Apathetic Australians?

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

Recently, a 15 year old boy was shot dead by police in Athens leading to massive riots which have been going on for a week now.

Recently, a 15 year old boy was shot dead by police in Australia leading to a discussion about tazers...and no riots.

Does that mean Australians care less about their children than Greeks do?

Personally I was shocked to learn that police have no mandate to shoot to disable, only to shoot for the body/torso. I assume this is because they're not given enough training on how to aim their weapons well.

Perhaps more training with a lethal weapon might be in order...along with tazers.

btw, the boy in Australia did not have a gun, only a couple of knives.

It was a different scenario. I haven't really looked into it but it seems that it is ILLEGAL for a cop in Greece to go on a college campus and the 15 year old boy was shot on a college campus. The Australian scenario was a lot different.

It would be like saying that since the shooting of Bobby Kennedy in the United States didn't start another WWI, that Franz Ferdinand was more important.


Plus, Greek is known for its anarchist riots. I haven't heard any in Australia.

[ZenGum]

The Greek riots were an expression of deep political anger; the police shooting was just the spark that ignitied it. Australia lacks that anger, so the spark did not ignite.

The Victorian Police (whose badge consists of an inverted pentacle and the motto "uphold the right", btw) have different gun-handling rules to most Australian states. 10 or 15 years ago two officers were shot and killed in a deliberate trap, and the police got the FBI to assess their procedures, and the Victorian police adopted the shoot-to-kill procedure, i.e. if you need to start shooting, continue shooting until the situation has been resolved.
In South Australia they use minimal shots. Recently a chap aimed a (replica) gun at police and one of the four officers present fired one shot (which was fatal). There was a case a few years ago when the specialist snipers did actually shoot the gun out of someone's hand with a single shot.
That kid was a perfect case for a taser.