Because aimed fire means being sure of your target and what is beyond it. Any bullet that hit a civilian directly was not aimed fire. Ricochets may be excusable, since they aren’t predicable.
As I said they have cover close by. They should have taken cover and not fired until they were certain of their of their target. If you aren’t certain of your target, then don’t pull your trigger.
And that the SDMB has people ready to excuse their actions when there is a prima facie case that they violated department policy.
You really need to ask your self if you want the Police to open fire when you are standing near or behind a felon.
If he has a gun in his hand and has already used it to kill somebody? Hell yes I do. The point is that you were not there, and your Monday Morning Quarterback analysis is not as open and shut as you think it is. You can make your own judgment, but it constitutes nothing more than your personal opinion.
My understanding is a majority of the nine bystanders hit were hit by fragments thrown off when the bullets hit the large planters in the area. I think one woman was directly shot in the calf from a stray bullet, so I don’t know that we have a full reconstruction of this event sufficient to make any opinions on how much anyone may or may not have fucked things up.
Knowing that, Mr. Johnson may well have never started it. In any event, I think the cops did a great job - he’s dead. Saved quite a few taxpayer dollars in the long run right there. They should be commended for effectively shooting to stop the threat.
The claim that 11% of police shooting injure an innocent but only 2% of civilian shooting do is presented without any corroborating evidence. The only footnote against that fact is #198, which links to a study that is… well, it’s not exactly the most convincing source, to say the least. That study links to another study, which is 33 years old, which doesn’t make this claim convincingly at all, and has no clear methodology; it’s impossible to say if the two figures are in any way comparable.
WAG-it might be that civilian shootings are more likely to be close range/one-on-one(mugging. home break-in) while police shootings are more likely to be out in public with numerous bystanders such as this one. Even a traffic stop on a suburban street could turn into a shooting with people in nearby houses.
Yes, I thought the same thing – a greater proportion of police shootings may be in situations where you are not strictly one-on-one or can’t “clear the range”.
Looks like he did brandish the gun, at which point the IIRC officers are authorized deadly force and the rule is shoot 'til he’s down and no longer a threat?
Also, from their relative positions it looks like ducking behind the planters would have meant only the forward officer could engage, and maybe allowed the suspect to move further, faster, making himself even harder to hit and exposing even more civilians. One of the officers does seem to step in and out from in between the planters (and to try to get in a proper firing position but with plants and street signs in his way) in case the suspect ran to the street side, but I suspect also to avoid getting the way of his partner, who was firing one-handed as he sort of hopped across the sidewalk. That takes away a LOT of your accuracy.
What’s downrange (relative to the officers) from the scene is nothing less than the corner of 34th St. and 5th Avenue. Once the gun was drawn, precipitating the decision to fire, the odds were on more than one miss/ricochet/enter-exit round/fragment hitting some person or vehicle.
(BTW the pedestrian traffic at the spot of the confrontation itself was light relative to what it can be on that block. Behind where the policemen stand, a little later in the day there’s commonly a phalanx of tourists lining up to visit the ESB and get on and off of Tour Buses)
[ol]
[li]Fire into a bunch of innocent bystanders.[/li][li]Jump for cover.[/li][/ol]
The guys that make choice 1 should seek a different line of work, just like firefighters that decide that running into a burning building is too dangerous should be working elsewhere.
Why haven’t you been appointed NYC Police Commissioner? Since you’re able to determine exactly the specifics of what happened before any of that has been released to the public and immediately know the appropriate cause of action I really think you’ve missed your calling in life.
I’m one of the first on the Board to jump with both feet on Cops who make mistakes that kill people, but if the guy was shooting people, I see no choice but for them to shoot him. Discussing the number of deaths is odious, but more would probably have died if they hadn’t shot and killed him.
Considering that we already saw the video, it looks like an investigation will just establish which officer shot which bystander. It may turn out all the bystander bullets came from the same firearm. That doesn’t change the NYC’s liability.
Not really. The guy shot his target and then put the gun away and tried to leave the scene. The police followed him and he pulled out his gun. I don’t blame them for shooting an armed suspect, but he wasn’t going to kill anyone else.
