NYC police kill unarmed man by firing 50 bullets

The BBQ Pit
61

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
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.)
[/QUOTE]

If the Driver knew the officer was an officer and he rammed the officer, than I would agree, he was stupid and he paid the ultimate price for being stupid. He was killed.

I still do not believe this officer should be allowed to function as an armed police officer. I cannot get past the fact that he put a second clip in and discharged it.

Maybe they can find him a nice desk job. Please note I am only calling for the one officer to have his pistol pulled.

Jim

62

[QUOTE=Cheesesteak]
Here’s a quote from the NY Post on the cop who reloadedWhether this explanation makes it better or worse for the detective is up to the reader to decide.

link, registration required, I think
[/QUOTE]

I’m provisionally* calling “bullshit” on this (on the cop’s story, Cheesesteak, not you). With a semi-auto, what is routinely considered a “jam” is caused by one of several factors:

  1. Failure to Feed: the bullet either isn’t stripped from the magazine and chambered when the slide comes forward, or the bullet doesn’t chamber properly (getting twisted slightly to the side somehow).

  2. Failure to Extract: after the round if discharged, the recoil pushes the upper receiver or “slide” backwards, and a pawl normally grabs the base of the round, yanks it out of the chamber, and flings it out of the weapon to make room for the next round. In a failure to extract, the spent round is left in the chamber, even as the next round is attempted to be fed.

  3. Failure to Fire: just what it sounds like. You pull the trigger, the gun goes :click:.

None of these are corrected by changing magazines. In #1, you can sometimes tap the back of the slide to chamber a stuck round, or cycle the weapon to chamber the next round in the mag. Switching mags isn’t necessary, or helpful.

In #2, things can be a bit more tricky; you may have to drop your current mag out of the magazine well and cycle the weapon to clear at least the spent bullet that failed to extract. You can change mags at this point, but if you’ve only fired a few rounds from the first mag, why not just reinsert it into the weapon?

The cop’s story is that he’d only fired a few rounds before his weapon “jammed;” he may have let the first mag just drop to the ground and drew a fresh one in reflex. This is the only scenario that remotely makes sense to me as a “gun guy.”

But in any case, simply swapping mags doesn’t do a damn thing to correct the weapon malfunction.

In #3, you just cycle the weapon. Switching mags isn’t necessary, or helpful.

*I say provisionally because the cop’s story may not have been related accurately to the media.

63

Here’s an interesting graphic reconstruction of what happened:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/nyregion/20061129_SHOOTING_GRAPHIC.html

According to this, while the cops fired 50 shots only 21 actually hit the car. Shots struck a nearby house, cars, and AirTrain platform.

It seems pretty clear that the undercover cop, “the first to open fire” got hit by the car–either accidentally or on purpose, we can’t determine–and panicked and started shooting, violating policy. And at the sound of the shots the other cops started shooting too. And every shot fired by the cops was interpreted by them as “shots fired”, meaning they were in danger, meaning they had to keep firing to stop the threat. And so 29 bullets go flying into the neighborhood. 21 shots go into the car. The driver is hit twice and killed, the guy in the front passenger seat is hit 11 times but somehow survives, and the guy in the back passenger seat is hit 3 times. That leaves 5 bullets lodged in the car, I suppose.

If this incident doesn’t illustrate the reason for the policy that cops aren’t supposed to open fire at vehicles, I don’t know what does. Even if we accept the cop’s version of events the decision to start shooting was clearly a mistake that should end that cop’s career.

64

ExTank, the part I didn’t like about his story is that he apparently fired 16 shots while only thinking he fired a “couple”. So he reloaded and fired 15 more. Maybe it excuses him from being deliberately murderous, but it suggests he’s not exactly to be trusted with his weapon.

I certainly wouldn’t want him back out on the street with a gun.

65

And lest anyone think I’m being hard on the cops for calling for them to be fired for making mistakes that put one guy in the morgue and two more in the ICU, I would also call for driver of the car to be fired for showing poor judgement for trying to drive away and hitting an undercover cop and an unmarked police van, if the driver had been a police officer, and if only he were still alive.

People who panic and cause other people to die might or might not be liable for various criminal charges depending on the exact circumstances of what they did or didn’t do, but people prone to panics that leave people dead shouldn’t be given a badge and a gun either.

66

[QUOTE=Cheesesteak]
ExTank, the part I didn’t like about his story is that he apparently fired 16 shots while only thinking he fired a “couple”. So he reloaded and fired 15 more. Maybe it excuses him from being deliberately murderous, but it suggests he’s not exactly to be trusted with his weapon.

