocent. In America we would probably term it, legally speaking, not-guilty by reason of insanity or mental defect. I'm not arguing that this wasn't a mistake-obviously, had the police had the clarity of hindsight from which you are looking, they would not have shot.
You and I disagree that killing is inherently wrong, we've had that discussion before. I daresay you would probably think differently once actually faced with the decision to kill, but hopefully for both of us that will forever remain a hypothetical situation.
As to the decision of the sky marshal to shoot, though, obviously that was not wrong. The right decision was made given the knowledge we can reasonably expect the sky marshal to have had at the time, thus he made the right decision insofar as he was able.
Your method, it seems, would be to give further benefit of the doubt to the potential bomber, just because he was crazy. That's nice, when you're looking at the guy in a courtroom, but quite different when you meet him on the street.
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I was with you until you got to this. You claim he might be innocent by reason of insanity, but what exactly is he guilty of otherwise? Other than shouting fire in a crowded theater, and since he didn't cause any injury I don't see that working, I don't see what he did that was illegal, especially illegal enough to merit execution.
At the end of the day, the marshals probably did act correctly, but the man was still innocent of any wrongdoing.
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I made that statement in two ways. One just to point out that in America, just because you're suffering from some mental delusion, you aren't necessarily "innocent".
Two, he was still guilty of doing something wrong. What he lacked was intent, which of course is very important. Let's say you or I were down with a horrible flu. Major fever, topping 102, delirious, spasming, all that. Now let's say somehow we got behind the wheel of a car and started driving, and while doing so plowed into another car.
It wouldn't be like getting likkered up and then getting behind the wheel. We would have been innocent of intent to act recklessly. We would still, however, have been guilty (I'm not talking in the legal sense here, either) of plowing into another car.
The man who said he had a bomb and started to reach into his pack despite being ordered at gunpoint not to was still guilty of claiming to have a bomb and fleeing authorities in an airport, although if he wasn't off his meds, probably he would not have done so.
Also he certainly was not executed. He was shot by a police officer while believed to be about to committ a crime and kill himself and others. In an execution just because the result is different does not make the two the same.
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posted
Maybe in a legal sense you might be right, but you said you aren't talking in a legal sense, in which case the term execution could be applied, just not in a legal sense. Parsing words works both ways.
Since you're talking about a non-legal sense of guilt, I have to say I don't think he was guilty. He most likely didn't know what he was doing, and we'll never know for sure. He fled plainclothes air marshalls, not uniformed airport officials. He was probably confused.
And in your example, if I were to get behind the wheel with a major fever and I was delirious and I drove all crazy, DIDNT hit anyone, not knowing what I was doing, and a cop not in a patrol car but his own car swung around, ordered me to stop, I didn't and then proceeded to drive me off the rode into a tree where I died in the crash, I don't think I'd be guilty. In a legal sense or not.
Lastly, yelling "bomb" isn't in itself illegal last time I checked.
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He was most certainly innocent of the crime for which he was summarily executed [Added: Your post with the bit about execution wasn't there when I posted this. Point taken. Not executed.]. He didn't have a bomb, and he was shot for trying to detonate one.
quote:I daresay you would probably think differently once actually faced with the decision to kill, but hopefully for both of us that will forever remain a hypothetical situation.
I should hope that I'd feel pretty bad about it afterward, even if I had to kill another person to save my family. The point is that killing is wrong, but in some cases it is less wrong than the alternatives. In this case it was clearly not less wrong than letting a bombless lunatic run around in an airport, but the marshals didn't know that he didn't actually have a bomb. In their assessment, killing him was less wrong than potentially allowing a bomb to be detonated. That doesn't mean what they did was "right" in a moral sense, it just means that they felt it was the least of a few evils.
In other words, if I was the air marshal who fired the first shot, I would probably feel like I had chosen the best course of action under the circumstances. That doesn't mean what I chose to do was right, in the moral sense of the term, and I would still feel bad for having killed a person.
I actually think that your view would be the one that changed if you were ever forced to kill, but like you I hope it never comes to that for either of us.
quote:The right decision was made given the knowledge we can reasonably expect the sky marshal to have had at the time, thus he made the right decision insofar as he was able.
