The death penalty should be reinstated for police killers?

[Bazzlad]

But you're giving those professions preferential treatment again.

That's the point. Their jobs DESERVE preferential treatment.

Do you believe an adult who attacks a child deserves the standard sentence, whatever that may be?

[TiG]

That's the point. Their jobs DESERVE preferential treatment.

Do you believe an adult who attacks a child deserves the standard sentence, whatever that may be?

Rubbish, a police officer being murdered is no different to anyone else being murdered. The punishment for the crime of murder is how it should be sentenced. Not who the crime was committed against.

You can kill a normal person and get life imprisionment, kill a cop you get executed. No thank you, its an appalling idea.

TiG

[ajbrun]

I suppose I have 2 main points to my argument:

1. Everyone knows the risks any job brings with it, just as everyone knows of the risks of living in a rough area. If you don't like the risks, then that job isn't for you. Fire-fighters undertake their job with full knowledge that any fire that kills them isn't going to have to go through the court system.

2. I believe everyone should be treated equally no matter what their race, gender or profession is. Again, if the risks aren't for you, then you shouldn't take the job, in a similar way that if the risks of living in a rough area are too high, then you shouldn't live there.

I think your analogy of attacking children isn't really appropriate as there is no choice about being a child. You can't just decide that the risks of being a child are too high, and then to simply stop being a child. Everyone is a child at some point, so in fact everyone is being treated equally in that scenario.

[Nick]

Do you believe an adult who attacks a child deserves the standard sentence, whatever that may be?

Yep, provided the standard sentence was appropriately long enough.

And the same sentence should be served on a child if they attacked an adult and caused the same amount of injury.

And let's do away with this 'age' thing too. If you murder someone when you're twelve you get treated like an adult regardless. There's no way you can tell me that at twelve years old you don't know right from wrong or have a concept of what death is, so you're going away for the rest of your life you sick son of a bitch.

That's what should have happened to the kids who tortured and murdered Jamie Bulger... lock the little sods up for the rest of their natural lives.

I'm sick to the back teeth of kids hiding behind the law that actually protects them from serious prosecution.

Throw the buggers into Borstal, give them a bath twice a week with carbolic soap, wire wool and a high pressure hose and we'll soon see how quickly they reform.

We're too bloody soft on all serious criminals. I mean, what the bloody hell are we allowing to happen when they can write to the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the legal system for keeping them locked up for 23 hours a day?

I'm sorry Mr Crim, but did you allow the same to the manager of the jewellery shop when you shoved a shotgun in his face? Was the woman with the pram allowed to complain to you about her human rights when you bowled her over in the street as you legged it? How about the couple you mowed down on the crossing in your car as you sped from the robbery. did either of them get to write any letters?

Nope, in my opinion if you show no respect for human life, no shred of humanity then you get what you deserve... a life spent a 6'x6' room with three other blokes and nothing but a communal bucket to use as a bog.

What's that, you've reformed? Tough. Funny how suddenly you can see the error of your ways when faced with 45 years of peeing in a bucket.

[Bazzlad]

Rubbish, a police officer being murdered is no different to anyone else being murdered. The punishment for the crime of murder is how it should be sentenced. Not who the crime was committed against.

You can kill a normal person and get life imprisionment, kill a cop you get executed. No thank you, its an appalling idea.

TiG

My suggestion was nothing like that, mine (if you read back) was add another 1/2 on to the sentence if your crime is against an on duty Police/Fire/Hospital worker.

As stated, if standard sentences were sufficient in the first place this wouldn't even be debatable. But they're not.

I can't understand the outcry against extra protection for people who risk themselves to help us. Yes, they don't HAVE to do it, but it's a pretty bloody thankless task as is (as proved by this forum) and one that is not, in my opinion properly enumerated anyway.

[Nick]

Bazz, I don't think anyone is questioning whether the Police are valued or if we should be grateful, they're arguing that a police officer's life shouldn't be held as being any more valuable than anyone elses' life and sentences for murdering a copper should be the same as if it was just joe public that was the victim.

Or, to put it another way, the sentence for killing Joe Public should be the same sentence for killing a policeman.

Either way, both should be life... with the only hope of getting out being in a hearse.

