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How much money should it take for a cop to be able to open fire on a suspect?

Broadly speaking, the police shouldn't be using lethal force unless someone's life is at risk.

But that gets us to the "we think he might have had a knife" excuse, which is just taken at face value as Carte Blanche to do as thou wilt.

The escalation of force from "jump a turnstile" to "four police trying to surround and tase the suspect" is more tied back to the $2.90 cost. Had they simply shouted after the guy as he fled, nobody would be in the hospital right now. Instead, they went Commando Mode, and bystanders paid the price.

You are suggesting the death penalty for theft. No.

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.

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.

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.

Based

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

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!

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!

Imagine if we had to pay money to use elevators

Most americans believe the entire point of transit is to sort people who can afford it from people who cant.

If mass transit is affordable for all it is literally considered a threat to these pathetic people who would means test their own kids before they gave them food and shelter if it was socially acceptable.

I was in NYC recently and the amount of wealthier people who just ubered everywhere (or actually just demanded to own a car and drive themselves in the least car friendly place IN THE US) with no consideration for ever using the subway underneath their feet was pretty disgusting and appalling especially coming from somewhere without magic train tunnels underneath my feet that run 24/7....

Notice all of these narratives run essentially in parallel with a nebulous fear of the subway being stoked by Eric Adams and centrists, they provide a convenient impulse to rationalize taking the easy way out and clogging the streets with another useless car. Kind of like convincing yourself as a kid not to do a chore in the basement because the basement is scaryyyy, I mean look at this video from somebody in another basement experiencing a freak scary incident that would likely never ever happen to me!!!!

I live somewhere with free bus transit in the US, and it is shocking how different it feels and yet also how many successful people around me with working cars just categorically ignore the use or possibility of using busses. The US is really really deeply fucked on this point and it makes me feel awful for the rest of the planet having to deal with our horrendous carbon footprints.

New York City has so much potential, but it is utterly ruined by rich conservative money suffocating the city in a chokehold.

I hate the US so much sigh

We could spend millions of dollars on making fares cheaper for people, but have you considered we can instead give that money to the police so they can prevent mere thousands of dollars in free rides?

With the settlement money they are about to get ripped up for I'm sure they could.