You didn't qualify your statement the first time. That makes a huge difference. I think this version is entirely reasonable.
quote:Your method, it seems, would be to give further benefit of the doubt to the potential bomber, just because he was crazy. That's nice, when you're looking at the guy in a courtroom, but quite different when you meet him on the street.
My method would be to remove guns from aircraft entirely. Putting them in the hands of air marshals or pilots is, in my view, a bad idea. Cases like this aren't the main reason why I think so, but they are certainly on the list.
Maybe you didn't notice, but I said I was using that word in two senses.
quote:Since you're talking about a non-legal sense of guilt, I have to say I don't think he was guilty. He most likely didn't know what he was doing, and we'll never know for sure. He fled plainclothes air marshalls, not uniformed airport officials. He was probably confused.
I'm saying that just because you don't know what you're doing doesn't mean you aren't guilty of doing it. It just means you didn't intend to do it, and that should be factored in when it comes to punishment. Incidentally, I think your point about plaincothes sky marshals doesn't fly (no pun intended) because he was pulled straight off the aircraft and questioned. Badges were surely flashed.
quote:And in your example, if I were to get behind the wheel with a major fever and I was delirious and I drove all crazy, DIDNT hit anyone, not knowing what I was doing, and a cop not in a patrol car but his own car swung around, ordered me to stop, I didn't and then proceeded to drive me off the rode into a tree where I died in the crash, I don't think I'd be guilty. In a legal sense or not.
You'd certainly be guilty of reckless driving. You can get busted for that if there are other people around or not. And you're still ignoring the most important thing here: gobs and gobs of people standing around.
Anyway, I have to wonder if you're being deliberately obtuse because you're sticking so stringently to one definition of the word guilty, which I've said is not the only one I was talking about. You're saying he was innocent of intent, just as the hypothetical guy behind the wheel.
I agree with you about that. I also think he was probably innocent of intent.
But he was not innocent of his actual misdeed, fleeing police and claiming to have a bomb. I also have to wonder if he was innocent of not being on his medication. Was that an accident, or did he choose not to take it? If it wasn't an accident, would that change your opinion on things?
quote:Lastly, yelling "bomb" isn't in itself illegal last time I checked.
Next time you're in the airport, yell that you've got a bomb and start reaching into your satchel, and see what happens. Or call in a bomb threat on a school or mall. Or even a private individual. It's definitely illegal depending on the context.
Twinky,
quote:That doesn't mean what they did was "right" in a moral sense, it just means that they felt it was the least of a few evils.
It seems you're operating on an almost religious definition of "moral right". All decisions are going to be at least a little bit wrong, unless you believe there can be an absolutely right moral decision-I certainly don't.
It is the prime duty of police officers to protect the innocents from criminals, and to uphold the law. That's what they swear to do, that's what they sign up to do, that's what they're expected to do. Thus, their decision was not "less bad" than the believed alternative, toasted innocents, it was in fact the right decision-practically and morally.
I realize you disagree with this, but in my opinion, morality is seriously dependant on context. There aren't really any thick, straight black lines in my opinion. It zig-zags, it becomes a broken line, it fades, it changes color, all based on context as far as the individual knows and should be expected to know.
Even the most heinous of crimes, in the right situation, might be right. Such situations are fortunately the products of fiction and imaginative minds, however.
quote:You didn't qualify your statement the first time. That makes a huge difference. I think this version is entirely reasonable.
That's my fault. That's how I view all morality, through the lens of what the individual knew and was able to know and sense. It is for this reason that I think killing can sometimes be right, not just better, but right in and of itself.
quote:My method would be to remove guns from aircraft entirely. Putting them in the hands of air marshals or pilots is, in my view, a bad idea. Cases like this aren't the main reason why I think so, but they are certainly on the list.
I think this is foolhardy, unless you can guarantee that no guns will find their way onto an aircraft, twinky. And they will.
posted
What do you say to the new stories coming out of this that no one on the plane heard him say "bomb" at all?
Incidentally Rakeesh, you're right, I made a bad comparison with the wreckless driving analogy. What exactly is the charge for saying "bomb" in an airport without actually having one? The charge isn't simply saying "bomb," there has to be something more to it.