[Bazzlad]

I agree, but in a world where murder = 7 - 15 years a bigger deterrent is needed to protect those who protect us.
In an ideal world, pre-meditated murder would mean life, regardless of who did it and who to.

[JPreston]

I'm right no matter what because I say I am and I know everything

"End Of"

HOW DARE YOU

Am I bovvered? "That which is asserted without reason should be dismissed without reason". And the fact remains that you are no kind of christian at all if you don't know about forgiveness and "love thy enemy" and "turn the other cheek" and "vengeance is [god's]" and all that rubbish. What Would Jesus Do? One cannot claim to be both christian and pro-death penalty without revealing oneself to be, well, retarded.

Although I'm glad you so proudly accept that your particular bizarre version of christianity is subscribed to only by you, in the all the world. I'm the same . No-one else believes that I am the messiah but I really am, you know. AND MY NAILBOMBS WILL SHOW THOSE INFIDELS THAT I AM

I'm saying anyone who risks their lives on a constant basis for idiots like you deserve better protection from the state.

Well, anyone other than those Community Support Officers who are so stupid that they actually do the same job on a voluntary basis. Don't they even know about money? They suck! They don't deserve any respect at all, let alone protection under law!

you're too stupid to realise what I meant when I wrote "Same for knives"

Well, what did you mean? Did you have a particular type of person in mind; are they poor? Less than 5 A-C's at GCSE? Black?

I'll pretend along with you that you actually do have some kind of 'tory-sense' that tingles (like Spiderman's, not like when you used to climb the rope in gym class) whenever someone that isn't Decent People Like Us owns (and presumably, carries in public) a knife that they absolutely intend to use to murder someone with (as opposed to just fit carpets with), and that you could (somehow) enshrine this concept in law, Minority Report style. Why do you mandate only 10 years in prison , as opposed to 25? Is it because stabbing someone to death is much less serious a crime than shooting someone to death? What about stabbing a policeman compared to shooting a supermarket cashier? Speaking of which idiocy brings me on to:

IIRC - In the states, Police Dogs have the same legal protection as officers - ie you kill one, you'll be on trial for murder.

They got it right.

Can I be the only person to notice that particular piece of buffoonery? Firstly, I'm certain you are completely deluded. Even I would give our 'friends' in deepest red-state dumb####istan more credit than to legislate something so patently hilarious.

But let's go along with you for a minute. Under "bazzlad's shariah law", killing a (police) dog is a more serious offence than, say, beating a child to death. But, if that child's twin brother grows up to be a traffic warden, then as long as he is on duty at the time killing him becomes as serious a crime as killing said doggy. That is, provided that the local authority has not contracted out its Parking Services dept, because if it has then the traffic warden was an employee of the private sector and so enjoys no more legal protection than his dead kid brother, and markedly less than the dog.

And what principle is this gem of legislation supposed to reflect? That the dog was very brave, to have volunteered for police duty in that way? To knowingly lay his doggy life on the line to protect ungrateful misanthropes like me? Are you clinically insane?!

[Bazzlad]

Am I bovvered? "That which is asserted without reason should be dismissed without reason". And the fact remains that you are no kind of christian at all if you don't know about forgiveness and "love thy enemy" and "turn the other cheek" and "vengeance is [god's]" and all that rubbish. What Would Jesus Do? One cannot claim to be both christian and pro-death penalty without revealing oneself to be, well, retarded.

I am a Christian and I am Pro-Death Penalty. And I'm not alone.

To be sure, there is still plenty of support among conservative Christians for the death penalty. Leaders like Jerry Falwell, Charles Colson, and Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, say it is biblically acceptable, and the McVeigh affair has only convinced some of the necessity for capital punishment.

The Old Testament also teaches that God instituted capital punishment in the Jewish law code. In fact, the principle of capital punishment even precedes the Old Testament law code. According to Genesis 9:6, capital punishment is based upon a belief in the sanctity of life. It says, "Whoever sheds man's blood by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God, He made man."

The Mosaic Law set forth numerous offenses that were punishable by death. The first was murder. In Exodus 21, God commanded capital punishment for murderers. Premeditated murder (or what the Old Testament described as "lying in wait") was punishable by death.

Even so, some Christians argue that in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus seems to be arguing against capital punishment. But is He?

