I don’t know how else to say it, so I’m just going to say it: sometimes I forget to listen to the weather. I know, it doesn’t sound so bad, but the thing is…sometimes that means I wear a heavy coat…when it turns out to be a warm day. (Yes I suck!).
As a nervous, absent-minded, person who carries a bulky backpack, I figure I’m one Indian Summer away from the Sweet Hereafter.
Seriously, though - this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Profiling is controversial enough when it has to do with airport delays. But using profiling to determine whether to administer a coup de grace in the field? Plus that profile describes a science professor or a schizophrenic at least as well as it describes a suicide bomber. If they start using it for real, half the MIT faculty will be wiped out in a month.
I know it sounds bad, but I really don’t think there’s going to be a rash of shootings of people wearing unseasonal clothing and/or bulky backpacks. Even if they suspect you of something, I’m sure they’ll shout “Freeze!” or something like that first. You might get questioned, but I think that’s about it. I mean, they’re going to look at the whole picture, I think.
According to reports they will not be shouting anything. That gives the suspected bomber a warning and they may just set their bomb of then and there.
Nope the first you’ll know about it is when armed non uniformed men chase you down jump on your back and put seven shots in your head and one in the shoulder.
Actually, this explains a lot. Many movies set in the future show people wearing skin-tight clothing; e.g., Star Trek.
This leads to the obvious question: Why are people in the future wearing skin-tight clothing? We now know the answer: So no one will suspect they’re strapped with explosives and shoot them in the head.
The cops don’t try to shoot you in the leg to make you stop. They won’t shoot your hand or shoot the gun out of your hand. If they decide to shoot at you, they are going to try and kill you.
“There is no other kind of shooting”. OK, if the police are shooting for your body, I can see where they would only shoot to kill, but there are different kinds of shootings.
Still, I’d like a cite where it’s stated that only 100% lethal force is acceptable. Never, ever shoot to disable, only to kill. And for all police, not just the London police. Their policy is spelled out above.
And you could be right, maybe I’ve been jaded by seeing too many cops shows on TV where they put one in his leg or whatever.
And I’m a Packard.
International Police Chiefs organization? Is G. Gordon Liddy a consultant for them? “If you see a person wearing unseasonal clothing board a train he might be planning a hit, so you have to hit him first. Since he might survive a center-of-mass shot and push that button you’ve got to shoot them in the head.”
I’m not sure you’ll accept this, since it’s not a written source, but I will mention it anyway.
When I was issued my PA License to Conceal Firearms, one of the things I had to do was sit in a seminar where it was spelled out exactly what the rules were with regards to use of that firearm.
Washington County Deputy Sheriff D’Allessandro informed the group that it is not advisable to draw your weapon on anyone unless you believe the circumstances justify shooting the center of body mass, and that drawing your firearm on a person means that you have used deadly force. What we were told is that it is a very bad idea to aim for any part of the body other than the center of mass or the head, since it is far more difficult to hit a small target like a hand, and it also indicates that the shooter did not consider lethal force to be justified. We were also told that this is the procedure that is followed by the Washington County Sheriff’s Dept. as well as the Pennsylvania State Police.
To paraphrase Deputy D’Allessandro, “We don’t shoot to wound, and neither should you.”
I think you’re missing the point that as a matter of course, police in the UK are not armed. Thus being shot at by police is very much the exception rather than the rule.
I think he just thinks “shoot to disable” means something other than what it does. When a police officer is shooting at you, it’s to try and disable you (ie, bring you down) where death of the target is not necessarily the goal, but the expected outcome. Basically, he’s going to aim for the torso because that’s the best chance he has of hitting you and ending the threat - either because you’re dead or in need of emergency hospital treatment. Either way, the threat has been disabled.
I think there’s a difference between that and when death of the target is the absolute goal and nothing short of that is acceptable. Which is when you get cops holding a guy down while another cop pumps 8 rounds into the back of his head.
The most common terminology that I have heard from law enforcement is ‘shoot to stop.’ The most reliable way to do that is to aim for the center of mass, which is typically around the middle of the chest. It’s understood that ‘stop’ often involves the death of the person you are stopping.
It also has to do with the fact that drawing a firearm is considered (at least in PA) to be using lethal force, and the last thing you want to do is provide evidence that you did not believe lethal force to be justified. This is what we were told when we were told not to ever aim for an arm or leg or hand.
And what was asked is whether or not when a cop is shooting at a person, if he’s ‘shooting to kill.’ In terminology, no. He’s shooting to stop, and going for a wound in an arm or leg is not a good way to go about that. It might not only be ineffective because someone with a leg wound can still pull the trigger on his own gun, but in an adrenaline-pumping situation it’s even harder to be accurate and you might miss entirely.
Basically though, if a cop is shooting at your body, he’s aiming for an area that’s going to kill you. He may’ve been schooled in just center-of-mass, or he may’ve been schooled as double-tap center-of-mass and double-tap head, but there’s no way he’s going for an arm or a leg like in the movies or on TV.
I believe the London police had been learning from the Israeli police that if you shoot a suicide bomber suspect, you have to destroy the head completly and quickly. Otherwise the wounded bomber can still detonate. If you shot the suspect in the chest, then he might still be able to set off the device.
If the guy had a bomb, (most) everyone would think these guys are heros. They already suspected him as they were staking out his house.
No, they did not. He did not have a house. They were staking out the entire apartment complex. They didn’t know who this guy was until after they killed him and found some ID.
The idea of shooting at the center of mass is shoot to hit, not shoot to stop. If you aim for the center of any target and miss the center, you may still hit a bit off center or at least the edges of the target. The intention of drawing a gun in combat is shoot to stop.