(I don’t know if this is really Pit material but it’s sort of a companion piece to an earlier Pit thread of mine, and the humor is rather dark.)
Yesterday, a troubled 18-year-old son of a Seattle police officer who was killed in the line of duty in 1995 stole a Seattle police car yesterday. Police officers in pursuit mistook their fellow officers’ cars for the suspect’s and fired 20 shots at each other. No one was hit.
The Seattle Police Department has been criticized recently following the shooting death of a black motorist. As the above incident demonstrates, however, not only are the Seattle police NOT selectively targeting blacks, they apparently shoot at anything that moves. This would be alarming for the populace, black or white, except that it also seems the odds of their hitting anything are almost nil.
Hey, look, check this out! He draws a conclusion from ONE incident. They could CERTAINLY be targeting blacks regardless of this one incident. That does not, of course, mean that they are, and I have no idea of the situation up there, other than a rough outline.
Second, “anything that moves?” They were chasing a guy in A POLICE CAR. Not a guy on a bike, or a guy on foot, or even a guy in a regular car. They were looking for a police car, probably speeding, much as another police car in pursuit would have been. Shit happens, man. They fucked up. Get over it. It’s a perfectly understandable, if kind of humorous and potentially tragic, mistake to make.
These guys have their lives on the line every traffic stop they make.
You’re looking at extreme stress and danger situations and evaluating behavior from the context of your comfy ass behind a computer screen.
Friendly fire is a problem for even the best trained, most elite military units.
The incident you make casual mention of involved an officer being dragged by a car.
These are situations where careful forethought and evaluation is impossible due to time/stress constraints. Being human they do not always make the best possible choice.
That’s fine. I understand that it’s a stressful job, but they’re not supposed to turn into the Keystone Cops. They’re supposed to be trained in not overreacting to a situation and shooting my comfy ass for no reason.
[sarcasm]Oh, and let’s not bring up Amadu Diallo, the man who was shot for pulling his wallet out![/sarcasm]
pluto did say at the beginning of the OP that “the humor is rather dark,” and I do see the dark humor in this story.
Scylla, I agree though. Cops have the most dangerous job in the world, period. My brother was a US Army Ranger, which are some of the most elite troops in the worldwide special operations community, and he said you couldn’t pay him enough to become a cop. In his job, you hardly ever got shot at, let’s face it. But if you’re a cop, there’s a chance of you being shot every single day. No thanks pal, I’ll take that boring office job now.
I think that many people reading the OP will be surprised that the police fired up to 20 shots without hitting their target. These will be the same people who get all of their knowledge about firing handguns from movies and TV. Hitting a moving target with a handgun is hard, and if you are firing from a moving vehicle, it’s damn near impossible. Why do you think those drive-by gang hits are with sprayed automatic weapons fire? Given the high number of rounds, there’s a chance you might actually hit a stationary target, but there’s no guarantee.
And cleosia? Firing at a fugitive in a stolen police cruiser is the polar opposite of “shooting my comfy ass for no reason.” Were there any police department weapons in the car at the time of the theft? Probably. I’m sorry the kid is “troubled,” but he put himself in the situation.
Sorry–cop lover or hater, I can’t get past the fact that these officers were discharging weapons without being certain of a target. Let’s not even get into that “it’s hard to hit a moving target from a moving vehicle” thing, though there’s a bit of a problem there too (as in, innocent bystanders), but these folks were basically shooting at random.
What would we have said if it were, say, a group of hunters out who shot a buddy and said, “Well, he looked like a deer”?
These is bullets, kiddies, and if the cops can’t put them in the right place with all their training, what are we supposed to think from there? If another officer had been killed, would they have called it “friendly fire” (an oxymoron if I ever heard one)?
This is the outrage; this is the humor. Kind of an oh-how-the-mighty-have-fallen thing.
Dark humor? Its damn hilarious. I’m surprised that half of the SPD didn’t arrest the other half, and vice versa.
And you got the story completely wrong. These cops were not firing while moving. According to CNN, one police car was stopped at an intersection when the other came up to it, rammed it, and started firing. These cops fired 20 rounds at a STATIONARY target and didn’t hit a damn thing. Didn’t they happen to notice the “criminals” were wearing police uniforms? All of these cops should be fired for endangering the public.
I should change my sig, but I’ll just add it here as a one-timer.
“Police and thieves in the street, scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition…”
-The Clash
Friendly fire is dangerous to military units because they can actually hit things every so often, and they use much more destructive weapons. For a police officer to be firing and unclear on his target is ridiculous and dangerous. As difficult as the job is, there is no excuse for that kind of shoot-first-don’t-ask-questions premature ejaculation. If you want yahoos shooting up your neighborhood whenever they get a hard-on, I’m sure you can find people who will do it without putting a tax burden on you.
And why, oh why, would a fleeing suspect stop at an intersection? That’s your first clue, Officer Twitchy.
Chas. E- you are totally right about the facts of the case. I hadn’t actually read the story yet, I was going on the statment in the OP about the officers “in pursuit” mistaking the car and firing.
Assumption is the mother of all fuckups. My bad totally.