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is not arguing against the principle of a life for a life. Rather He is speaking to the issue of our personal desire for vengeance. He is not denying the power and responsibility of the government. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is speaking to individual Christians. He is telling Christians that they should not try to replace the power of the government. Jesus does not deny the power and authority of government, but rather He calls individual Christians to love their enemies and turn the other cheek.

Some have said that Jesus set aside capital punishment in John 8 when He did not call for the woman caught in adultery to be stoned. But remember the context. The Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus between the Roman law and the Mosaic law. If He said that they should stone her, He would break the Roman law. If He refused to allow them to stone her, He would break the Mosaic law (Lev. 20:10; Deut. 22:22). Jesus' answer avoided the conflict: He said that he who was without sin should cast the first stone. Since He did teach that a stone be thrown (John 8:7), this is not an abolition of the death penalty.

In other places in the New Testament we see the principle of capital punishment being reinforced. Romans 13:1-7, for example, teaches that human government is ordained by God and that the civil magistrate is a minister of God. We are to obey government for we are taught that government does not bear the sword in vain. The fact that the Apostle Paul used the image of the sword further supports the idea that capital punishment was to be used by government in the New Testament age as well. Rather than abolish the idea of the death penalty, Paul uses the emblem of the Roman sword to reinforce the idea of capital punishment. The New Testament did not abolish the death penalty; it reinforced the principle of capital punishment.

Although I'm glad you so proudly accept that your particular bizarre version of christianity is subscribed to only by you, in the all the world. I'm the same ."

Well. You must feel stupid with such a daft statement. Lots and lots of Christians are pro-death penalty. Who'd have thought, how crazy am I? Actually reading the Bible and deciding what it means myself. Madness.

Well, anyone other than those Community Support Officers who are so stupid that they actually do the same job on a voluntary basis. Don't they even know about money? They suck! They don't deserve any respect at all, let alone protection under law!

What are you talking about? You really are the master of taking quotes out of context to further a point. The ONLY legal Form of Police who do it voluntarily are Specials, who when on duty have the same rights and powers as standard Police. Community Support Officers are not only paid, but paid well:

Starting salaries for PCSOs are around £16,000 a year.
With experience, PCSOs can earn between £16,000 and £19,000 a year plus a shift allowance.

So it's not so voluntary is it? Besides, as I stated (and you happily ignored) I would never have hired any of them, and spent the money on half the amount of ACTUAL Police - you know, the ones who arrest people, not give directions and fine you for littering.

I'll pretend along with you that you actually do have some kind of 'tory-sense' that tingles (like Spiderman's, not like when you used to climb the rope in gym class) whenever someone that isn't Decent People Like Us owns (and presumably, carries in public) a knife that they absolutely intend to use to murder someone with (as opposed to just fit carpets with), and that you could (somehow) enshrine this concept in law, Minority Report style. Why do you mandate only 10 years in prison , as opposed to 25? Is it because stabbing someone to death is much less serious a crime than shooting someone to death? What about stabbing a policeman compared to shooting a supermarket cashier? Speaking of which idiocy brings me on to:

You're not very smart at all, are you? Did you know it's legal to walk down the high street carrying a Golf Club? But it isn't. It's only legal if you're carrying Golf balls at the same time. If you walk down the high street with a Golf Club, without justification you can be arrested for carrying an offensive weapon. It would work the same for knives. If the Police happened to stop say a chef, and he had his cookery equipment in the back of the car, they wouldn't do anything. However, if they pull over someone for say dangerous driving, and notice he has a machete in his car, that'd be a 10 year MINIMUM. Murder would be the same scale as it is now, provided it doesn't go lower than the minimum. It's not too hard to figure out now, is it?

Can I be the only person to notice that particular piece of buffoonery? Firstly, I'm certain you are completely deluded.

Yes crazy thinking here - Harsh minimum sentences for gun and knife crime, extra protection for Police/NHS and Fire workers and for any sentence longer than 3 life sentences that can be PROVEN WITHOUT DOUBT the death penalty, by injection.


Now I see the error of my ways. What was I thinking. Craziness. Pure Right wing, skin headed, NF craziness. It's insanity.


Oh here it comes - the famous JPreston picking apart a logical idea with stupidity. Yay. Strap yourself in, it's going to be a fun ride!

