This happened this morning.
There doesn’t appear to have been any attempts at using pepper spray, tasers, or even attempting to talk to the person. They just shot him and killed him.
I’ve noticed this pattern a lot recently, that police will ignore the possibility of negotiation or less-lethal weapons, and simply shoot the person dead. Why does this keep happening?
Maine has had several fatal police shootings this year, and most of them very quickly escalated to the suspect being killed. Sometimes the victim didn’t even have a real gun.
The police will generally use lethal force if they perceive that bystanders or themselves are in serious danger. Confronting them with a firearm in the middle of the night is an excellent way to create that perception.
So? That is enough to cause you to believe the police acted inappropriately in this case, when we’re given no other details then “Dionne confronted them with a firearm and deputies shot him”? Nothing about that small detail backs up the assumption in your thread title.
Well depending on how Mr newly Deceased greeted officers with his firearms, pepper spray and tasers my not have been a very prudent response.
Pepper spray wont stop me from shooting you, hell neither will military grade CS.
Not if i am already set up to do so.
And a taser has limited range, and limited effect to make you not shoot me if your finger is already on the trigger, hell it might make you shoot me faster.
Exactly how many words might you attempt to say to me as i am pointing a 45 at your head pulling the hammer back?
I think you may just get out “Wait!” then BANG, you’re dead.
By the way, confronting officers with a fake gun, well there is a word for that.
Suicide.
Not enough info on the story to judge anything yet, but unruly persons brandishing firearms against armed members of law enforcement is not a game winning move.
Because they are trained to do so.
And we had a interesting example in vic.aus over the last 50 years. Aus is not a gun culture.
The police were given guns. They shot each other.
They were given training on shooting people. They shot people.
There was an external review. Training was changed. They stopped shooting people.
Police officers don’t “shoot to kill.” They are trained to shoot to stop the threat by aiming where they have the greatest likelihood of doing so. Because the center of mass is the best place to aim for hitting a person (much less stopping them), they aim for that. It just happens that there’s also some major organs there. The Hollywood-inspired notion of shooting to “wing the suspect” or shoot a weapon out of a suspect’s hand is completely unrealistic & dangerous to the public (if the shot doesn’t hit the suspect, where does it go?).
Don’t want to get shot by the police? Obey their commands. Whether a person can continue to present a threat to the officers & the public isn’t up for debate. Comply with the officers’ orders & you won’t get shot.
Because there are few and rare consequences to doing so, no matter what the circumstances. This thread demonstrates half the reason why.
So you suggest an armed man with a hand gun walks towards the police and you wish them to use restraint and:
- Try conversation
- Try Pepper spray
- Then Use a Taser
- Then, and only then, can they use a firearm to protect themselves…
I would say this is a policy designed to have more police killed each year in the line of duty.
Is that your goal here, to have more police killed each year ?
Why do you believe part of police training involves being trained to be quick to kill?
How does this thread do that?
Not enough info to suggest anything, including your contention that shooting the man was the correct action. The manner in which this firearm was being carried is crucial to making any judgments.
Killing someone should be an absolute last resort.
There have been many cases where police made the snap decision to kill unarmed people, or people who were not posing a direct threat. Police being too quick to kill has even lead to riots.
In Ireland, UK, Norway, Iceland, and New Zealand, the police do not carry guns at all. Do these countries have significantly more officers killed in the line of duty than the US?
This happened about 24 hours ago, I’m sure there’s going to be a press release this morning. But in general, here’s the issue:
Cops show up at a scene,
" Dionne confronted them with a firearm"
Cops shoot the guy that confront them with a gun.
I’m willing to bet they used the standard protocol of ID’ing themselves, asking him to put it down, telling him they would shoot if they didn’t etc. But as soon as you point a gun at a cop (or anyone else with a gun that’s willing to shoot back) it becomes a situation of ‘either I’m going home tonight or you are…and I want to go home tonight’.
As far as LTL weapons, as was explained, for most of them you have to be considerably closer and to the best of my knowledge most officers don’t carry things like salt or beanbag shotguns.
But next time you wonder about something like this ask yourself the same question, put yourself in the officers shoes, even just slip one on for a second. Imagine you had a gun on you and saw an armed person that appeared ready to shoot someone. If he pointed the gun at you, do you get close enough to tase or spray him or do you shoot him from where you are.
Methinks you’re a tad incorrect in your assertion about police not carrying guns.
About 150 LEO’s are killed annually. Investigating officers confronted by a suspect with a firearm (deadly force) or what appears to be a firearm, gives the officers the right to protect themselves. In the US, citizens are aware that LEO’s carry weapons and that they will use them. If you don’t want to experience deadly force from a LEO, best case is to not be brandishing a gun when you are being confronted.
UK: They don’t carry guns as part of normal beat duty, you’re right, but obviously there are specialist fire arms units (deployed at airports and the like, and during gun related incidents).
But for the record, there were NO UK police officers killed on duty in 2016. One in 2017 (Keith Palmer, the officer stabbed outside Parliament).
It’s quite simple really. The average policeman doesn’t carry a gun. So the average petty thief doesn’t need to either. Win win.
So, not only do “petty thieves” carry guns in the US, they do so because the police carry them, and if the police didn’t, they would cease to carry them because the need to would be alleviated. Interesting theory.
Are you suggesting that the police should die as a second-to-last resort … hmmmm … interesting thought but not very likely …
I don’t know that this particular incident is a good example of what I’m guessing the OPs is actually asking about.
Certainly police ARE quick to kill, and in situations where it’s absolutely unnecessary, there’s plenty of data showing this to be the case here in the US.
I read an article where it was speculated that in many cases it’s due to poor police training. They jump in front of moving vehicles unnecessarily for example. They create situations in which, no matter the response form the suspect, there’s only one outcome, and there are almost never any repercussions for the officers involved or their departments. In one case they discussed, an officer put himself right in front of a moving vehicle, shining a bright light at the driver. Now, if the driver had not immediately acted to stop the car, he would have been shot and killed, like in many similar incidents, because the cop is now under physical threat (by the car), nevermind that he put himself there in the first place. Of course the young (black) man involved apparently tried to stop the car, only to be shot because, well he moved, and the police interpreted THAT as a threat.
This all happened because supposedly this person wasn’t wearing his seatbelt (contradicted by his passenger, by the way). In all likelihood, this was really another attempt by police to extract cash from people under current drug laws, and not really because he wasn’t wearing shi seatbelt. Why we think it was a good idea to turn our police officers into highwaymen I’ll never know.
Many police are trained to escalate situations, rather than deescalate. Think of the Rice case. This was a child, playing with a bb-gun. In almost any other country police would have taken a cautious approach and spoken to the child form a safe distance to try and deescalate the situation.
But not the cops involved in the Rice case. No, they drove straight at the kid like they were in a Michael Bay film and jumped out of the vehicle shooting.
It’s not that hard to get your head around. Police don’t carry guns, average homeowners don’t have them, simply being caught carrying a handgun will give you a mandatory five year prison sentence, so if you just want to break a kitchen window and steal a laptop… why on earth would you carry a gun?
Thanks for the quote marks, BTW. We generally regard petty thieves as a pain, but not a threat to life. Because they don’t tend to carry guns.
Think of the Rice case? That’s evidence that police are trained to escalate situations?
I could think of lots of reasons, for instance, to avoid getting severely hurt by someone protecting their home and property. But I don’t believe that most laptop thieves carry guns in the US.
Are you going to establish that petty thieves in the US tend to carry guns?
This. Their fear results from training, formal and informal. They are taught to shoot people and how to justify the shooting. So they do it. It will take training to undo that.