The incident unfolded on Aug. 2, 2022, after police received several 911 calls saying a man had broken into the municipal building and set several fires inside.

Officers arrived to find the suspect still inside the building, armed with a large machete.

Two officers armed with Anti Riot Weapon Enfield (ARWEN) devices shot the suspect nine times over the course of 35 minutes.

Despite undergoing surgery, the man lost one testicle. The other was injured and only a portion could be saved.

  • lamp@neon.nightbulb.net
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    10 days ago

    This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, “f*** around and find out.” Brutal.

    What is it with these perps carrying machetes? A machete is for toting around in the woods and brush, not downtown. And threatening police with a machete is a real stupid move and removes all sympathy for the suspect. Just dumb.

    On the same site a Canadian suspect fled across the border into USA and was captured by the Washington State Patrol. This genius also had a machete. What gives?

    • ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social
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      8 days ago

      Because gun control laws work. They couldn’t get their hands on a firearm so they went for giant knives instead.

      • lamp@neon.nightbulb.net
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        8 days ago

        Gun control laws work for people of low intelligence or low moral character. A criminal of middling intelligence can get guns anywhere in the world. These criminals clearly were not very smart. They were impulsive and short-sighted, which is why they would not be able to get guns.

        The proper word for disarmed people is : SLAVE.

        If you are not allowed to be armed, you are a slave. You are not free. You can mealy-mouth it all you want with nonsensical and false political rhetoric, or try to massage the lie with statistics, or whatever. But the fact remains that a man who is disarmed is slave to the man who is armed. The armed man is allowed to easily kill you if you don’t submit to his commands, and that is slavery. Just because the masters put a cute tin star and hat on the slavers, doesn’t change the nature of what they are: SLAVERS.

        “Those who beat their swords into plowshares plow for those who didn’t.”

        Someone has declared themself your master, and told their slave, ‘thou shalt not resist by force, the force we force upon you; thou shalt call this, freedom, safety, and law.’

        Many slaves love their slavery. They have a word for it : FREEDOM. These ‘freedom’ loving slaves desire to force their ‘freedom’ on others, using officers with guns to do it. How do they do this? Why, they beg their master government to use guns, to impose this unarmed state of ‘freedom’ on everyone else. So those arguing for gun control aren’t arguing for gun control. They are arguing for men with guns to control other people without guns and keep them that way. There is a word for this: HYPOCRISY.

        Advocates of gun control are against violence, unless it is state thugs doing the violence to people they don’t like. Then they are pro-violence all day, every day, praising the violence their police do to others in the name of their slavery racket.

        • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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          8 days ago

          Gun control laws work for people of low intelligence or low moral character.

          Ah, the No True Scotsman fallacy. It’s so cute when a debate gets a dose of toxic masculinity.

          I’m happy that I don’t need a gun after leaving the infantry and handing in my work tools. That kind of fuckwit paranoia has no place after the 1900s.

          • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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            8 days ago

            All-capsed rants aside, in this moment in history you really don’t feel paranoid at all? He’s right that even with gun control, someone still has them, and could use them for whatever they want.

            • ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social
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              8 days ago

              Of course, but having far less guns on the street than our southern neighbour is still an overall very good thing. And it’s a silly conservative argument to say that just because you can’t block ALL guns EVER being sold to criminals, that blocking the majority is no longer worthwhile. It’s still worth it if it’s meaningfully harder (which it already is with the PAL).

              • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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                8 days ago

                Yeah, the idea that it won’t stop mass shootings and suicides is silly - it empirically has. When they talk about civil liberties I start wondering if they have a point, though.

                That being said, I don’t expect a military coup any time soon. I worry a lot more about surveillance and technology lock-in slowly eroding our choices in much more subtle ways.

        • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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          8 days ago

          A man with a gun in a country full of armed police is still useless. Out numbered out gunned. Even without guns the sheer population size can rise up against this Master you are talking about. But as you see in the USA (with all their guns) they still have let corporations turn every citizen into a slave. So guns have been useless.

    • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      10 days ago

      Because Canada has pretty strong gun laws and rules for ownership. They tend to weed out a lot of people from buying/owning a weapon.

    • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Pretty sure I read somewhere that people are more intimidated by bladed weapons than guns because a gun can only hurt in one direction.

      Idk if this is true though it was a while ago that I read this.

    • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      What would you have them do differently here? Just wait patiently for the building to burn down? Wait until the man escapes the scene and threatens the public with a machete?

      • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.worksOP
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        10 days ago

        If they had a half hour to use the guy for target practice, they could have used that time to talk him down instead.

        Or does that make too much sense?

        • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          They were attempting to talk him down throughout the entire engagement. They don’t just shoot nonlethal without giving instructions. They also warn saying things like “drop the machete or you will be tazed/bean bagged/pepperballed.” Eventually he did drop the machete, and the pain from nonlethal may have contributed to that. I’d rather the suspect be in pain than be shot to death.

          If the suspect was still inside the burning building, there was likely a sense of urgency to get him out before smoke inhalation, high heat, or building collapse became a significant threat to his life.

          • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.worksOP
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            10 days ago

            According to the article the only thing they cops said/yelled to the guy was to drop the weapon.

            And a “sense of urgency” to get the guy out of the building would preclude the cops from spending 35 minutes using him as target practice.

            • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
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              9 days ago

              If you read the police report linked in the article, the suspect refused to drop the machete and asked police to shoot him. The suspect was escalting the situation and actively resisting police while in the burning building.

              • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.worksOP
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                9 days ago

                Sorry, I learned long ago to the take “police reports” with a pound of salt. As far as I’m concerned those are not a trusted source for facts.

                If they released the body camera footage, that’s a different story. But they didn’t, did they?

                • nyan@lemmy.cafe
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                  9 days ago

                  Assuming that the police report is always wrong is just as bad as assuming that it’s always right. I don’t think there’s any question in this case that the suspect was committing arson—the presence or absence of fire damage would have been hard to hide from the public. Arson is a pretty serious crime that might have endangered innocent bystanders if the fires had spread sufficiently. Was he really brandishing a machete at the police? I can’t say for sure, but it isn’t implausible. Was the force used to bring him in disproportionate? Maybe, but I find it difficult to believe that anyone was aiming at this guy’s testicles on purpose. They’re just not a very good target.

                  This isn’t like the cases of someone being seriously injured or killed during a “wellness check” or for standing on a street corner while Indigenous. In the absence of any other information, I’d say that the injuries that the suspect suffered here really weren’t intentional and a misaimed plastic bullet ricocheted into his crotch. If you want a flagship case for demonstrating police brutality to the public, I wouldn’t pick this one.