But let's go along with you for a minute. Under "bazzlad's shariah law", killing a (police) dog is a more serious offence than, say, beating a child to death.

Ignoring the blatant attempt to rile me, did you not read the post earlier where I questioned people's views on ageism. If you had you may (probably not, because you're not the brightest of energy saving bulbs) have realised that I believe crimes against a child should be punished very harshly. It's not to hard to realise the sentence would match the severity of the crime. However, the person who killed the Police Dog (who is on duty - let's get that right) would also be punished harshly.

But, if that child's twin brother grows up to be a traffic warden, then as long as he is on duty at the time killing him becomes as serious a crime as killing said doggy.

Yes because in the fantasy world needed for your argument to try and ridicule my perfectly logical ideas Traffic Wardens are a part of the Police/NHS or Fire service. Good job brainiac!

That is, provided that the local authority has not contracted out its Parking Services dept, because if it has then the traffic warden was an employee of the private sector and so enjoys no more legal protection than his dead kid brother, and markedly less than the dog.

Which completely invalidates this ridiculous statement.

And what principle is this gem of legislation supposed to reflect? That the dog was very brave, to have volunteered for police duty in that way? To knowingly lay his doggy life on the line to protect ungrateful misanthropes like me? Are you clinically insane?!

And this one. Your insulting, ridiculing post appears to have fallen flat there.
Chin up.


And to remind any readers, what crazy ideas provoked this insulting post from the self proclaimed, nail bombing messiah of Hexus?


Harsh minimum sentences for gun and knife crime, extra protection for Police/NHS and Fire workers and for any sentence longer than 3 life sentences that can be PROVEN WITHOUT DOUBT the death penalty, by injection.

[Sinizter]

This thread has completely deteriorated to the equivalent of a shouting match.

[Lucio]

I'm late to the party, but hey what the hell I'm sure there's some cheesy nibbles at the back still!

As someone who happens to know a murderer, I have to agree that life should really mean life but at the same time, it shouldn't mean being completely removed from society in the way our current prison system does.

I think that the system really needs to start getting some use out of prisoners, whether it's getting them to do a tonne of menial labour or grinding them into soylent green, there should be a nett benefit to society in their punishment. The biggest problem with the death penalty, is that it's very very negative. There can never be a gain to be made from killing another person, even in the name of justice, the very worst examples of humanity should still serve a purpose.

The hardest part of course, is trying to figure out what that purpose should be, my initial instinct was "stage 1 medical trials"....

[redlight]

Slightly different from you Lucio but sentiments much the same.
I have a relation who was convicted of murder.
While no excuse in the same circumstances it would have been easy for me to do exactly the same thing.
He has served his time(15 years) and is out on licence for the rest of his life.
This means if he is caught doing anything that breaches the licence he will have his licence revoked and that breach could be as little as being arrested for being drunk.
So even though he is out there are many restrictions placed on his freedom,as there should be.
But a free man he is not and will never be.
He is an intelligent man and in full time employment.
The restrictions placed on him make changing jobs and moving around difficult but he accepts these as part of his punishment and is grateful for being a second chance to prove he can be a useful member of society.
Before anybody starts flaming about the other person being dead and had no chance well maybe they had every chance and did not take them but that is still no excuse for murder.
My relation was a young man when backed into a corner and a moment of extreme rage committed the crime.
If I could tell you the exact circumstances I would but for obvious reasons I cant.
Should he have been executed,no way. If a person is backed into a corner and nowhere to turn and see no other way of getting out of the situation why should he die for being put in that situation.
Maybe the hang em high brigade should look inwards(dig deep) a bit more and think about circumstances where they may have no alternative and would they deserve to be executed.
Have a think bazzlad would you protect your own and do you deserve to die for giving that protection?

[Bazzlad]

S
If I could tell you the exact circumstances I would but for obvious reasons I cant.
Should he have been executed,no way. If a person is backed into a corner and nowhere to turn and see no other way of getting out of the situation why should he die for being put in that situation.
Maybe the hang em high brigade should look inwards(dig deep) a bit more and think about circumstances where they may have no alternative and would they deserve to be executed.
Have a think bazzlad would you protect your own and do you deserve to die for giving that protection?

With all due respect Redlight, if you'd read my first post you would have noted:

I'd also differentiate between a crime of passion and pre-meditated murder.

