Police killed a person
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Original Question
A police officer killed a man who was trying to get something from his (victim) bag despite repeated warning. The police intended to just arrest the victim but instead the latter was killed. The victim had no gun in the bag but this fact was only found out later.
John: The police should not have gunned down the victim because he is not sure as to what the guy was trying to get from the bag.
Michael: You don’t understand because you are not in the situation of the police.
is there any fallacy?
Answers
4Even this trivial example can reveal the limits of logic alone. "Intention" is not evidence but neither is the later analysis of the swag.
Looks like a historian's fallacy. The historian's fallacy is an informal fallacy that occurs when one assumes that decision makers of the past viewed events from the same perspective and having the same information as those subsequently analyzing the decision. In the case of John, John views the policeman's action as immortal. Yet, John is making this judgment with information that was not available to the policeman relative to the time and circumstances he was faced with when he had to make his decision (killing the man with the bag)...
Sound's like John is displaying what is known as the hindsight bias. Otherwise, I see no fallacy.
Michael is using Ad Hominem (Circumstantial). Just because you're not in the situation of the police doesn't mean the argument can be dismissed. It will limit the information John has available and could mean he draws a false conclusion, but it doesn't rule out him being right either - the police do abuse their powers sometimes.
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