I certainly wouldn’t want him back out on the street with a gun.
[/QUOTE]

While inexcuseable, it is pretty explainable: adrenalin.

He may have (probably did) received a main-line hot-shot of pure adrenalin. In which your mind goes all bibbledy, perceptions alter, and time gets kinda funny.

67

[QUOTE=What Exit?]
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.
[/QUOTE]

Exactly!

And, Martin Hyde? I’m a little bit on the fence about your post, but I will say this: I believe that if I were a police officer, and, under these circumstances, I killed an unarmed civilian–a person who, apparently, had committed no criminal act, or, as may be the case here, one who acted not out of malice, but out of sheer confusion and fear–I’d have to seriously consider a career change, whether or not I was encouraged to do so my by department.

That’s how I felt when the Diallo shooting went down, and it hasn’t changed.

68

I’m going to agree with ExTank here, on the weird things your mind does under stress.

I’m also going to come on the cop’s side for reloading and continuing fire. If I’m shooting something, I have made the decision that it is better dead.

If it takes one bullet or fifty, I will shoot it until it is dead. Would it be better if they only fired 20 rounds? 30? What’s the tipping point?

Again, I’m not sure what happened.
I’m looking at the NY times link… but the car drives forward, hits the cop, and hits the van.
Backs up, rams a wall, hits the van again.
At about that time, the cops open fire.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/nyregion/29shoot.html
Some things about the officers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/nyregion/26cops.html
An early report says

Logical deduction suggests the undercover officer was black or hispanic. Probably black. Since he opened fire first, clearly it was racially motivated. (Burn in hell, Mr. Sharpton)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/nyregion/27fire.html?pagewanted=2

I reserve the right to change my opinion based on developing news, but there you go.
In my opinion, based on the facts as I have them, the cop presented his badge, IDed himself, and the dead man behind the wheel tried to drive him down.

69

[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]
I’m going to agree with ExTank here, on the weird things your mind does under stress.

I’m also going to come on the cop’s side for reloading and continuing fire. If I’m shooting something, I have made the decision that it is better dead.

If it takes one bullet or fifty, I will shoot it until it is dead. Would it be better if they only fired 20 rounds? 30? What’s the tipping point?
[/QUOTE]

Well, as has been established, these guys were unarmed, so I’d say that something like that might be the tipping point.

<snip>

[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]
Logical deduction suggests the undercover officer was black or hispanic. Probably black. Since he opened fire first, clearly it was racially motivated. (Burn in hell, Mr. Sharpton)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/nyregion/27fire.html?pagewanted=2
[/QUOTE]

With all due respect, E-Sabbath, this convinces me of nothing. Granted, I get what you mean by “racially motivated,” but based, at the very least, on my personal experience, being black in no way insulates me from making unsavory assumptions about other black people based on how they dress, talk, etc. And FWIW, I suspect that much of the ill will that’s aimed towards Al Sharpton has to do with the Tawana Brawley case. (Not saying that this is the case with you, mind you.) My take on that is this: What did he do, really? He took the word of a black woman who claimed that she’d been raped by white men. Historically, black women have been treated like whores and sexually victimized by white men (yeah, I know–not *all * white men), so yeah, I totally get where he was coming from there.

And you know what else I like about Al Sharpton? He’s one of the only prominent black ministers/politicians who’s stated that he supports gay marriage. If you know anything about homophobia and the black church (and, by extension, black American society), then you might be able to imagine just how awesome I think that is. Not that I think he hasn’t made some missteps, but he certainly, IMHO, doesn’t rise to the level of “burn in hell.”

[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]
I reserve the right to change my opinion based on developing news, but there you go.
In my opinion, based on the facts as I have them, the cop presented his badge, IDed himself, and the dead man behind the wheel tried to drive him down.
[/QUOTE]

The cop ID’ing himself is not a fact–it is his claim. Just sayin’, is all.

70

[QUOTE=Li’l Pluck]
The cop ID’ing himself is not a fact–it is his claim. Just sayin’, is all.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, as is the shooting victims saying that they didn’t realize that they were dealing with police officers.

71

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
What if the car kept coming at him even after the first clip was unloaded?

[/QUOTE]

Under what appear to be the rules applicable to NY cops, he should not have been shooting at the car at all. However, if he’s got time to reload, he’s also got time to get out of the way.

72

[QUOTE=What Exit?]
If the Driver knew the officer was an officer and he rammed the officer, than I would agree, he was stupid and he paid the ultimate price for being stupid. He was killed.