I'm pretty sure that'd cover what you're talking about, would it not?

Not only that I also said (repeatedly) that the death penalty would apply to anyone given 3 life sentences (in this case the person you know wouldn't have had) and if it could be proven 100%.

[Saracen]

Rubbish, a police officer being murdered is no different to anyone else being murdered. The punishment for the crime of murder is how it should be sentenced. Not who the crime was committed against.

I don't agree. If a police officer is murdered because they're a police officer, then the offence is all about who, or rather, what the victim is. For instance, those two women police officers shot in Bradford (one dead, one survived) were shot purely because they were police officers. The fact that they were police was inherent in the offence, and in the reason for the offence. That's what makes it different. If Sharon Beshenivsky had not been an officer attending an alarm, she wouldn't have been shot. If she hadn't been a police officer, she wouldn't have been in that area anyway, and certainly wouldn't have been doing her duty, which is to protect the rest of us and fight against crime. She died because she was a police officer.

It has long been the case that assaulting a police officer in the execution of their duty is a separate offence from common assault. Ironically, statistics given in Parliament over the last couple of years show that the average sentence for assaulting a police officer is actually lower than that for common assault against a non-officer. But note, that offence isn't just assaulting a police officer, but "in the execution of their duty". It's that latter part that separates a police officer from the rest of us. If a random individual that just happens to be a police officer is assaulted, or murdered, then it ought to be exactly the same as for anyone else. If, however, they're doing their duty as a police officer, then they deserve our respect for that and whatever little added protection they may gain from people knowing that if you assault, let alone kill, a police officer, you'll get the proverbial book thrown at you.


As for using the death penalty, that's harder. There are arguments for, and against, and one of the arguments against is that if someone kills a police officer, is the fact that they know that means they'll be executed going to mean they consider they've nothing to lose, so will wantonly kill anyone who gets in their way?

Personally, I have no problem with the death penalty in principle. But I think it needs to be reserved for very special cases, and needs to be surrounded by a series of protections, both in terms of the level of evidence and proof needed, and the circumstances and type of crime it would be used for. I am not in favour of it being mandatory for any category of crime, because inevitably, sooner or later, a set of circumstances will crop up that had not been envisaged and for which it would be wholly inappropriate.

At the moment, you don't actually need to have even intended to kill to end up convicted of murder, if the person dies as a result of your actions, but without that specific intent. If that someone happens to be a police officer, I can see plenty of possibilities where a custodial sentence, perhaps even a lengthy one, would be appropriate, but the death penalty would not.

If the DP were ever to be brought back in the UK, and at least in the foreseeable future, that's extremely unlikely, perhaps what we need is a trial (part 1) to establish guilt of murder, and in the relevant cases, a trial (part 2) to see if the circumstances for the DP have been met.

[TiG]

Saracen, I appreciate that you are doing a duty and obviously police do require respect for that, however a harsher penalty for killing a police officer isn't protection for the officer. Its retrospective punishment, it won't in 99% of the cases result in the criminal thinking oh wait i won't shoot a police officer because i might go to jail. Its the situation of i'm trying to get away, i'm screwed anyway i don't care.

Its not pre-mediated in the sense of i'm going out to murder a police officer, like some murders might be, and hence i don't see why this offence should exist. You can't just say because you murder a police officer its death sentence.

Surely the assaulting a police officer can occur when trying to "resist" arrest, when someone is drunk etc and hasn't had the police communicate correctly. Hence the lower sentencing in the sense that while they might be guilty there might be mitigating circumstances.

TiG

[Bazzlad]

Saracen, I appreciate that you are doing a duty and obviously police do require respect for that, however a harsher penalty for killing a police officer isn't protection for the officer. Its retrospective punishment, it won't in 99% of the cases result in the criminal thinking oh wait i won't shoot a police officer because i might go to jail. Its the situation of i'm trying to get away, i'm screwed anyway i don't care.

I disagree Tig, in fact, I think it could have an opposite effect, whereas a cornered criminal with a gun may consider blasting his way through a crowd of people, if the Police have arrived, he may well think, "Well it's over now" and give up, knowing that killing an Officer on duty means his 5 years for armed robbery or what ever it is, would turn into 1 1/2 life sentences.

Who knows what goes through a criminal's mind anyway>?