There was a police shooting in Calgary AB a few days ago, where AFAIK the cop shot a knife-wielding bad guy in the leg (sorry can’t find a news link). On the phone just now with a friend I was wondering why the bad guy got hit in the leg when my friend said that they are trained to shoot for extremities so they don’t kill the person.
I immediately called BS as that goes exactly opposite to everything I’ve ever heard. I even checked Badge’s thread and sure enough came up with this quote:
The answer is no, we don’t do anything to avoid killing the person. We shoot for the center of the largest mass visible. If the person is standing in front of me, that’s the center of his chest (if he’s peeking around a corner, it will be his head). It’s a nice idea to shoot him in the leg or shoot the gun out of his hand, but it just doesn’t work in real life… The goal is NOT to kill the person. Our goal is to stop him from doing whatever he is doing. However, since we shoot for the center of mass, it is very likely that the person will be killed… Why do we shoot for center of mass? Because numerous studies have shown that fine motor skills disappear when under extreme stress (such as a shoot/don’t shoot situation). A person under such conditions is basically a shitty shot, no matter how good he is when he’s at the range. We are trained to shoot for the large mass because we have the best chance of hitting and stopping the suspect… If you read reports of officer-involved shootings, you will see that the hit ratio is usually terrible.
All this info however comes from American officers… so there may be a remote possibility of certain Canadian cops not being trained the same way. I really doubt it, but could my friend possibly be right in this case (or shall I start the gloating now :D)?
Australian police are trained to aim for the centre of the largest mass. Cite: my friend who is an Australian policeman.
The thing to remember, I guess, is that if you have got to the point of shooting someone then you have got to the point of killing them. If you don’t intend to kill someone or don’t want the risk of killing someone, then you should not have a gun pointed at them. So once a policeman has decide to fire upon a target, then he/she has chosen to (possibly) kill them. Once this is understood, you can see that aiming for the leg is a pointless exercise.
In the US, cops, and people who’s homes are being invaded are advised to do the same. Use whatever force is necessary to defend yourself. This means that if your attacker is coming at you with a plastic spoon, you are using too much force if you shoot him in the face with a shotgun. Likewise, a guy with a knife getting shot by a .357 is not going to be a considered self defense case. IANAL, but you only want to deter the person from hurting you, not kill them for thinking about it. If a heavily armed person forcibly enters your house, you are entitled to protect yourself, your family, and your posessions. Do so with discretion. Many a law enforcement officer has told me, “dead men tell no tales”, hence maiming people is bad. Bottom line is, if you have to end somebody’s life, be prepared to prove that you ABSOLUTELY HAD TO DO IT. Otherwise, have fun in prison.
I guess I skipped the OP, yes “center of mass” is taught to cops. Most cops have never had to kill a perp, and most cops aren’t expert marksmen. Leg shots are not promoted as an option. An experienced, sharpshooter of a cop can make this decision, but it is not doctrine because it is beyond the ability of most cops in that situation.
Shooting is not a deterrent. If you are going for non-lethal force, the police would be more likely to use something like mace or a taser, or just pouncing on the subject.
If a cop fires on a suspect, it should be because of an imminent and serious threat to the officer or to others. Because of this, the most important thing is stopping the threat. As other posters have noted, shots to the extremities are more likely to miss and therefore less likely to stop the potentially lethal threat that the officer has identified.
I was wondering how the bad guy in Calgary ended up getting hit in the leg… probably a lucky shot (for him since the cop was probably aiming for his chest). I saw another leg shooting on the TV show COPS, which was almost certainly a “miss” by the officer. He was running across a lawn in the dark when the suspect turned around with a gun. Cop drew and fired with one hand while running in the dark and holding his flashlight with the other. Guess anyone who gets shot by the police and lives to tell about it should consider themselves lucky even though they got shot.
My ass its not self defence. A knife can kill someone just a dead as a gun. If your 50 feet away from me with a knife you can walk away. At 20 feet and coming torward me you now pose a serious threat…its your fault for bringing a knife to a gunfight. No one expects you to wait for someone with knife to get close enough to stab you with it to shoot him. Thats just plain stupid.
