Guy is coming at you and close - sure, unload a clip. Guy has his back to you, or is a ways off? Shoot him once (if you really have to), and see if that gets you “compliance”. If not, shoot him again.
You said it would never happen.
I showed you an instance of it happening.
In one, you had a person trying to leave, with officers crowding behind him, and the other, you had a person attacking an officer with a knife.
In the one, you had a whole bunch of officers around, in the other, you had a single officer.
So, yes, different circumstances. In one, the cop was actually in danger, and fired a single shot. In the other, the cop was not in danger, and the only reason he had to even assume that he was in danger was because of the position that he had chosen to put himself in, and so he panicked and fired 7 shots.
Or if you prefer, you have this situation:
Where not only does the guy refuse to get on the ground and instead get into his vehicle, twice, against the cop’s lawful orders, he also tells the cop that he is going to kill him. How does the cop know that he doesn’t have a gun in the car?
0 shots fired.
Yeah, the distinction was like black and white. Oh, wait, it probably was black and white.
You are welcome to disagree with the officer’s decision that there was a threat and that he should have shot. You are welcome to think officers should not have guns.
That is a different discussion than whether officers should shoot to wound. Yes, you can find plenty of instances where officers have shot and not killed the suspect (like this one, 7 shots and he didn’t die). You can find lots of instances where officers have shot and hit nothing at all. And sometimes you get one shot insta-kills.
IF he was not a threat the officer shouldn’t have shot. Period.
The thing with shooting someone is, it only takes one shot to kill someone, but it takes a lot of shots to stop them. If someone’s attacking you, and you shoot them once, they’ll probably bleed to death within five minutes… but five minutes is a heck of a long time for them to hurt and possibly kill you.
If you take even a single shot, it should be because you’re in a situation where killing someone is your least bad option. If you’re not in that situation, then you shouldn’t even be taking shot number 1. And if you are in a situation where the first shot is justified, then shots two through seven (or however large your clip is) are also justified. You won’t kill them any more dead, but you might do so more quickly. Which matters.
Yes, sometimes you shoot someone once, or even seven times, and they still survive. But that’s not what you should ever plan for.
The fact is that cops shoot wildly in a blind panic. That’s how out of seven point-blank shots, three of them can miss completely. There’s no way to train cops or anyone else to be less deadly. They have to be trained to use fireams less period. Indeed, they have to be trained to use all potentiallly deadly force less. They need to understand that they are there to protect everybody else other than themselves, including the people they are confronting.
If they’re not going to risk their own lives to protect everyone else, we don’t actually have a use for them,
Thank you, and I will.
You are welcome to think that I think that.
I can also find instances where officers have shot and hit innocent bystanders, or even other cops.
At least we are in agreement that even the first shot was unjustified.
But somehow the next 6 are.
Would be nice to cite someone other than a couple of cops.
As I recall, there is little consistent reporting of police shootings across the various law enforcement organizations. That makes it difficult to assess the effectiveness of various methods. It would not seem an impossible task to assess shooting incidents, and compare incidents where 1-2 shots were fired compared to 5-7, and the effectiveness of the various approaches.
Folk often talk about the crazed assailant who continues through multiple shots. OK - how frequently does that happen? Are those the situations where cops are being criticized? It sure WASN’T the case in Kenosha, or in Chicago w/ Laquan McDonald. Shouldn’t cops be able to distinguish between sitiuations where multiple shots are needed, as opposed to when 1-2 shots are enough? In fact, don’t most cops do so, such that when a cop fucks up and uses excessive force, that can be criticized and punished?
I think it problematic that certain posters present this as a dichotomy - suggesting that anyone who questions THIS use of force as excessive believes in NO use of lethal force by police.
I - for one - do not accept that. I do not object to (most) police being armed, and I can imagine many instances in which the use of lethal force is warranted. But there is the old problem of - if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I think - at heart - the current shooting reflect a recruitment and training issue. What was happening in this incident such that the cops tried to tase the guy twice, and then had their guns out? What would the harm have been if he had gotten away at the moment?
