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The child was a hostage. The man's goal is not to harm the child, but to save his own hide. If disabled he would not try to harm the kid, but rather escape or tend to himself.

Did you read that? Disablement was not the ideal option, because the guy has a knife to the kids throat, and the pain caused could have caused the guy to slit the throat, even if it would be accidental.

On another note, you have to be slightly insane to take a child hostage and hold him with a knife. How do you know that the man wouldn't have slit the child's throat, if only to deny the police of their goal. You can not be sure of how someone like this is going to act. It's not worth the risk.

Sorry, I am bit defensive today

You're one to talk, you'd hang someone just for stealing your cookie.

Obviously it was to you.

Prejudicial Language.

I'm going to leave your comments about me alone. It would be disrespectful to have this turn into something personal.

I understand what most of the asylum posters are like. Read the thread mirth and you'll realise I am extremely "thick skinned."

But when one says that a man deserves to die I take that very seriously. What that man did there was unforgivable, but an action that was taken against him should always be a last resort. I can deal with officer defending a child, there is little time to think or act there, but to listen to people say a person deserves to die?

Edited, Mon Jan 9 21:21:37 2006 by Allegory

There are many, many people who deserve to Die Al. There is no way to deny that.

You presume too much.

Allegory, I won't fault your viewpoint. But it's a tough one to have, because it revolves solely around hindsight.

The police do not place equal weight between criminal and victim in a hostage situation. Saving the criminal's life is a distant third to ensuring the lives of the hostages and officers. That is the way I'd like it to stay, too.

Coasting over what the criminal did by saying that it was a "poor decision" only detracts from the horrific nature of what he was doing. Spontaneous and panic-driven as it probably was, he consciously put himself in a position to steal that child's life away, motivation be damned.

Discussing the value of the man's life, or his future merit to society is fruitless. That doesn't enter into the equation. Because some situations (albeit a vast minority) can only be solved by violent action. It's a bitter truth, but it's the truth.

Any other action in that situation, and there is a high enough chance that that infant ends up dead that the police (and I) would not be willing to risk it.

If the child ends up dead, so goes the idealist's beliefs. All the what-ifs in the world aren't going to reconcile that consequence.

I don't think that's quite what I'm going for. (I'm trying to sort out my opinions and wordings on the fly here, so bear with..)

It's not about "deserving" death. If I had a clean slate, and could pick and choose the best outcomes for any given situation at my leisure, in every case I would ensure that everyone survived safe and sound. To say that the man deserved death would be to say that if I had this hypothetical "hand of god" situation, I would again kill the man, even if it was possible for him to survive the event.

But that's not the case. It would be great if both lives could be preserved, but there is a tremendous unpredictability to this situation. A large degree of error, if you will. An officer could try to subdue the man without killing him, but fail to prevent him from killing the child. Even if the chance of this is small (who knows), the officers are more concerned with saving the innocent hostage's life than that of the man threatening to take it. They do not want to risk the worst outcome: that the child is killed (the true worst being both man and child, of course).

They chose the course of action which was most likely to prevent that outcome. So I don't want to say that the man "deserved" it. The motives guiding the police were most likely "what gives this child the best chance of survival", not weighing consequences for the poor judgement of the man. So I don't think we as outsiders can look at it that way through hindsight.

If the police were to err on the side of caution, and that error resulted in the death of an innocent victim as opposed to that of the man threatening a life, would their course of action still be appropriate?

Edited, Tue Jan 10 04:24:14 2006 by Eske

Allegory is being too idealistic here as a reaction to the “he deserved to die” statement.

The basic logic here involves a choice of evils. Choice one: let the guy live and have a strong chance that an innocent child dies; or choice two: kill the guy thereby preventing harm to the child. The greater good was served by making choice two.

That is not to say that taking the guy’s life is a good thing, the bad was just outweighed by the greater good of saving the child. This simple math of choosing between what causes the least harm is something that many idealistic are not capable of because they cannot get past the idea that the best choice is one in which someone or something is harmed. (Example: everyone in PETA)

Allegory is taking his argument that killing the guy is not a good act, which is true in its own context, and trying to use that as a logic basis to say that no other results change that, which is false. This is of course the same argument that many idealists make about one cause or another without taking into consideration the negative consequences or not doing the necessary evils ie - killing bad guys who hold knives to little kids necks in order to save the little kid, killing cattle for food so everyone can eat, etc.


Edited, Tue Jan 10 12:21:22 2006 by fhrugby

If someone is in a hospital bed, feeling excruciating pain every second of every day, you know they probably won't get better, and you have the option of "pulling the plug"; don't you feel that they deserve to die?