That’s something I’ve always thought about. If I were a police officer I think I’d have a very hard time shooting at a car for exactly that reason, although I can certainly imagine a situation where I would in fact do so (drive by shooting, for example.)
Someone remains a potential lethal threat until they are dead. Unless you are 100% certain beyond any level of doubt that the person cannot move and doesn’t have a weapon secreted somewhere it’s not smart policy to assume that just because they are shot they are out of commission.
This isn’t necessarily germane to this discussion, but in a military situation for example you don’t shoot to wound or immobilize, you shoot to kill, because someone can be incredibly shot up and still be able to roll a grenade at you, or squeeze off a few shots.
What I find unbelievable is that the cops fired 50 bullets into the car and only one guy got killed.
Which just goes to show how useless firing at a car is.
I find nonsensical the idea that the best way to handle a car trying to run you over is to shoot the driver. Shoot the driver and that speeding vehicle doesn’t magically stop. Newton’s laws of motion, y’know?
Ever fired a weapon in a situation where you’re fearing for your life?
50 bullets isn’t that much, you can empty an entire clip in seconds, and if the threat is still there, you can reload and empty a second one in seconds as well.
If all of those shots came after the persons were immobilized and no longer a threat, yeah, that’s a bit much. But I can see easily a situation where you’re trying to disable a car and after many many shots it is still posing a lethal threat to you (although in New York you aren’t supposed to fire on a vehicle unless another weapon is present, obviously.)
Killing the driver isn’t a bad method depending on circumstance. It is hard to hit a moving target through a windshield, though. If he was repeatedly ramming them, killing him means that he won’t be able to ram you one more time, because that requires active and deliberate acts on behalf of the driver (reverse, accelerate, reverse, accelerate.)
In an ideal situation if you’re on foot and need to disable a non-armored vehicle the engine block is the best place to shoot at in my opinion. But that’s in an ideal situation, and requires some distance as shooting in to the engine block has varying results (it can disable a vehicle in one shot or fail to do so in fifty.)
That’s more from the standpoint of having a modern combat assault rifle, too, not a hand gun.
What I find much more likely is that the cops are firing, bullets are flying, and they mistake their own gunfire for return gunfire. “I’m being shot at–keep firing!” So you have a one-sided firefight.
The idea that they’re firing to disable the car is ludicrous. They weren’t calmly assessing the situation and deciding that things would be improved if the car had a few more bullets pumped into it. They panicked and violated procedure and sent a guy to the morgue and two guys to the ICU because of it.
At the very least these guys need to be working at Arby’s instead of the NYPD, even in the unlikely case that their current story is an accurate version of events.
But these are trained police officers who should not be panicing and just firing off as fast as possible.
And some people have mentioned that it seems odd that they shouldn’t fire at an oncoming car to save their life. Well, as mentioned, if you have enough time to unholster your gun and fire a clip of bullets, you have enough time to jump out of the way
Most police officers never have to shoot their weapon at another person. All the training in the world isn’t necessarily going to make it so you do it perfectly when the time comes.
I’ve pretty much said that in most situations I think there’s a better option than shooting at a car, but one situation where I do not think there’s a better option would be if you were in the police car being rammed and were unable to get out (because it’s easy for doors to be rendered unopenable after an auto collision.) We still need to know when the shooting started and why, imo.
I think it’s been established that they violated their protocols and training by firing into a moving vehicle and not stopping after firing 3 rounds to re-assess the situation. However, I’m not going to crucify the cops purely over the number of rounds fired. When you fear for your life, or the life of another officer, I think it’s understandable to fire until the threat is gone. These are not men who get in firefights often and training can only do so much to prepare you for real life and death situations.
I prefer to focus on the events leading up to the shooting, before it became life and death. Did they follow protocol and avoid escalating the confrontation to this level? Could they have intercepted these men before they got into the car where the gun was supposedly kept? Could they have approached the car without displaying a gun, only their badge? Did they create a threatening situation where the driver would reasonably think his life was in danger, prompting him to attempt a getaway?
No, I have not. I still think 50 are too many by s good number, especially when you had to change clips out to achieve this very high number.
However, I understand your point. Of course, I guess when it comes to fight or flight, I would have chosen flight. As in, get out of the way of the moving vehicle.
If you are panicked enough to discharge the entire contents of your weapon, are you still calm enough to exchange clips?
This still does not add up to me. It sounds more like uncontrolled anger than panic.
Jim
I’d find that a reasonable argument, except for the guy that unloaded a full clip, then reloaded and kept firing. I can’t think of a jusitification for that…
Good point. 
What if the car kept coming at him even after the first clip was unloaded?
I can see a situation where the officers continue firing in that scenario.
Ultimately I think everyone would be better off if they wait for more information on this. Most incidents where police officers have to use their weapons are incredibly complex with many different factors, and all the little maxims that get trotted out by people who weren’t there don’t help any one, either.
Here’s a quote from the NY Post on the cop who reloaded
Whether this explanation makes it better or worse for the detective is up to the reader to decide.
Does anybody have more info about this? When I first heard about the fourth guy, I thought “this is too convenient; in a few days, we’ll hear that there was no fourth man.”
Cops are trained to handle certain situations, but you cant really leran how you will handle a car trying to run you over in a simulator- the only way to know how you will handle is to have a car try and run you over. Some cops shine in these circumstances, others don’t handle it as well. As long as it was not found to be done with malice aforethought, there should be no criminal charges. When will people learn you obey police officers? When they say stop, you stop. When they say put the gun down, put the goddamn gun down. Many of these riot inducing instances would be prevented if people would obey the police. You put a cop in a situation to possibly go overboard, or incorrecty assess a threat, and blame him? Blame the person who tried to run him over.
Well, OK - why not the same logic if he has a knife?
Regards,
Shodan
I’ll second this an pre-empt the, “zomg authoritarian fascists, we can’t blindly obey the policy!” by saying duh, you can’t blindly obey authority but when a police officer issues an obviously lawful order, obey it, it’s your responsibility to do so. If you have some debate about whether or not they were right to order you to put your hands behind your back or to step out of the car, that’s something you resolve after the fact through legal counsel.
Although again, I don’t think we know enough to apply these general principles to this situation. I’ll second an earlier poster’s assertion that it’s very possible the driver in this situation wasn’t entirely certain he was dealing with police officers versus random guys in a club waving guns at them.
We have no idea for sure if the driver of the car knew they were cops. You are making a big assumption, while excusing the cop. At very least, if there are no criminal charges against the officer in question, he should probably be made to seek a new career as he does appear to be dangerous to the public.
Jim
I don’t think you can give such a big pass to the driver and in the same post say the police officer should never serve as a police officer again when you admittedly do not think we have the information to make a big assumption about one of the parties, I don’t see any info that allows us to make that sort of assumption about either.
If the driver was ramming police vehicles and trying to ram police officers (who may have been in the vehicles) then even if the police were violating SOP I don’t think they deserve to lose their badges. Because they’d only represent a danger to the subsection of the public that thinks they have the right to repeatedly try to murder police officers with a car.
That’s just one situation where I think the city of New York would be justified in allowing these men to keep their badges, there are others, and certainly situations where the men should lose their badges (or even more.)