It’s my (probably mistaken) understanding that the cops are authorized and expected to go one level beyond what the suspect has. That is to say, if a violent suspect is unarmed, the cop is allowed to use his club, and if the suspect has a weapon (of any sort: A knife, a gun, a board with a nail in it) the cop is allowed to use his gun. The police aren’t supposed to “fight fair”.
Here in Canada, police are trained to shoot for the centre of mass just like in the US. I’ve seen and used the RCMP trainer, it is pretty nifty. They judge your shooting based on whether it was the correct shoot/no shoot decision and whether if you were supposed to shoot if you would have successfully stopped the target.
So, either the police officer missed the centre of mass and hit the leg, which is possible, remember a properly trained police officer on average only hits with 3/10 rounds under adrenal stress, and those 3 are not necessarily going to be centre of mass hits or the police officer, being a human being and not an emotional-less robot, at crunch time couldn’t bring himself to purposefully aim to kill and aimed for and hit the leg. This is equally possible, there are plenty of documented reports of this. Taking another life is not psychologically easy to do and often leaves psychological scars on the killer even if it was fully justified legal, ethically and biologically.
The RCMP, in fact, did some interesting tests on their officers back in the late80/early 90s (I don’t recall off the top of my head), which resulted in their new training program.
As to a firearm being used against a knife, this would almost certainly be judged a case of self defense barring some kind of unusual extenuating circumstances. Under 15’ a knife is, statistically speaking, nearly as deadly pistol.
Small note: Aiming for the center of the largest group of mass is not the same thing as shooting at the center of mass. The center of mass is a physics term, in humans it’s usually near the belly button (atheletes trying to anticipate an opponents move are taught to look there, as you can’t fake with the center of mass). Here I believe we are talking about aiming for the largest area of cross section visible, to maximize your chances of hitting something.
Most people don’t realize how incredibly difficult it is to consistently accurately hit a non-moving target with a handgun at a non-trivial distance in a shooting range. In most police shootings, the suspect is not standing perfectly still with their hands down at their sides like you see in those human outline targets. Go down to your local shooting range (if you don’t have a gun, most will rent you one), get the human outline target and put it 15 or 20 feet downrange. Take your time and aim, then empty the gun as fast as possible. You will be simply amazed when you see at most 2 out of 10 shots even hit the target at all, at most one hitting the person, and probably none in a lethal area. Now imagine doing it with the target running towards you zigzagging with a knife, your gun starting out in your holster, in near darkness, and your aldrenaline pumping, while you’re trying to figure out if that really IS a knife the suspects hand, and not a foil-wrapped sub sandwich.
muttorx: True, but against a person who has no cover or concealment they come to be about the same thing. The textbook technique is to aim for the low end of the “bowling pin” (i.e. the kill zone) which is about a person’s centre of mass and then let loose. The pull of the pistol will bring you up higher into the kill zone, resulting in the desired double tap which on average will put your attacker down.
Cover and concealment changes everything of course. If only a person’s head is revealed aiming for their centre of mass would be foolish, as you’d be unable to hit it.
One training film I saw showed that a man with a knife can consistantly take out a cop if he is within 21 feet. I remember it happening 100% of the time when the gun was in the holster. The attacker was able to get at the officer most of the time when the gun was out too.
Shooting “center mass” is not a scientific term, it is police/military jargon. Although whoever came up with the term was probably thinking in terms of physics, don’t think too literal. It has come to mean aiming for the middle of the torso. I’ve had it yelled at me on many ranges. No one was expecting me to calculate where the actual center of mass is. Those you were trying to correct are using the term correctly in this context.
Exactly. And not only does aiming for an extremity make it less likely the lethal threat will be stopped, it can STILL result in the death of the target. A person can easily bleed to death from a gunshot wound that tears open the femoral or brachial artery. If you shoot someone in the arm or leg, you’d damn well better be able to justify killing him, because there’s a real chance you might do just that.
Guns represent lethal force. They should NEVER be used if a lethal response is not justified. If you can’t justify killing a person, you shouldn’t be drawing a gun on him.