Per this article - After police bullets hit bystanders, questions about protocol
Apparently the gunmen never aimed at police after killing his intended victim. The police arrived and just started spraying bullets once they saw him.
Is this more a procedural issue or a skills issue or is it just the way things are in a dense crowded urban scenario when trying to take gunman down, and there’s no help for it?
Yes. In a real world situation, everyone is a terrible shot.
It’s possible the officers committed a fault.
The link does say that the suspect pointed a gun at the officers to which the officers responded by shooting.
I’d say it’s an issue of:
If the citizens of New York were allowed to carry, this scenario might have ended differently.
They aren’t terrible shots:
10 / 16 shots being hits doesn’t strike me as poor.
9 bystanders getting hit strikes me as poor.
For comparison, Amadou Diallo got 19 / 41 although in likely worse shooting conditions.
Anyone know how far away they were from the target in either case?
Do 9mm HP bullets tend to go through people? If so, even 100% accuracy could result in bystanders being hit.
Yes, in mass carnage instead of only 9 injuries.
Nothing spells safety like a large, milling, frightened crowd firing weapons.
I may be wrong but as his name indicates, Czarcasm is the one in overall charge of sarcasm on this forum. Interpret his words accordingly.
Some stories say 10/17 hit the shooter, only three slugs hit bystanders, and four shots missed people, but perhaps contributed to the “fragments” that hit some.
Not bad shooting in an instant call situation.
The answer is in the article.
If you hit 9 innocent bystanders, that indicates that your professional judgement leaves something to be desired.
There were some big planters where the officers could have taken cover and used aimed fire instead of using spray and pray into a group of civilians.
The officers’ action were a violation of department policy. I don’t think their actions were criminal, but it shows a lack of discipline that you probably don’t want in a sworn police officer. We need more data. It is possible that all the civilians were shot by a single officer or at least all the civilians that were shot directly and not hit by ricochets.
We need more data, as JoelUpchurch said.
Right now, the NYPD officers look a bit ‘Ramboish’, but it may turn out that there were extenuating circumstances.
Very odd situation, though.
The reports of outcomes seem contradictory as mentioned upthread.
They did use aimed fire. What makes you think they didn’t?
Evidence has long since proven that aim deteriorates dramatically under pressure. The myth of a steely-eyed shooter is exactly that, a myth.
It’s good to know that we have people people here on the SDMB qualified to make that judgment definitively.
I guess the cops should have chosen a better place to have a gun pulled on them. Or hell, why not just let the guy that walked up and shot someone in the head go? Not like he might be dangerous.
There is video of the shooting. The guy did point his gun at the cops and they were certainly right to shoot him. The marksmanship of the cops, and cops in general, is a different story.
From Gun Facts PDF.
Myth: Citizens are too incompetent to use guns for protection.
Fact:About 11% of police shootings kill an innocent person - about 2% of shootings by citizens kill an innocent person. The odds of a defensive gun user killing an innocent person are less than 1 in 26,000 despite American citizens using guns to prevent crimes almost 2,500,000 times every year.
It’s extremely hard to prepare for something that may- or may not- happen once in a thirty-year career and then do it perfectly the first time within two seconds notice.
(I keep thinking someone ought to do a remake of “Westworld” with police training in an animatronic “Hogan’s Alley”.)
I have it on good authority that if the perp were in a dark movie theater filled with teargas, a half dozen random armed citizens would have left him with a baseball sized hole between his eyes and a couple of dozen rounds rolling around in his skull. No collateral damage.
A “defensive gun user” uses a gun in the US ** 7,100** times per day to prevent a crime? It is to laugh. :mad:
Remember, always add the smiley. Some people might take you seriously. :eek:
Clearly you didn’t bother to research the cite. There aren’t many statistics on crimes that did not happen because the intended victim showed a gun to his potential assailant. The author presents a very convincing case for that number. It is not talking about gunfire, not even necessarily about brandishing a weapon; most of the time, simply making it known that you have a gun ends the situation on the spot.