There're obviously a lot of details we don't have yet to make an informed decision.
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posted
I do not know the actual law against inciting a panic such as shouting "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater, nor do I know the actual law against, say, calling in a bomb threat on a school. I do know they're both illegal, though.
If it turns out that this man never told anyone he had a bomb, then shooting him was probably the wrong decision for the police to have made, with the knowledge they had. But the shouted cry is not central to my point. Telling the police he had one is.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
It is not certain that he said he had a bomb. Reports seem to be conflicting. I'm sure that eventually most or all of the passengers will be interviewed, but we may never know for sure either way.
quote:It seems you're operating on an almost religious definition of "moral right".
Well, I generally come at discussions of what people should do in various situations from a pragmatic (sometimes loosely utilitarian) perspective. Not unlike yours, actually. The reason I'm being so anal retentive about it in this particular case case is that I think spreading that kind of mentality -- that it's "right" to kill in certain situations -- makes further incidents like this one all the more likely.
I think it's very important, when something like this happens, to focus not on how the marshal made the "right" ("least wrong") decision based on the information he had, but rather on how it was regrettable that this happened at all. If we don't do that, then there won't be any review of his actions to make sure that he did indeed follow the appropriate protocols, he'll just get a commendation and then get assigned to his next flight. In other words, even when the system is working, we need to make sure that we don't get into a mentality where we shrug events like this one off as "collateral damage" or "acceptable losses" associated with "doing the right thing," because that mentality will only lead to more losses.
quote:I think this is foolhardy, unless you can guarantee that no guns will find their way onto an aircraft, twinky. And they will.
Is there any data to support the assertion that guns actually make air travel safer? As far as I can tell that claim is still disputed, years after the air marshal program was initiated. I definitely don't take that claim as self-evident.
I think putting a projectile weapon with the muzzle velocity of a .357 (my understanding is that that's what the air marshals use) onto an aircraft is a bad idea. Making it semi-automatic is worse. Even a slight crack in a window or fuselage can lead to people passing out from oxygen deprivation before the oxygen masks even deploy. The risk of this happening is not great, but when you give guns to sky marshals and pilots you're intentionally increasing that risk. At least they use hollow point bullets, which "explode" on impact so as not to penetrate too far into whatever they hit.
"It will happen someday" can be used to justify pretty much anything, including outlawing air travel altogether -- after all, people will eventually die from it. The problem with saying that guns "will" find their way onto aircraft, so we should have other guns on the aircraft just in case, is that you're intentionally increasing the risk for all travellers while trying to decrease it for the few whose flights are hijacked.
Basically, I don't think the risks were weighed with enough care before the decision to employ armed air marshals was made. The program was fast-tracked: early on, the original training requirements for air marshals were loosened so as to make the program's quota. Now their marksmanship requirements are among the most stringent (possibly the most stringent, I can't recall) of any federal U.S. agency, as it should be, but it shows that this wasn't looked at carefully enough before these people were put on planes.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
I heard that the man was suffering from bipolar disorder. Most of the rest of this post is predicated on that being true. If I've got it wrong, let me know.
Sadly, it's not uncommon for bipolar disorder sufferers to go off their medication. I can think of a number of ways in which this situation might've played out differently, but most of them put the onus on someone other than an air marshall or two charged with making a quick decision under stress. Once things have gotten to that point, the likelihood of a bad outcome for "someone" is just too high.
I don't mean any of the following as negative judgement on the man or his family, but here's some things I wish would've happened.
1) He would've stayed on his meds, and, if they made him feel bad, worked with his doctor to get the dosages and mix of medications just right. It IS possible with bipolar disorder. It takes time, effort and sometimes a bit of really hard work to find the right doctor (one willing to work with the patient). But ultimately, this comes down to the patient's attitude (which is not always reliable or geared to self-preservation in a bipolar person) and the strength of will of the people most close to them (such as a spouse or parents).
2) If the man has a history of aggression when off his meds, I wish that they could've notified the airline of the man's mental condition ahead of time, and that the air marshalls would've known that the man was perhaps prone to outbursts and aggressive displays. It seems to me that they could have worked together to find a way for this man to fly safely even if he ended up having an episode of manic behavior, or became severely depressed. But, really, chances are they would've probably decided that unless he was on his meds, he shouldn't fly. There's just not a lot of room for bizarre behavior in the current air travel environment, and if this was a concern, I think the airline and the man and his wife might've figured out together that this was not such a good idea.
