Really? What town is that? I have never heard of any law enforcement agency that recommends using shooting firearms “to hurt, not to kill.”
Now, I readily concede that there are plenty of guidelines for the use of non-lethal measures like tasers, foam, and pepper spray. I’m not talking about that. I want to know what jurisdiction advises their officers to use their firearms to “hurt, not kill.”
I’ve never heard of such a thing.
No, they do not. If this is what they are saying, then it’s just PR crap. In reality, when an officer makes the decision to fire his gun at a person, he’s prepared to kill that individual.
Pink, this is where people are arguing with you. If you fire your weapon, you’re shooting to stop the person, to put them down. There is no such thing as shooting to hurt, or shooting to slow someone down, that’s Hollywood. You shoot to stop, and you shoot until that person is stopped. You don’t fire one shot, or maybe two, that’s the way to piss someone off and let them gun your ass down.
Diallo got shot at 41 times because there were multiple officers all with 10 shots in their guns shooting at the same time. It takes almost no time to fire off 10 shots, and when you think a guy is ready to shoot you, you fire them off.
So, you’ve had bad experiences with police officers, and that equals “all cops are bad and wrong all the time”? I’ve had bad experiences with police, too - every time I get stopped by a traffic cop, I get attitude and rudeness when I am not rude to them first. I still think that they are mostly good people trying their best to do a very difficult, mostly thankless job.
Are there bad cops? Do they make mistakes? Of course. They’re only human. Do you have any realistic suggestions on how they can do a better job, and make fewer mistakes? One suggestion I would make is that an impartial, knowledgeable outside agency would be more believable, in my opinion, than the police investigating themselves in these kinds of incidents.
My rant was about a racist asshole who said the kid in LA and Amadou Diallo deserved what they got.
I’ve never met a cop who seemed like a normal person. I’ve only met the barely-educated, authoritative ones. It’d be nice to think there are good ones out there, but I haven’t seen much evidence of that.
It got sort of buried in the anti-police stuff. The kid was a stupid young kid who put himself in a situation to die, much like driving off a cliff. Did he deserve death? No, but that doesn’t mean it’s all the cops fault. Diallo was one unlucky guy, wound up in a very tense situation and had the misfortune of reacting in the worst possible way. He didn’t deserve to die, but that doesn’t mean it’s all the cops fault either.
Anyone who says these people deserve to die is a shithead of the highest degree.
You’re probably right on that one, it most likely is a PR thing to keep people quiet, I’ve just heard it a lot on local news. And I understand that not everyone is a marksman and there will be mistakes. I just don’t understand why they felt the need to have multiple officers unloading their weapons into this guy. I don’t understand completely, and I’ve admitted that, I just think it was excessive and unfortunate and I thought the whole reason they created other non-lethal weapons was for situations like this.
I just hope that you never find yourself on the wrong end of this situation. It would be very unfortunate if someone got shot due to a traffic stop when they were reaching for their wallet.
Yes, it would. This is why the police want you to put your hands on the steering wheel in plain sight and not reach for anything until you are instructed to by an officer. If Diallo had obeyed the officer’s instructions that night, he’d more than likely be alive today. Remember, a jury of 12 ordinary men and women like you and I heard all the evidence on that shooting and eventually determined that the police did not act inappropriately. In my mind, that trumps any second-guessing by people who do not have access to all the facts.
The problem is that the police could end up on the wrong end of that situation as well and are far more like to do so. What if Diallo did have a gun and the police had waited until he drew it? What if two had gotten killed? Would you like to tell their families, “Well, sorry but it’s better that officers die than suspects making suspicious moves.”?
My brother is police officer and he’s, thankfully, only had to draw his gun once. Some people told him that a man on the train was showing off his gun. My brother had to go in with his gun drawn, he didn’t know what this guy would do. Fortunatly the guy didn’t make a sudden grab for his gun and things were resolved peacefully. In fact it turned out to be a pellet gun. But how was my brother to know? If he had pulled it, how could he make that determination in less than a second where his life and the life of others are on the line?
Watch “Cops” sometimes. Suspects do really stupid stuff. The police say “Stop” and the make all sorts of rash reactions. Many of these situations wouldn’t happen if people would just listen to the officers.
Diallo’s case was a tragedy because the poor bastard wasn’t doing anything wrong. And people that aren’t doing anything wrong shouldn’t be shot dead in front of their house for grabbing a smoke. By anyone.
That’s not to say that I think the cops should have been prosecuted for murder. Why? Because there was no malicious intent. They made a terrible, tragic mistake. And as such I do think they should have been demoted or fired. As a general rule, I believe that if you make a mistake in judgment so severe that it results in someone’s death and you should find a new career path.
