There’s been an arrest made in the Wichita swatting incident.
The one thing I’ve been puzzled about these cases is that often it seems that the cop does not settle with one shot. Too often it’s just as many bullets as the gun can hold.
The training should emphasize that you shoot just once. Then you check out the situation and only if it is necessary you shoot another etc.
If I would be a trainer I would say that if one possibly can avoid it, NEVER EMPTY YOUR GUN, especially on a single target ! What do you do if you face an armed thug just after you have emptied your gun on a passer-by whose pants were falling. Well, you’ll die, 'cause now you’re holding a useless piece of metal.
And the conduct of the officer and more importantly, the training standards of the department who hired him, will probably receive barely a mention going forward. Much more sensational to focus on a trial of “The XBOX or Playstation Murderer”.
The issue goes back to training - that has to be reformed on a massive scale. Departments need to stop training their officers to kill at the mere perception of threat. If Hillary were president, my proposal would be that we implement new federal training standards and that departments don’t receive a drop of federal money until they complete it to the satisfaction of the DoJ. Unfortunately, in the eyes of this sociopathic administration, they probably regard deaths at the hands of police departments as one less social security recipient the “job creators” have to feed.
I’d also add that it’s idiotic for courts to instruct jurors to, in essence, establish a different legal standard of criminal liability, essentially creating a separate class of domestic militia to whom the rules do not apply. So what if officers are trained to perceive going for the waistband as a threat? Is the perception of a threat a genuine threat or an imagined one? Could any of us beat a murder rap with that excuse? Can the rest of us kill someone simply for tightening their belt or grabbing their wallet? I suspect it will end one the son or daughter of someone considered more important gets riddled with bullets at the hands of some community college officer’s gun.
That’s not really practical, though. Someone who’s big, muscular, and on the right drugs could keep coming. So from the officer’s point of view, the threat is still there, and in real time, there’s no way to determine which bullet neutralizes the threat. I can actually take the officer’s side on this particular aspect of the discussion. What might be a good alternative is to utilize technology that overwhelms the assailant and neutralizes the threat but doesn’t actually kill anyone. Maybe some kind of enhanced taser. I’m sure the technology could be developed, if in fact it doesn’t already exist.
I’m glad they made an arrest, and hope they charge the guy with all they can. But not murder. Calling in a false report on an innocent person is reprehensible to say the least. Calling in a false fucking hostage situation should get a guy locked up. But when it comes to murder: God dammit why are these cops so ready to shoot someone??
This guy, probably:
Cops love this guy, because he sucks their dicks, throws in some bad research and pseudoscience, and encourages some of the worst aspects of cop culture. Aspects which just happen to be the favorites of most cops.
Exactly. The mother of the deceased asked the right question: why the fuck did the officer not give this guy a chance to establish his identity before unloaded a clip into him and wasting a life?! Why the fuck did the officers just descend on the residence? Yes, if the officer rushes right into a hostage situation without thinking and planning at all, the first guy who opens the door and reaches for his waistband could be perceived as a threat – that’s why you survey the situation first. Nobody has to be a cop to figure that out - basic intelligence will suffice.
Charging this punk kid with terroristic and false threats is absolutely appropriate and the feds will take care of him for a while. But he didn’t commit murder. Manslaughter’s a stretch, too. Nobody made the officer’s conduct inevitable. More likely maybe, but not inevitable.
I’m not exactly getting your point here because this is pretty much what I was saying. I didn’t suggest that a cop shoots once, then puts the gun away and ponders the situation for awhile. Calculating a risk can be done in fractions of a second while pointing the suspect and holding your finger on the trigger. Sometimes it just seems that these cops close their eyes and look only after the gun is empty.
So: you shoot what you need, no more, no less. And killing is indeed an option on the table, but to be avoided if possible - if not, then let him have what he’s asking for.
Also while I’m no expert I could assume that if a big, muscular etc., a shot ( if time to aim ) that breaks the thighbone is more effective at stopping him than two, three shots to the center of the mass - but I can be totally wrong in this and I have no illusions that I would be a good cop, let alone a heroic one. YMMV
A friend of mine that is a prison corrections officer says that they are trained to fire two shots, center mass, then evaluate.