As far as non-lethal ways to stop people, I don't think there's a good way to do that. In an airplane environment, shooting people seems like a very bad idea anyway, and should be used as a last resort. Those two marshalls probably breathed a huge sigh of relief when the guy got AWAY from the plane, because it means they didn't have to shoot at him inside a confined space and either missing, or having the bullet pass through him and hit someone else. The probability of him being shot at may well have gone UP when he left the plane only because the risks for injuring others in the process went way down.
The risks to other lives, however, weren't all that diminshed by him being inside the jetway. The jetway sits on top of a fuel dispensing system in most airports. If there was a bomb, setting it off there might've actually been a way to blow up several airplanes. If they had any thought that he was reaching for a bomb, they HAD to act.
One thing about tazers and bombs. A tazer is a means of delivering high-voltage electricity in a concentrated fashion. When it hits a target that possesses a central nervous system, it disables that target by forcing huges numbers of neurons to fire all at once. Muscle control is lost instantly and the target is incapacitated for a period of time.
I have no idea what it would do to a bomb (with or without an electronic circuit.) I'm not sure I'd want to find out.
And the problem with stopping because some woman is frantically screaming something about a man being off his medication is that she might well be part of the plot. The officer is about to shoot, the woman says "wait, he's off his meds." The officer hesitates, and the man sets off the bomb.
Being off his medication doesn't preclude him from setting off the bomb, if there was one.
In this situation, I think the use of deadly force is a sad necessity. I would be okay with having people like this man actually LIVE THROUGH the experience, but I'm not going to berate the air marshalls for doing what they should have done. The decisions that would've made this situation better (barring the one collossally bad decision by the man himself to make the threat) would've all had to have been taken before this man ever left for the airport in the first place.
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I agree with much of what you said in your latest post above. I include among the decisions PRIOR TO this guy leaving for the airport, the decisions on how best to handle threats on board aircraft.
I can't answer those questions about whether air marshalls make air travel safer. I would like to know that TSA and DHS (and others) have a really good handle on this (scenarios, methods of dealing with them...) But I don't know if that's true or not. I suspect it is not, and that you're right about some rushing in to fill a perceived need after 9/11.
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quote:It seems to me that they could have worked together to find a way for this man to fly safely even if he ended up having an episode of manic behavior, or became severely depressed.
At minimum they could have searched his bag and known there was no bomb. But not flying was a far better choice if his wife knew aggression was a possibility.
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I mean, people fly with oxygen tanks and other hazardous stuff. They MUST have ways of dealing with health-related hazardous materials and conditions.
Mental conditions are tougher though. Less well understood, and the spectre of aggressive or bizarre behavior is probably going to give the airline pause before accepting a passenger for flight. I can see why they (he and his wife) wouldn't want to disclose his condition if a) it was really serious, and so they'd risk being turned down by the airline, even if he was ON his meds, or b) he'd never done anything really aggressive in public before, so they felt the risk wasn't very high.
The patient's rights and dignity are at stake here, but put in the balance are the other passengers' rights, and the chances for disaster if people do the wrong thing, or act the wrong way (as this case demonstrates).
I'd also like to point out that knowing a killing was "justified" does not make it psychologically easy to accept for the law enforcement officers either. They know they shot the man because they had to. But they will almost certainly have to deal with issues of guilt and remorse. These are also real people, with families and a self-image as a "good person." Killing a mentally ill person under these circumstances is not going to be easily forgotten.
And don't forget, we expect them to show up for duty again soon (if not tomorrow), and in the same situation, do exactly the same thing.
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posted
It's my understanding that usually when there is any shooting, even if they miss, police officers go on required leave at once. Sky Marshals might be different.
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posted
It's a pretty sad country we live in when people say killing innocents is "obviously right."
I've read several interviews with passengers who said they did NOT hear him say he had a bomb, and that the air marshals were the only ones they were afraid of. Air marshals had ordered people not to look (since when are people not allowed to observe police?), to keep their hands on their heads (or else they would be "viewed as a threat and dealt with accordingly").