I view this similarly to the past practice of high speed chases - which were discontinued due to their limited effectiveness and undesirable collateral damage.
What experts would satisfy you? They are certainly more experts on the subject matter than I am and likely you as well.
What was happening? Here’s what allegedly happened. (Note if you don’t like that this comes from Wikipedia, take up with the sources, all of which appear to come from credible news sources).
On August 23, Kenosha police responded to a 911 call about a “domestic incident” at approximately 5:11 PM. According to multiple official sources, the female caller referred to Blake as her “boyfriend”, said he was not permitted to be on the premises, and that he’d taken her car keys and was refusing to give them back.[15][16] Officers were also informed by the dispatcher that there was a “wanted” alert for someone at the address, indicated by police code 10-99.[9] Blake had a warrant for his arrest from July, based on charges of third-degree sexual assault,[note 1] trespassing, and disorderly conduct in connection with domestic abuse.[1][9] The woman who called 911 on August 23 to report that Blake had stolen her keys was the same woman who had previously filed the criminal complaint alleging that Blake had sexually assaulted her.[17] Both Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis and the Kenosha Professional Police Association stated that the officers dispatched on August 23 were aware of the pending warrant for Blake before they arrived on scene.[17][18][19]
According to a witness, Blake pulled his car up near “six or seven women shouting at each other on the sidewalk” and “Blake did not say anything to the women”.[20] According to other witnesses, Blake was trying to intervene between two women who were arguing when police arrived.[13] According to the police union, the officers were dispatched because of a complaint that Blake was attempting to steal the caller’s keys and vehicle.[21]
Officers attempted to subdue Blake, and two officers used tasers on him.[22][13][23] A bystander who recorded a video of the incident told reporters that he heard police yelling “drop the knife”, but also said, “I didn’t see any weapons in his hands; he wasn’t being violent”.[24] The police union says that Blake was armed with a knife in his left hand, but officers did not initially see it, and he “forcefully fought with the officers, including putting one of [them] in a headlock”, while ignoring orders to drop the knife.[25] “Based on the inability to gain compliance and control after using verbal, physical and less-lethal means, the officers drew their firearms,” the police union added.[21][26] One of Blake’s attorneys disputed this version of events, calling it “overblown”, and saying that the police officers were the aggressors and immediately became physical with Blake upon arriving at the scene.[27]
After an initial scuffle, Blake walked to the driver’s side of his vehicle, followed by officer Rusten Sheskey and another officer with handguns drawn. Blake’s hands were empty. Sheskey attempted to grab Blake, and when Blake opened the driver’s side door and leaned in, Sheskey grabbed him and fired seven shots towards Blake’s back.[13][28] In a press conference on August 26, 2020, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said that a knife was recovered from the driver-side front floorboard of the car Blake was leaning into when he was shot in the back. Kaul also said that Blake told investigators that he had a knife, though Kaul declined to describe the knife or say whether it was related to the shooting; Blake’s lawyers disputed the implication that the knife was in his possession.[29]
Based off my reading of that, there was no way Blake was going anywhere outside of the back of a police car, let alone in his own car with kids in the back. That was basically predetermined before the police even got there based on the outstanding warrants.
Also I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that high speed chases have been “discontinued”. That is simply not true. That still happens quite frequently on a case by case basis.
Perhaps I am not expressing myself clearly. Perhaps someone can help me understand the miscommunication.
I never suggested the cops should have tried to inflict “a flesh wound”, or to shoot Blake in an arm or leg. Instead, I’m asking whether it is unreasonable for a cop who is aiming at center mass, from a very close distance, at a suspect who does not clearly have a gun and who is not moving towards the cop - ought to stop after firing a couple of shots to see if he actually hit what he was firing at.
None of the cited articles support firing 7 shots - instead of 1 or 2. I am not sure exactly how many times the officer fired, or how many times Blake was hit. A quick search revealed many references to him having been shot 7 times. I thought I had also heard that 7 shots were fired. I do not know the model of gun or clip capacity, but it sounds as tho the cop involved had a much better “hit ratio” than the articles cited describe.
