That would be sighted
That would also be a mistake. Cops with pistols are notoriously inaccurate. Even if they did get solid leg shots, unless they hit bone, he’s still gonna get to somebody. Not to mention the femoral artery, which if a bullet rips open will bleed him out in no time. Center of mass.
Think of it as evolution in action.
I’m not suggesting they did anything wrong, I’m just wondering if it could have gone down differently. Then again, if OtakuLoki is right that the cops wouldn’t have had their weapons drawn, then they were lucky they were able to shoot at all.
Ask for backup with riot gear, backup with tasers, backup with bean bag shotguns, backup with wooden bullets, sniper. Pretty much anything with non-lethal qualities. Heck, a standard 12 guage police shotgun with birdshot would be an excellent choice. Again, it’s rare to get an opportunity to stage a functional defense. The longer a hostage situation drags on, the greater the options.
On a radio show yesterday discussing this very incident, a former police commissioner of Baltimore stated that a young, healthy man with two sharp blades charging you means that you (the cop) aren’t going home again unless the perpetrator goes down. Unfortunately, they did not have the time to shoot to stop in this instance.
They had 35 minutes. How much time do they need? The implication is that they stood there with their guns in their holster for a half hour while a 5th policeman tried to talk the assailant into surrender. If that’s the case then they were hosed from the start. If they were there as backup to the negotiator then they should have had their guns drawn with trigger finger forward ready to shoot.
I dislike speculating as if I’m blaming the police because the article is a really poor source of information from which to comment on.
Sniper=deadly force
wooden bullets=just stupid. Wood kills just as dead.
Birdshot=deadly at close range
The problem I see is that for their “sighting” to be any good, they’d have to shoot before the boy did anything, since once he began moving, their aim would be off again. As far as I know, unprovoked shootings aren’t police policy.
I can top that! A cop in Denver shot a old bedridden guy for reaching for a pop can.
Sorry, totally inappropriate.
It’s surprising how quickly someone with a knife (or scissors) can cross a significant distance and become deadly. See Mossad Ayoob, “In the Gravest Extreme” I think.
Charge a bunch of trigger-happy cops with a large pointy thing? Yeah, definitely bad.
And no one is going to call bullshit on this ignorant bit of jock-bashing? Jesus Christ, suppose the kid was black. Then you’d want to suggest he was loaded up on crack. If he was Arab it clearly must have been part of a jihad. You’re still a fucking bigot when you do that, regardless if your prejudice doesn’t happen to be based on skin color, religion or orientation.
That’s related to the question I was asking before. I’ll grant that the police really couldn’t have done anything else in the Fisher case, even though it sucks to see someone who wants to commit suicide-by-cop get his wish. But if it’s a given that the police will shoot someone who is threatening them, how do we deal with it when the police are wrong about the threat? Whether it’s Amadou Diallo or This much-debated case where a teen was shot outside an IHOP, these are all split-second decisions with huge consequences. Since the police are responding in a prescribed manner, I feel like it almost gets shrugged off.
This isn’t new at all, I watched out community college police academy drilling on this type of scenario with rubber knives and dummy guns. Instructors were regularly scoring solid hits on cadets before they could have a gun in firing position starting at 20 feet. This was 1994 and was supposedly common knowledge for quite some time.
I hear you.
I was thinking about the Diallo shooting earlier, myself.
I can only think that more shoot range, “stress streets,” etc type training needs to be done so officers can more accurately judge real threats from pissed off persons who are none-the-less obeying. But that’s expensive. Not just for setting up the training, but making sure that the officers have the time to use those facilities. Usually done on the clock. And no amount of training is going to prevent things like the kid who forgets to put the barrel blocker in his marker, and starts waving it around the IHOP, and a cop jumps to a reasonable, but wrong, conclusion. Nor can training prevent mistaken judgements from every happening.
And while I don’t want to give cops a bye when they make mistakes, it’s a difficult line to draw. Last summer, locally, we’d had a case where a good kid hanging out at a local drug house (That’s the father’s description, not mine, really.) was present during a drug raid. One of the officers, carrying a single-action shotgun tripped or was startled (I can’t remember which) and discharged his weapon into this kid at point blank range.
No one thought that the shooting was justified by the actions of the kid (Nor anyone else in the house.) but there were only a few people who were pressing for criminal charges, too. But, somehow, administrative leave, or leave of absence, just doesn’t seem fully appropriate, either.
As long as the police are going to be allowed to carry lethal means to stop people, there will be accidental, and senseless deaths. Society, and the police, can do all they want to minimize those, but they won’t be eliminated. And as long as the police do carry lethal force, I think that there’s an obligation to back them up when they use such force - provided that the situation was one where force could have been seen to be appropriate. To get back to the Diallo shooting, it’s a tragedy, and the cops involved needed more than a little marksmanship trainking and firing training. After the first shots were fired, the sound of shots were what the cops were responding to, I believe. Hence the phenomenal hail of bullets sent towards Diallo. But when dealing with a man who was responding in a belligerant, and incomprehensible manner, who suddenly reaches for something from his back pocket - I can see where a reasonable person would think that it was a weapon being drawn.