First of all, even if the man had said he had a bomb in his bag, what was the likelihood that he could have gotten it past security? Very low. Given that air marshals KNEW that he was mentally unstable (his wife was yelling it), they should definitely NOT have shot him. A full-speed tackle may have been in order, perhaps.
Posts: 1592 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
I think that given that even suggesting in a very distant manner that you might have a bomb is enough for someone to be arrested, acting in a suspicious manner on a plane is enough for some kind of dramatic reaction.
Aside from all the could haves and ifs they had done this is the real situation, a man who was acting suspiciously on a plane and the result was that he ended up dead. Yes, he was an unstable but innocent man, but I agree with Tom and Rakeesh here that given the immediately apparant situation it's not a surprising outcome.
I hate to use theory here because I know that in real life theory often goes out the window, but faced with a crisis situation where the person has only a few moments to decide whether to shoot or how to shoot, the human mind doesn't really have the capacity to think through all the possible ramifications of the situation and the actions in a long-term way. These people can't afford to NOT shoot and be wrong.
In this case, the decisions are: a) not shooting and being right, which is the best case scenario. b) shooting and being wrong, which is tragic. c) shooting and being right, which is okay. d) NOT shooting and being wrong, which is the worst and to be avoided at all costs.
Given the available options and the huge division between not shooting and being right and not shooting and being wrong, in a split second decision, unfortunately, firing was the "safest" option.
quote:A full-speed tackle may have been in order, perhaps.
Somehow tackling someone who may have had a bomb, especially if he was a few seconds distance away, probably didn't cross these particular people's minds.
Yes, it didn't turn out as well as they had hoped. Yes, it's tragic, but given the available options... they did what seemed to be right. They've probably be told and trained to take each threat or suspicious activity seriously, and not to second guess things.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Nato, your post raises some important questions:
1) Would it be prudent to assume that security inside the terminal catches EVERYTHING, or that, eventually, some motivated person, perhaps with inside help, might be able to get something on board a plane some day?
2) Is it possible that a confederate of a terrorist might try to sow confusion among the people charged with responding to a situation? If mere seconds count, then delaying the response from air marshalls could be all that's required to ensure optimal placement of the person carrying/wearing the bomb.
I haven't read interviews with passengers, but if this was a typical jet aircraft, it probably had over 230 people on board, and maybe as many as 400+. It'd be surprising if everyone heard ANY given thing that was said by any one person. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that there are as many versions of the story as there are people on the plane.
Ultimately, I'd prefer that this person was alive. Nobody has said otherwise.
What some here have said is that the system is now geared for this response and that second-guessing the air marshalls, who had mere seconds to decide what to do, is probably less fruitful an avenue of exploration than others that might be explored.
My wish has been all along that the man: 1) stayed on his meds, and got better ones or better dosages. 2) stayed out of airplanes (where aggression is a poor behavior choice) until such time as he was certain to be in control of his behavior. 3) alerted the airline (and by extention, the air marshalls) to his mental instability before boarding the plane.
I haven't presented ideas for the air marshall service and how to reform their training and/or weaponry. But I did say that having guns on planes is not a choice I'm particularly comfortable with.
Addressing those issues, seems to me, is important, but so long as deadly force is an option for meeting threats on board airplanes, I don't see how threats like that posed by this man are going to be dealt with with a vastly different outcome than what was achieved this time.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
I'd like to clarify my earlier statement a little bit. I believe that this particular case is one of the ideal situations for tasers.
From my understanding of things, there was at least reason to suspect that the man did not actually pose an immediate threat. However, when he was ordered to get onto the ground, he instead reached for his bag. As Teshi mentioned, the costs of not shooting and being wrong were quite high, but using lethal force was not an ideal option either.
Had the marshal been equipped with a taser, they could still have still fired the necessary shot while avoiding the man's death.
I recognise that tasers have a lot of limitations to them, and for that reason I am still in favor of arming air marshals with guns. I simply believe that including a taser along with the gun would provide some added flexibility that would help to avoid this type of unfortunate situation.
Given the options available to the officers on the scene, I believe that they acted correctly. That said, I wish that better planning could have provided the officers with better options.