The 13 year old in the OP? 13 year old kids shouldn’t be shot dead any more than they should be driving a car or fleeing from the cops. He was clearly in the wrong. The parents were wrong for not controlling their child. Looks like they paid the price for their failures.
I don’t see a parallel between the two cases, except for the fact that they both involved cops. One was a criminal who provoked his own shooting; the other did nothing wrong except not understand what the cops wanted.
Not to take this off topic, but this kind of attitude almost pisses me off more than the actions of the police officers in the OP.
You know, I read over that a few times and it didn’t piss me off, still doesn’t, but I see where you’re coming from.
If you’re depressed, you’re supposed to take a pill to numb it all away. To what extent is some depression over real things normal? How is it that anyone is happy at all? Is it really all Prozac?
I started this thread hoping people would back me up, I guess. I wanted someone to agree with me. I still feel like somehow the point I was trying to make has been missed. Maybe I’m just too sad to be coherent about it.
I might be losing it anyway. I got pissy in another thread after a couple of people jumped to conclusions about me. I feel defensive, and I don’t know why. I need some reassurance somewhere, but maybe I’m just wrong about everything and I’m too argumentative and that’s why these things go all awry.
I’ve got my problems, sure, but I’m a good person and people do like me for things other than my looks. Really. And I’m sorry I hijacked my own thread.
Well, I can’t. I neither want a gun nor particularly want to learn to use one, except maybe to skeet-shoot. Are you going to defend me, too?
Come to think of it, I wouldn’t want an anarchist with a gun anywhere near my house or me.
How much are you offering?
Then hire a private security firm.
Umm, I mentioned medication because sometimes it is necessary. I was basing it on my experience - I wasn’t pushing meds on people. If I could have handled my own depression with therapy, I would have jumped at it - but even after therapy, I was crying myself to sleep for an hour every night. The anti-depressant was the thing that stopped me from jumping off the fucking Brooklyn Bridge.
I wasn’t trying to push you into meds, Indygrrl, just saying that it might help to talk to someone about it and look into what might be causing it if the real world’s getting to you that much. I mentioned the meds because that’s what worked for me - I’m no longer on them, but I think I’m here today because I was on them.
Continuity eror, I’m not sure what kind of ‘attitude’ you think I have, but the depressive nature of her post sounded a lot like how I was in my deepest lows. It’s not an ‘attitude’ of throwing meds at something, it’s an attitude of trying to figure out what’s causing the feelings and finding a solution.
E.
Several reasons.
In a high adrenaline situation such as one where you’d be drawing your weapon on someone, your accuracy will be reduced thus making it extremely difficult to hit someone in a small extremity, so you go for the center of mass.
Stopping power for a gunshot to the leg will not necessiarly end the threat that this person poses to your life.
In drawing your weapon you have committed to using deadly force, thus showing that you believe the situation called for it. ‘Shooting to wound’ contradicts the idea that you believed the situation to merit deadly force, in which case you were not justified in drawing your weapon at all.
So long as a person is conscious and has a gun in their hand, they can fire it and are still a threat to life and limb.
Yes, it’s overkill that they fired 41 times. It’s also not that hard to see how it could happen if there are 4 cops there and all of them have been trained to ‘fire until empty.’
Depression over real things is usually called situational depression, and it is mostly normal. I mean, who doesn’t get down from life situations like losing your job, death in the family? Even good things like having a baby or getting married cause stress in your life. You just sound overwhelmed to me, but maybe a visit to a doctor wouldn’t be a bad idea if you think it’s more than that.
I forgot that this thread was over the people in the OP saying the 13-yo got what he deserved. Jerks. Nobody deserves to die for a stupid mistake - if they did, we’d all be dead. But I agree that the police weren’t all to blame, either - I honestly don’t think that the police involved are bragging to their buddies about killing a 13-yo. It seems more likely that they’ll be seeing a counsellor themselves.
You can opine all you’d like, but if your opinions have no basis in fact, I feel the need to call you on it. If you don’t want to be called on it, it’s best not to address the group with the opinion in question.
In fairness, I was responding to your post
With an equally outrageous response. I meant no insult, honestly.
I don’t have the money. Now what?
catsix I’ve been around firearms instruction most of my adult life, and I’ve never even HEARD of the ‘shoot until empty’ theory. Most instructors will teach you to fire-recompose-fire-recompose-fire and so on until you need to reload.
No, what got ahold of the cops in Diallo was the andrenaline of the first shot. Once the first shot was fired, they all acted independently, rather than as a team, which is what got him hit 19 times.