I still do not believe this officer should be allowed to function as an armed police officer. I cannot get past the fact that he put a second clip in and discharged it.

Maybe they can find him a nice desk job. Please note I am only calling for the one officer to have his pistol pulled.

Jim
[/QUOTE]

The whole second clip thing only matters if the person was no longer a threat, at least to me.

If I’m a police officer and I’m in a shoot out with three bank robbers, is it instantly unjustifiable and excessive if in the shoot out all 3 of them die and I unload 3 clips? I don’t think so, there’s failure to recognize that most likely you’re going to MISS, and just because you’ve emptied a clip does not mean the threat is gone, at least in my mind. And there are tons of situations less far fetched than the bank robber scenario where someone would remain a threat, in which case it’s not only easy to get my mind around reloading, it’d be hard for me to understand a move as dumb as not reloading, that leaves you virtually unarmed.

73

[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]
I’m also going to come on the cop’s side for reloading and continuing fire. If I’m shooting something, I have made the decision that it is better dead.

If it takes one bullet or fifty, I will shoot it until it is dead. Would it be better if they only fired 20 rounds? 30? What’s the tipping point?

[/QUOTE]

How about the 29 rounds that went into nearby houses, cars and AirTrain platforms? How many bystanders are you going to kill with stray rounds as you wildly attempt to pump bullets into the guy’s twitching corpse?

As I said before, I understand why the cops kept firing…they kept hearing gunshots and didn’t realize the gunfire was all one-way. They thought they were in a firefight and they kept firing in a panic. Which is a perfectly normal reaction, except cops shouldn’t panic in a firefight, and if they do they need to be retired.

And cops aren’t and shouldn’t be trained to shoot to kill. They are and should be trained to shoot to STOP. Which means shooting the target in the center of mass…it doesn’t mean you keep putting bullets into someone. Yeah, getting shot in the chest might kill the target, it might even be likely to kill the target, but the purpose isn’t to kill the target, it is to remove the deadly threat the target poses, and when that deadly threat is neutralized then the cops have no more justification to continue to use deadly force.

These cops fired 50 rounds, and only 2 hit the driver of the vehicle that allegedly hit the undercover cop, and it’s only blind luck that more people weren’t killed. The cops fucked up royally, again, EVEN IF events occured exactly as they allege.

74

[QUOTE=Oakminster]
Under what appear to be the rules applicable to NY cops, he should not have been shooting at the car at all. However, if he’s got time to reload, he’s also got time to get out of the way.
[/QUOTE]

That’s not universally true, it’s not useful arguing that any more, there are many situations where you could have 2 months and you still wouldn’t be able to get out of the way (imagine if you’re pinned in a car, for example–you aren’t getting out of there without help.)

75

[QUOTE=Li’l Pluck]
What did he do, really? He took the word of a black woman who claimed that she’d been raped by white men. Historically, black women have been treated like whores and sexually victimized by white men (yeah, I know–not *all * white men), so yeah, I totally get where he was coming from there.
[/QUOTE]

Problem is, he continued to take her word long after all evidence showed that she was lying through her teeth, and still has not admitted that she was lying, or aplogized to the accused. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth. He’s going to have to do an awful lot of good to make up for that.

76

[QUOTE=ExTank]
I’m provisionally* calling “bullshit” on this (on the cop’s story, Cheesesteak, not you). With a semi-auto, what is routinely considered a “jam” is caused by one of several factors:

  1. Failure to Feed: the bullet either isn’t stripped from the magazine and chambered when the slide comes forward, or the bullet doesn’t chamber properly (getting twisted slightly to the side somehow).

  2. Failure to Extract: after the round if discharged, the recoil pushes the upper receiver or “slide” backwards, and a pawl normally grabs the base of the round, yanks it out of the chamber, and flings it out of the weapon to make room for the next round. In a failure to extract, the spent round is left in the chamber, even as the next round is attempted to be fed.

  3. Failure to Fire: just what it sounds like. You pull the trigger, the gun goes :click:.

None of these are corrected by changing magazines. In #1, you can sometimes tap the back of the slide to chamber a stuck round, or cycle the weapon to chamber the next round in the mag. Switching mags isn’t necessary, or helpful.

In #2, things can be a bit more tricky; you may have to drop your current mag out of the magazine well and cycle the weapon to clear at least the spent bullet that failed to extract. You can change mags at this point, but if you’ve only fired a few rounds from the first mag, why not just reinsert it into the weapon?

