Recently, AES posted:

"Gary Drescher" wrote:

"AES" wrote in message
...
To quote someone I overhead yesterday: "If there's a 2% chance,
based on all information known at the time, that the guy is a
suicide bomber, and 50 people in the subway car -- well, the choice
is unfortunate, but very clear."

I see several problems with this proposal.
[...]

We're faced, however, with a new and very difficult situation in the
suicide bomber phenomena. The fact that it's primarily based in,
caused by, and supported by religious fanaticism (not primarily
anything we do) makes it all the more difficult to cope with.

Simply quoting Ben Franklin's "better that 100 guilty escape
punishment than 1 innocent be convicted" -- an aphorism that validly
applies to a very different situation or set of circumstances -- and
concluding from this, as some apparently do, that the bottom line is
clear: the police should never shoot in any suicide bombing
situation, is not a conclusion I find acceptable.

The problems that Gary presented should make it quite clear that the
likelihood is that police shooting in this situation will not be
effective. In the real world example, someone completely unrelated to
suicide bombings was summarily executed, and the reasons could be
attributable to some of these very problems.

To take another view, the fact is that if someone is determined to perform
random acts of violence and murder, there is no way to stop them, even in
a society where personal freedoms are at a minimum. So, the notion that
police should open fire whenever they profile someone is not a situation I
find acceptable.

Neil