I would like to concentrate only on the tactics of this engagement regarding the placement of the vehicle. Not whether officers should protect themselves, the right to bear arms, etc.
I don’t know all the details and I assume that you don’t either.
There doesn’t appear to be much foot traffic or other vehicles in the street/parking lot. The paved areas are clear of snow.
Why bring the vehicle inside the park area? Snow covered grass is not good for keeping your footing.
Why would the officer position the vehicle so close to a person with a gun? There is open area to the left of the gazebo that would have provided more distance. Wouldn’t placing the vehicle in this position put the passenger in a bad spot?
So LEO’s and other security trained personnel, why would someone position their vehicle there?
They crossed his tee, and cut off any avenue of oblique evasion. The suspect would then have to back up and go around that Gazebo in order to evade in a foot chase. If that was a real weapon, he would have had cover from the gazebo area, had they pulled up on the street.
One needs to define the criteria. An assumption made in this and similar incidents seems to be that the only priorities are
[ul][li] Apprehending the suspect, dead or alive.[/li][li] Protecting the police.[/li][/ul]
Before questions like OP’s can be answered one needs to ask questions like
[ul][li] Is it better to have a “suspect” live but escape, or have him shot dead by the police? What if the “suspect” is obviously not a hardened criminal, but likely just an addled person, or a kid playing with a toy?[/li][li] Should police be asked to suffer an increased 0.01% chnace of injury if it reduces by 10% the chance that they need to shoot dead an innocent civilian?[/li][/ul]
Obviously, a policeman can’t be expected to assess probabilities in the heat of the moment. But priorities and trade-offs need to be considered in training. In some of the recent incidents, it’s hard to understand police behavior unless killing an unidentified suspect is viewed as a successful outcome.
What Declan said. Pulling up that close is a tactic designed to cut off avenues of escape. it’s quite common in active gang/drug dealing neighborhoods (which that area is, I’m very familiar with it) where suspects tend to bolt.
I teach police tactics and, in my opinion, pulling up that close to someone you believed to be armed (and has been pointing the gun at others) is far from desirable. One of the hardest things to do is train cops to not get too close. We expect them to rush in and handle the problem. Distance equals time. Time to better assess what is going on. Time to get behind better cover/concealment. Time to wait for backup. I hate to Monday morning quarterback though and maybe they a had a good reason for getting so close. Maybe they were flying in and were on top of him before they realized it and were unable to stop in the snow.