And re: my reference to high speed chases, my understanding (no cites, sorry) was that the practice had been greatly reduced in the Chicago area, due to crashes and injuries in chases related to relatively minor offenses. Perhaps “restricted” would have been a better term - but I may well be mistaken. I had a high speed chase occur around me earlier this summer - quite disturbing.
What was the cops’ primary goal? Defusing the situation and ensuring that laws were enforced - or escalating things when their initial efforts were disobeyed? My impression is the latter played too great a role.
Seems to me the resulting shooting was down to the fact that the cops lost control of the situation. Didn’t wait for back-up. Couldn’t defuse the situation and ended up escalating it instead. Got all butt hurt that the guy made fools of them and refused to respect their authority. Did I mention lost control?
Not very frequently at all. Which is why cops should only very infrequently fire even that first bullet. They shouldn’t be shooting at all unless there’s a crazed assailant.
But this thread is asking us to assume, for the sake of argument, that the first shot was justified. That means assuming that the suspect was, in fact, a crazed assailant, because that’s the situation under which a shot is justified.
As the OP - I’m not entirely sure. I was assuming the facts in THIS case (as best we know them.) Even if I was willing to grant the cop the first 1-2 shots to this non-gunbearing person’s back, I just don’t see how the next 5 shots can be anything other than at least a major fuckup.
What do you mean by defusing and ensuring that laws were enforced? For anyone who thinks they should have let him get in his car and drive away (if anyone does think that here – I’ve heard it said elsewhere), what do you think about the fact that this is someone with a warrant out for the rape* of the woman whose house he is at, and whose car keys he has taken, and whose residence he has apparently been ordered to stay away from? I am strongly in favor of police reform and fewer people getting shot by police, and I want police to figure out how to better handle situations like this one. And I also strongly support rape and domestic abuse victims, and their right to have police protect them. Having the police back away and let him go would be terrible, in my view.
I’d like to know how and why the tasers didn’t work. It seems like some kind of nonlethal option was definitely called for. I’m not sure, without more info, if they should have tried the taser again, or if that was even feasible.
*2nd degree sexual abuse is defined there as sex without consent – what is commonly known as rape.
Dinsdale, the facts in this case don’t support shots 2-7, because the facts in this case didn’t support shot 1 either. The reason for all of the shots is the same, and if it’s a good or bad reason is also the same for all of the shots.
And if you want to stop the guy from driving away, why not just park the police car to block him in?
I probably agree w/ all you say, Chronos.
I was thinking of a couple of things. I’m really willing to cut cops A LOT of slack. And I have limited sympathy for folk who have clearly acted illegally and disobey police. But even these predispositions of mine have limits.
Likely related - of people who think this shooting justified/appropriate/whatever, I was hoping they could explain why all 7 shots were justified.
How’s this for an analogy? Someone comes up behind me and startles me by tapping my shoulder. I react poorly by perceiving a threat, spinning around and punching them. OK - I should be liable for battery, but my reaction COULD be understandable in light of all of the facts. But it is a different situation if I hit them, knock them to the ground, and then proceed to straddle them and pound them into a pulp. No?
The only options I see for shooting this many times are either ill-motive - malice, intent to punish, etc., or gross, reckless, over-reaction and lack of control.
The most common is the probe(s) didn’t make contact with the skin.
InRange Youtube of the history of the taser.
Skip to about 15:00 for demonstrations including failures.
Yes, I know. But we haven’t heard if that was the cause here. There are other reasons, and it’s not like he was wearing heavy clothing or something. If they were missing or some other failure that had nothing to do with Blake personally, then they needed to try again. For the two tasers that had been deployed, could they fire them again, or did they have to be reloaded? Did the third officer have a taser? What other less lethal options did they have?
I don’t expect answers from anyone here. I’d just like the information to come out.