Just to clarify, I didn’t mean to imply that someone on this particular board would think the cop wasn’t justified. Only that there is always a fringe element out there that can and will find fault with his actions.
There doesn’t seem to be any such element in this case, on or off the board. I suppose if you looked hard enough, you could find somebody kooky enough to say this shooting wasn’t justified, but so what?
Ugh.
Good on the cop. He handled everything perfectly. Better, in fact.
Maybe some people have some crazy fantasy that everyone on the Dope thinks that cops are always wrong, but that’s not the case. This cop was just doing his job and doing it well. And frankly, he was very lucky - I doubt many cops are ready for a pretty routine traffic stop to turn into a shootout.
Good for him, he handled an insane situation well. Crazy driver shot first. Cop was clearly justified in returning fire. Sad that some people died but I ascribe no blame to the officer. I’m glad the officer came out OK. He did his job well.
I haven’t watched the video but from the information given by someone upthread I found it interesting that stress can distort memory and skills. He thought he’d fired 6 or 7 shots, it was 14. Hit the target with 1 of them (though from the other comments I gather the guy was driving away).
A good job handling a situation that was stressful beyond anyone’s belief (including veteran cops).
But… and please don’t’ shit on me for this–it is purely an academic question:
I wonder about the “better than perfect” handling. It looked to me like the cop held his flashlight in his gun hand (right hand) when approaching the suspect. He had to switch the light to his left hand before he could draw his weapon with his right hand. That could have been a very costly error, it seems to me. I fully admit I don’t know if the officer was using the correct protocol in this situation. I have no idea what the “textbook” teaches a cop to do on this sort of vehicle stop.
It just seemed odd to me. Especially since the newspaper quoted the officer as saying:
I hope nobody suspects me of being usual…
As the old truism goes, “power corrupts”; and the police have power. Especially in a society like ours, where they are typically given exaggerated respect and the benefit of the doubt regardless of the facts. If you live some place where the police are corrupt, brutal or often bigoted towards a group you happen to belong to, it’s only natural that you will regard them as enemies.
As for the cop in the video; I doubt he’s going to be traumatized by killing the guy all that much; it was clearly justified and he couldn’t even see the guy well if at all from what it looks like. I expect that it’s having that gun come out of nowhere that will give him nightmares.
So, none of those who came in the thread expecting outrage from “the usual suspects” can see ANY fault in the officer’s actions?
ps. Besides the one pointed out by I Love Me Vol 1.
Nah. I don’t have a low opinion of Dopers in general. The reaction I mostly expected was “Wow…that was pretty hair-raising, that cop was within an inch of life or death!”
Which is mostly the reaction (aside from people agreeing that in this case it was justified) that has been displayed.
As I had said before, I didn’t post this with the intention of trying to provoke anyone to try to defend the man whom was shot and killed. But once Hal had mentioned it, I did wonder if anyone would.
Yeah, I’d have 1) gotten shot on the second shot because I’d still be going “what the fuck?” and 2) forgotten I had a gun to shoot back with when he drove away. By the time I started shooting I wouldn’t have had a chance of hitting him.
I love how his voice has a little tiny shake in it but otherwise he’s Eastwood-cool when reporting in.
Read youtube comments on any police shooting video.
Who cares about youtube trolls?
I know, which is why I was as surprised as you that people expect that level of “thought” here on the dope. We are actually in agreement, Cynic.
Things might not have gone as well as they did. For instance, if it was a busy highway with a constant flow of traffic past the pulled over car, and the cop had emptied his gun anyway as the guy pulled away, I might be screaming at the cop. He might have hit several people. OTOH, in such a situation he might not have fired at all, and then this thread wouldn’t exist and we wouldn’t be discussing his actions.
The only other thing I can see that might be criticized is the cop shooting into darkness. There might have been some homes in that darkness that the headlights didn’t show. What would we be saying if the exact same thing had happened but one of the cop’s stray rounds had killed a kid in his own living room?
Obviously, this didn’t happen. Was that because there was better visibility than suggested by the camera, or that the cop knew the area and knew he wasn’t endangering anyone by firing in that direction from that location, or was he just lucky? I dunno.
Or what if there was someone sleeping in the back seat of the perp’s car that the cop didn’t know about? Or even someone sitting in the passenger seat that the cop DID know about?
There are many factors that might have been differrent and changed this from a correct action into a reckless tragedy. All I can say is that, from the evidence of the video, the cop was completely justified. He was lucky in more than just not getting hit by they guy’s first shot. Some would even say he was unlucky in the sense that circumstances dictated he had to kill someone. But if he hadn’t, the guy might have killed the next cop along the road.
To summarize, life is a crapshoot, my friends. 
The cop didn’t even look into the back of the car with his torch, as he approached it. For all he knew, there might have been a child sleeping on that back seat. And, as has been mentioned, say there was passengers - would they have been as deserving of a bullet in the back as the guy who actually shot at the cop?
Yes, actually.
What kind of handgun carries 14 rounds? Isn’t that a lot?
The Glock 17 held 17+1 in the chamber. Pretty much any modern (9mm/.40) full size service pistol will hold 12 or more rounds.
Not as deserving, but they would have been further victims of the driver, if they were held there against their will or if they were young children. If they were there, knowing he was drunk, and they were there intentionally, then they are victims of their own foolishness.
Aha, I see!
Acts of foolishness = summarary execution. Well, that should help the planet’s over-population problems.
And btw, having a weapon would have done nothing to save him, had the criminal’s gun behaved differently.