With respect to tazers, there’s a large number of people who hate the idea of them being used. While they’re advertised as non-lethal force, most people don’t recognize that it’s a description based on averages, not guarantees. Some people will be killed by tazer use. Or rubber bullets, or beanbag shotgun rounds. And when the police start using tazers as an intermediary step between trying to wrestle a suspect, and shooting them with the gun - people get really up in arms - because most people seem to think of tazers as a gun alternative. Which isn’t a wrong way to think of them - but, then they shouldn’t be labelled non-lethal force. Less lethal, perhaps. But if you’re going to label them non-lethal, expect them to be used in corner cases.
This response is completely out of line for IMHO. Please remember what forum you are posting in.
Victoria Snelgrove, killed during the partying/riot in Kenmore Square when the Red Sox beat the Yankees in the ALCS in 1974. Police were using a gun which shoots pellets which burst on impact and release pepper fog. She was hit in the eye and died a few hours later. Some details here. IIRC, the officer who actually fired the pepper gun had not been trained in its use and wound up taking early retirement.
I am not a cop. I am just an ordinary person who has taken a couple of defensive handgun and combat handgun courses. I will assume (because I believe it to be a safe assumption) that cops would be taught the exact same stuff that I was. Here’s what my instructors have had to say.
You aim at the center of mass, period. There are several reasons for this. Legs and arms are small targets that are not in the least bit easy to hit at distances of 20 feet in a stressful situation. Aim small, miss small.
Your goal when using your handgun is to stop the threat. Shooting someone in the arm or the leg has far less chance of stopping the threat to yourself than shooting them in the center of mass does. A person can still charge you with a bullet wound to the leg, and can still shoot or stab you with a bullet wound to the arm. You shoot to stop, and your best chance of this comes from aiming at the center of mass.
Drawing your handgun is the use of lethal force. There are a select few circumstances in which you may lawfully use lethal force (this as explained to us also includes police officers). In Pennsylvania, lethal force may be used if you have reasonable fear for the life of yourself or another person. If you draw your handgun and attempt to use it in a non-lethal manner (shooting an arm or leg deliberately, firing warning shots, etc) you are demonstrating clearly that you believed the situation did not merit the use of lethal force, and you never should’ve even drawn your handgun.
In a stressful situation, your aim will not be anywhere near as good as it is on the range, in controlled conditions, when you are not in fear for your life. If an attacker’s chest is 18" wide and you fire 10 times at him at 20 feet, you might hit him a couple of times. Yes, I practice often. I’m pretty damn good on the range. I have absolutely no reason to believe that I could definitely put all 10 in the center of mass at 20 feet if my life was really on the line, but that’s where I would be aiming. I might miss the chest and hit an arm.
Shooting at an arm, leg or hand is Hollywood bullshit. In real life, if someone is a threat to your life or the life of another person, you draw your handgun, aim for the center of mass, and pull the trigger. In Pennsylvania (according to the deputy sheriff of my county), you should keep pulling the trigger until 1) the attacker is down and not attempting to get up/attack you (threat neutralized) or 2) the handgun is empty.
Any cops who were trained differently, feel free to correct.
I am glad you wrote this because you put this much more succinctly than I would have in the post I was about to write. There is no way a cop should be pulling his gun on someone if he doesn’t intend to use it. If you have enough time to fruit around with trying to shoot the guy in the arm or the leg, you shouldn’t be shooting at all. Conversely, if you are truly in danger the only smart thing is to stop the guy from getting to you, and that means aiming for the center mass as already stated.
It almost seems that some of the people who advocate the ‘shoot’em in the leg option’ wouldn’t even mind if the cop shot the suspect BEFORE he charged… as long as it was just in the leg. That kind of thinking takes us to bad places.
This is exactly true, and why I stated that drawing your handgun is the use of lethal force.
That’s how it was explained to me by the Deputy Sheriff of the county in which I live when I obtained my Pennsylvania License to Conceal Firearms.
You do not even pull your weapon out of the holster unless you have reasonable fear for your life, or the life of another person.
catsix said:
In Florida, pointing a gun at anyone in cases where deadly force is not required carries an automatic three-year sentence with no possibility of parole. As I understand it, this applies to citizens, even/especially licensed citizens, and not to police officers.
If that is the intent.
Wooden bullets have less impact than lead or jacketed bullets.
bird shot directed at feet/legs versus a chest shot with a pistol? Better chance of hitting a target with a shotgun and birdshot is significantly less potent than a 9mm.
Suggestions were asked for, and given within a framework of what could conceivably have been done by a trained police officer. So far all I’ve heard is excuses as to why it’s impossible.