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quote:It's a pretty sad country we live in when people say killing innocents is "obviously right."
And I'll thank you if you're going to insult me, be a little more direct and accurate about it.
I have said that given the circumstances, the action taken was obviously the right one. That does not mean it was a good thing, or that I'm happy about it, or that it was right with knowledge of all the circumstances.
quote:I've read several interviews with passengers who said they did NOT hear him say he had a bomb, and that the air marshals were the only ones they were afraid of.
Well, "several" is obviously an accurate portrayl of events, right? And eyewitness accounts are of course accurate.
quote:Air marshals had ordered people not to look (since when are people not allowed to observe police?), to keep their hands on their heads (or else they would be "viewed as a threat and dealt with accordingly").
Cops take airline security seriously. Funny, that. And in certain situations, you aren't allowed to move around, even to the extent of turning your head.
quote:First of all, even if the man had said he had a bomb in his bag, what was the likelihood that he could have gotten it past security? Very low. Given that air marshals KNEW that he was mentally unstable (his wife was yelling it), they should definitely NOT have shot him. A full-speed tackle may have been in order, perhaps.
What's the likelihood that if someone is told by police to put their hands up and instead they move toward the inside of their coat, they'll come out with a gun? Pretty low, depending on the person.
You don't know that the police knew he was deranged. You also don't know that they believed her, either.
A full-speed tackle may have been called for?! Well, at least you're willing to authorize some force when someone claims they have a bomb. I guess they should've had an attorney there to issue a court citation!
Yeah, that last bit was a shot. It's a sad nation we live in, ain't it?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:I recognise that tasers have a lot of limitations to them, and for that reason I am still in favor of arming air marshals with guns. I simply believe that including a taser along with the gun would provide some added flexibility that would help to avoid this type of unfortunate situation.
How much time should police devote in the heat of the moment to making these sorts of decisions?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I'm sorry for my tone earlier. I didn't mean to insult you. I just think that this incident, just like the couple of shootings in England this past summer, could have been prevented.
The stories I read had all the witnesses from agencies saying he shouted a bomb threat and the passengers doubting that, with some saying directly that he never said the word bomb. (Others said he only feared that a bomb was on board.) Newsday.com story
In any case, he managed to get off the plane before he was shot, and I think that the evidence suggests that the problem could have disappeared right there. I feel sorry for the men who made that decision, and I know they acted in what they thought was the right way, consistent with their training. But I think they should have tackled him instead.
Especially because it was after they got him off the plane.
...After reading a dozen different news articles on it, I have YET to see a quote that is not from some sort of official source say that the man said he had a bomb. Most passenger accounts mention instead his wife yelling that he was unstable and had not taken his medication. If anybody cares to search through a bunch of articles and finds one, post it.
Posts: 1592 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
The only thing, Nato, is that the passengers were not outside the plane with the marshalls when he was shot. Whether or not he said he had a bomb in the plane is not really relevant, so it doesn't matter what the passengers heard or didn't.
If he said he had a bomb outside on the jetway, and then reached into his backpack, the marshalls were justified in what they did.
All the witnesses I've seen interviewed did agree on one thing - he was yelling and running out of the plane and he had a backpack on at the time. The marshalls followed him, as they should have. Any passenger acting that way needs to be followed and checked out. They say he claimed he had a bomb and reached into his backpack. If so, they did the right thing.
Honestly, any person acting that way that reaches into a bag of any kind, after being told to stop and not stopping, might be shot because even if he didn't say he had a bomb, he might have a gun in there. The marshalls would have an argument that they acted in self defense even if he never said he had a bomb at all. Cops and marshalls are trained not to let a suspect draw on them, so if he refused to stop and then reached as if going for a weapon, they may well have fired in according to their training. If he did indeed say he had a bomb, then they had even one more reason to shoot him before he could harm everyone else.
But my main point is, the passengers may not have heard he had a bomb or not, because they weren't present at the actual scene of the shooting.
It is a tragedy, and I am sorry for the family. But it would be an even greater tragedy to drag two officers through the mud who were only doing their job. It wasn't their fault this man didn't take his medication, and they were doing what they were supposed to do to protect the lives of everyone else on that plane.
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