That seems reasonable. One shot may not stop the aggressor, any more than that is usually going to be unnecessary, and as was pointed out, leaves you defenseless against any other threats.
The concept of proximate cause should always be a consideration. Even if the officer acted negligently, the guy who called in the false call intended for the confrontation with law enforcement under false pretenses to occur. Both should be equally liable for the outcome. Mens rea by the 911 caller seems clearly in place. Just because you didn’t intend for a death to happen does not mean it was not a distinct possibility. This is pretty much why the felony murder rule exists.
I was not a cop, I was EMS. it is common for situations to be vastly different from the 911 call, better or worse. A situation in my hometown where the police were not so quick to act ended with the guy killing like 9 family members.
Did this officer act negligently, probably. Did the person who gave a fake address act negligently, possibly. Did the person who made the false call act negligently, absolutely. Negligently is actually to soft a term, I’m not sure what the legal term for ”intended to create the situation but not the outcome” is.
I don’t know that I would hold the person who gave the address responsible in any way, other than take as a lesson that if you give a fake address to someone, make sure it’s a real fake address. (One that doesn’t exist).
I am not sure what you can charge the guy who called the police with, but I see him as responsible for the death as anyone else involved. I would find it hard to feel that anything charged against him would be prosecutorial overreach. Terrorism, felony murder, whatever, throw the book at him, he knew that he was putting someone else’s life in danger (and possibly the police lives as well) when he made that call.
The cop who shot the first guy he saw come out a door in a potential hostage situation should be let off the force, and never let around anything more dangerous or fragile than a lump of clay (and I’m not sure if he’s responsible enough for that). I mean, it was, in the cop’s view, a hostage situation, which means by definition that there are innocent victims involved. Sending out a hostage, or a hostage getting free and escaping should not result in summary execution of that hostage, and the cop did not spend a moment determining whether the person at the door was hostage or aggressor. (turns out he was neither).
If this had been a real crisis call, then this cop may have very well just killed a hostage, completely defeating any point to them coming out to “protect” the hostages in the first place.
If he knew this was a real address, probably. If he knew who lived there and had some grudge against him, absolutely.
At which point you’ve already been shot. That’s a ridiculous standard.
If you have a right to own a gun, that means the cops don’t have a right to shoot you just for holding it, right?
Sadly, no, it doesn’t mean that; have you not read thru this thread? :dubious:
“Just” is doing an awful lot of work in that sentence. No, they can’t shoot you for “just” holding a gun. So, if you are sitting in private, minding your own business, not reacting to the police or anyone else, just holding your gun, then no, they would not be allowed to shoot you.
Not sure how that’s relevant to any of the cases mentioned here recently.
Yes it does mean that, there’s no case in this thread where someone has been shot for just holding a gun. If I’m wrong, please link to it.
NO, there was no “and a bullet was fired” in the scenario. You’re just taking the worst, most fearful position possible, even when there’s no evidence to back it up. Which is exactly the problem that manson1972 was pointing out. So thanks for your (inadvertent) help in indicating part of the problem we’re all trying to solve; such aid is unexpected but not unexplainable.
That’s what I’m wondering too. Because those people did NOT have a gun.
Yes, there have been people shot for holding their pants up or similar - but NOT for holding a gun.
You are absolutely correct here.
I probably wasn’t clear enough in my earlier posts, but I’m not necessarily saying that the officer acted maliciously or even with gross negligence - there’s no way to know that at this point. It’s entirely possible that the officer was doing exactly what he was trained to do. It’s too early to know how to distribute blame and to what degree. What I fee fairly confident in saying, though, is that as bad as this prank was, a properly trained police squad would have surveyed the situation and this tragedy wouldn’t have happened. A few spooky moments but ultimately a safe resolution to the crisis and (I’m assuming) federal charges against the offending caller. The issue here - as in so many of these cases - should be not so much the focus on the individual, but rather, what the hell passes for training in police departments across America these days?