Prosecutors have charged a Metropolitan Police officer with murder after he shot rapper Chris Kaba in London last year.

  • Chainweasel@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Here in the States he would have won a free vacation (suspension with pay) and suffered no actual consequences.

    • kartonrealista@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Ha ha very funny. Except this is grammatically correct and not ambiguous. It would work with your joke interpretation if it said “who shot dead, unarmed, black man”

      • Landrin201@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I disagree that this is unambiguous, I was also confused reading this headline. It’s odd wording. It may be technically correct but that doesn’t mean it’s unambiguous.

          • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Or “shot dead an unarmed black man”. Three additional characters would have fixed this. I’ve long been frustrated by the journalistic style of removing every possible word from headlines. We’re no longer reading these things printed on dead trees, there’s no extra ink being spent or space wasted.

        • naught@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          “Dead” and “unarmed” are adjectives and if they were being used like you thought, they should have a comma between them. I agree that it’s potentially vague, but if you read it in your BBC broadcaster voice it should help

          • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It’s ambiguous. Adjectives don’t need a comma like that, especially when there are two. You don’t say “look at that small, red, fire hydrant”, you just say “look at that small red fire hydrant” (and technically, you could call “fire” an adjective there too).

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        This is absolutely ambiguous diction.

        “…who shot and killed unarmed black man…” would have been substantially more specific and readable without potential confusion.

  • Caboose12000@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m curious how this could even happen in England, I thought their police force was totally different from the US? I thought they only used guns as a last resort instead of as a constant threat of their gangster-style authority? was this some sort of very strange circumstance? was the cop who did it some kind of deranged murderer who somehow infiltrated the police force? or are cops around the world just not as different as I thought?

    • Baketime@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I thought the main difference was police generally don’t have guns in the UK. Has this changed?

      • 520@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        No. There are of course some armed units, but they don’t do regular patrol work with their guns.

        Armed units were involved here because the car Kaba was in was linked to a shooting the day before. Any involvement of firearms will invoke an armed response from police, however that does not mean they can simply shoot on sight and say they felt their life was threatened.

      • Skua@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        It hasn’t changed. The proportion of police carrying firearms in England and Wales (Scotland and Northern Ireland operate separately, so E&W is the biggest UK data source) has held steady at about 5%. There are typically fewer than 10 total incidents in which the police actually fire a gun each year. Of course, it only takes one to result in a story like this one.

  • Syldon@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    Needs more information, which obviously will come out after the trial.