The cop’s story is that he’d only fired a few rounds before his weapon “jammed;” he may have let the first mag just drop to the ground and drew a fresh one in reflex. This is the only scenario that remotely makes sense to me as a “gun guy.”

But in any case, simply swapping mags doesn’t do a damn thing to correct the weapon malfunction.

In #3, you just cycle the weapon. Switching mags isn’t necessary, or helpful.

*I say provisionally because the cop’s story may not have been related accurately to the media.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not sure you’re reading the cop’s story correctly. He said, “after he emptied his first clip, he thought his gun had jammed” and then he quickly reloaded a second clip. I think his point was he was experiencing such an adrenaline rush he hadn’t even realized he had discharged all the bullets in the clip, I don’t think he was saying his gun was jammed, he’s saying it stopped firing and he thought–“shit, jammed” then he realized he’d actually emptied the clip. That’s very consistent with lots of reports I hear of police officers using their weapons in times of stress, and I’ve read many reports of cops saying they think they had fired 2-3 times in an incident when they’ve actually emptied an entire clip, or spent all the rounds out of a revolver (in earlier years.)

77

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
If this incident doesn’t illustrate the reason for the policy that cops aren’t supposed to open fire at vehicles, I don’t know what does. Even if we accept the cop’s version of events the decision to start shooting was clearly a mistake that should end that cop’s career.
[/QUOTE]

I disagree on the final point. I don’t think someone’s career should be over because they use a weapon after actually being struck by a motor vehicle that very well could have killed them. Departmental policy be damned, police have to have a right to defend themselves and I think there has to be a point where that factors in as a huge mitigating factor when they violate departmental policy.

78

[QUOTE=Cheesesteak]
ExTank, the part I didn’t like about his story is that he apparently fired 16 shots while only thinking he fired a “couple”. So he reloaded and fired 15 more. Maybe it excuses him from being deliberately murderous, but it suggests he’s not exactly to be trusted with his weapon.

I certainly wouldn’t want him back out on the street with a gun.
[/QUOTE]

We’d have to take guns away from most police officers if we wanted to take guns away from all of the ones who fire more shots than they realize during a situation like this. There are so many documented cases of officers unloading entire clips without being aware of it that it’s quite staggering.

You can’t take regular human beings and expect them to be able to switch on/off from life-death situations and expect them to perform perfectly. I think soldiers perform better under fire, especially when they have been in combat situations before because in the military you are constantly trained with the expectation and the genuine acceptance of the fact you will probably be shot at some day. Whereas no matter how well trained a police officer is, you can’t avoid the fact most of them are never shot at and know they will never be shot at. Furthermore, their incidents in which they have to use their weapons last a few seconds, not weeks or months as is the case with professional soldiers.

Unless you want to start using combat veterans as your police force (and there’s so many reasons that you don’t want a military police force overseeing civilians it’s ridiculous) you have to give police officers some leeway in not performing perfectly or by the book in a situation where they have to use their weapon, at least in my opinion.

If we’re going to start demanding perfection from our cops, we need to start paying them a hell of a lot better than we do. Until I see society make that sort of vested interest I can’t justify asking for perfection. Certainly they should be held to a higher standard than some random guy, but if a police officer discharges his weapon at someone who has nearly killed him, I have a hard time finding fault with that no matter the departmental policy. Yeah, he did violate policy, but the punishment for that should be relatively minor, not career ending.

79

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
And lest anyone think I’m being hard on the cops for calling for them to be fired for making mistakes that put one guy in the morgue and two more in the ICU, I would also call for driver of the car to be fired for showing poor judgement for trying to drive away and hitting an undercover cop and an unmarked police van, if the driver had been a police officer, and if only he were still alive.

People who panic and cause other people to die might or might not be liable for various criminal charges depending on the exact circumstances of what they did or didn’t do, but people prone to panics that leave people dead shouldn’t be given a badge and a gun either.
[/QUOTE]

What about when said person in the morgue ostensibly tried to kill the police officer in question? That has to factor in. Although obviously we’re still not clear on what the situation was or what the motivations were of the driver.

80

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
I disagree on the final point. I don’t think someone’s career should be over because they use a weapon after actually being struck by a motor vehicle that very well could have killed them. Departmental policy be damned, police have to have a right to defend themselves and I think there has to be a point where that factors in as a huge mitigating factor when they violate departmental policy.
[/QUOTE]

Anyone has a right to defend themselves. Are you suggesting that anyone struck by a car may fire 20-odd bullets into it?