No, it's not a good point, & the officer's response if thoroughly comprehensible. The fact that reporters & other smart/informed observers are this confused by this account is a big reason why the discourse around policing is so messed up. https://twitter.com/JakeWojtowicz/status/1370034518439133190

The main point at issue is the knife: people think a knife is somehow magically non-lethal or less-lethal, & that a knife wielder who says to a cop "I'm going to kill you for Jesus" (as this guy did) is not a threat, especially if the cop is armed. This is all nonsense, tho.

Here are some links for understanding how cops are trained to see knife-wielders & to take that threat as seriously as a gun threat:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill https://www.lawofficer.com/21footrule/ 

I don't want to get into debating the 21-foot rule. It is overemphasized, & the policing obsession with it is a USA-centric problem. But I do want to make 1 point: if you've ever done the Tueller drill (I have), you will fear the knife.

So, rightly or wrongly, cops are programmed to fear the knife via this drill. And the knife is scary. Educate yourself. http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/knifelies.html 

The Dog Brothers dedicate most of a DVD to trying to defend against that one attack -- the jail yard rush -- shown in the previous tweet. https://dogbrothers.com/die-less-often-promo/

So if you read that news story with the mindset that the perp is mentally unstable, carrying a deadly weapon that can absolutely kill the cop at close range, & is advancing on the cop w/ a clear verbal threat, you realize the cop was trying to de-escalate safely.

People are on about de-escalation -- he tried that! This was a suicide by cop. Sending a social worker after that perp would've likely resulted in a dead or severely injured social worker. Again, the knife is a very deadly weapon!

Anyway, we're never going to get anywhere with this because people have completely uninformed, Hollywood ideas of what it's like to be approached in a hostile manner w/ an edged weapon, & what is dangerous & what isn't, & what de-escalation looks like.

This isn't a thread about how policing is not broken -- it is horribly broken. Rather, it's a thread about how people who tweet like the OT will never be part of fixing it, because you can't fix something you're tragically misinformed about every aspect of.

I honestly wish people of good will who honestly care about social justice issues would spend time doing police training, at the very least to understand how cops think & are socialized so they can troubleshoot & offer alternatives.

But I also want them to do that because when you're operating in the realm of violence, it has its own rules. It's its own universe w/ its own laws. You can't capably reason about it & talk about it w/out being socialized into it via some training & experience. It's too alien.