Posts by Morgan Nichol
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There have been precious few cases of civilians shooting other civilians in defence of themselves or another, and the most recent case did not result in a prosecution for attempted murder, some form of aggravated assault, or even careless use of a firearm.
In defence of themselves or another is completely fair. I'm not suggesting this officer should be charged with shooting at the bad guy - at least as it's been reported so far, it seems the shooting was absolutely appropriate.
Carvell shot the guy with the machete. Officer X, or whatever his name turned out to be, shot the guy with the golf club (never mind the sequences of errors that lead to his being within range of the golf club). But this case, with an innocent bystander being shot, is unprecedented - so it seems, if for that reason alone, that it should go through the courts.
The problem here isn't the shooting - I absolutely believe that people should be able to defend themselves by whatever means necessary, and that people who can't defend themselves should be defended by others - the problem here is that they hit the wrong guy.
What would happen if I did that? They'd throw the bloody book at me.
All this said, I'm not blind to the fact that we still don't have a complete picture of everything that happened, and I'm open to the possibliity that there was some special circumstance that makes it clear that going through the courts would serve no purpose but to prolong the agony of an officer over an honest and genuine mistake. But all things being equal, it's the courts job to decide if it was a mistake, or if it was manslaighter.
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I/S is demanding a prosecution of the officer who fired, but if he was acting on an express order, who's culpable?
The officer who fired still is.
But his commanding officer has to be open for action as well (even if it's limited to an employment matter).
And I think I/S is probably right about this - anyone else would be put through the process of going to court - the police would say "let's just let the courts decide" so to do anything different in this situation is hypocritical.
If these people don't suffer any of the same legal repercussions we do when they get things wrong, where is their incentive to do better?
(It's all very well to feel guilty/remorseful, I'd feel guilty as well if I hit someone in my car. But I'd still probably be charged with careless/wreckless/whatever driving - no matter the depth of my guilt or remorse.)
If a judge doesn't think there's a case to answer, then that's up to her. If the a judge does, but the officer is found not-guilty, then, again, the process has been followed.
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[Re: P] I don't regard it as a defence, and I do not think the courts should either.
Quite right, the thing about losing your shit after taking P is that first you have to take P.
I think the penalties should be higher, if anything.
(Which might only mean mandatory drug counselling. But might also mean more time inside. Or urine/blood tests for the duration of any probationary period.)
Russell, have you stopped proof-reading?
This is the least important part of any post, IMHO.
Russell generally uses the LazyWeb proof-reading services of his readers, instead of passive-aggressive snarking in the comments, just email him with whatever errors you spot. (Or STFU.)
He'll fix them, he'll thank you. Everyone wins.
It's hard enough to hit a stationary paper target from 10 metres. Seriously.
I bet that given a few more visits to the range you'd be hitting that target with every single shot. And a few more still and you'd have tidy little shot groupings.
Your point that paper targets don't move or shoot back isn't lost on me,but if I can hit a running target through trees with a piece-of-shit rented paintball gun I'd never even held before 5 minutes ago, a trained experienced marksman should be able to hit ANYTHING you ask him to.
Training is the difference.
Our police have a long and storied history of being pretty useless shots with bad judgement. Give them more ammunition (I heard, once upon a time, that the average officer gets about 100 shots a year), and more range time, and don't let the ones that aren't very good shots use the pistols. Ever.
*AND* lets give them more less lethal options - bean bag guns, rubber slugs, pepper balls, bear spray. All of that good stuff that knocks the shit out of people, but is more likely to knock people out than kill them.
It seems he had discharged his rifle repeatedly in the course of the chase. The cops may have been reluctant to fire shots at a fast-moving car on the public road.
Which would seem the right decision, a sawn-off .22 (if reports are correct) would have to be pretty low on the firearms power scale - probably less dangerous than a decent air rifle. A careening driverless car on the other hand. Eesh.
The whole thing... Just such a disaster. I hope the book they throw at this arsehole is a very heavy one.
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"Public Address -- Fewer Wankers!"
Yeah, I don't post comments that often, but let's not make a big deal of it, eh?
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If one of the heads was Douglas, it wouldn't be Cerberus, but some sort of dinosaur. (Somehow oblivious of a fact blatantly obvious to everyone else - that it's already extinct, thrashing and wailing as it sinks ever deeper into a tar pit.)
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Morgan that is some funny sh1t. Nice to see Grafton looking so good.(I lived there for nearly a decade and never knowingly had the pleasure of falling off the planet into your world).
Heh, cheers. :)
As for Win2000, well, I've got some pills here for you. ;-)
Well what can I say, I haven't actually used it for years, but it was great stuff back in the day. Miles better than Windows 98 or ME, and it kicked the arse right off OS9.
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Mark Harris:
Get a Mac. ;-)
(sorry, but someone had to say it)If the TVNZ site is Apple only, I think it should be labeled as such. Then everyone involved in making that decision named, shamed, fired, and replaced with people who know what they're doing.
The largest site I'm running at the moment (~40k uniques this month, which isn't bad but isn't nearly the largest site I've worked with) shows Apple users at just under 10% of my visitors. Which is vastly higher than it used to be, but still a tiny number compared to the Windows users.
(My various sites are all over the place, the average appears to be just under 10%, the greatest proportion - on my very modestly trafficked personal video site - is just over 30%, which is probably knocked out of whack by so many of my friends being mactard web folk.)
Anyway, I think that anyone running windows 2000 is probably a man of taste and distinction. I always found it to be a great operating system. (But not as good as Vista 64, which I've found to be fast and stable. Though I've only used it post-SP1, and have heard that things perhaps weren't so good when it was first released.)
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The feed thing is really annoying, when my podcatcher gets the b0rkened result (either 404 or just a zero length file, I'm not sure exactly what it sees) it doesn't bother trying again.
Can't watch it on demand either - apparently my 100 mbit connection all the way over the other side of Queen St isn't enough to get past "LOADING". (And that's only when it doesn't say "SORRY THIS CONTENT ISN'T AVAILABLE FOR YOU TO VIEW", yeah, what?)
So far I guess I've managed to see ~1 in 3 of the shows. Too bad, as I quite like it.
How is it that TVNZ make this (really bloody simple, let's be honest) stuff look so hard? Bad CMS?
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If his dog could give explicit informed consent, I'd be in favour of allowing this holy union of love Marks so strongly desires.
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When it comes to pork rinds Snix are fatilicious (and made from NZ grown pigs) but microwave rinds are even better - unfortunately they've been off my supermarket's shelves for about a year. So when I want to snack on a dead animal's skin, Snix it is.