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So a friend's friend got shot and killed by the cops
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StormRider
Diamond Member
Personally, I'm pretty sure if someone was standing only 10 feet away from me and had a tire iron in his hand and was walking around menacingly (swaggering) towards me with an attitude I would have great fear of being seriously hurt or killed.
I find it somewhat amusing that many would claim that they would not be in fear in such a situation. I'm almost positive that most guys would be in fear in such a situation.
For the police officer, the problem is that having a gun is also a liability. Let's say he doesn't shoot the guy and the guy takes a swing at him with the tire iron. In the ensuing struggle it's quite possible for the attacker to take away the gun from the officer and use it on him. That's why officers are usually taught to take no chances if they feel threaten.
mugs
Lifer
Of course. I've said that over and over again. All we CAN do is consider the possibilities. Given that we don't know what happened, and absent any other proof of what happened, I accept the officers' claim that he lunged at them, and I believe deadly force was justified.
I'm not trained as a police officer, so I can't speak as an expert on police training. Perhaps someone who is trained as a police officer could weigh in. But as long as the guy is not actually moving to attack with the tire iron, I think a better course of action would be to take a few steps back with guns still aimed at the guy and try to get control of the situation. Taking a few steps back diminishes the tire iron's effectiveness as a weapon and would potentially calm the situation. The ideal outcome of the situation is that nobody dies.
I hope it's clear that I do not actually think the police shot the guy while he was just standing there holding a tire iron that he was prepared to use as a weapon. This whole string of replies has ventured pretty far from the topic of this thread into the theoretical. I'm not speculating about what did happen. I accept the explanation that the guy did lunge at the police and they were justified in shooting him. There is no evidence to support any conclusion, but I don't believe two guys' careers and lives should be ruined over that.
soonerproud
Golden Member
Please be a little more specific on how the police are going to accomplish this and still guarantee their safety and the safety of citizens around them. Even the police in the UK will call in the guns if a guy is welding a knife or blunt object and refuses to drop it.
BeauJangles
Lifer
I agree. To the police's benefit, they were clearly spending time trying to get him to put down whatever he had. In the video you can see they back away from the squad car as he approaches and are clearly talking to him the entire time. I have no idea what happened off camera, but from that initial encounter it doesn't seem like those police officers were primed to kill or anything.
jlee
Lifer
A deadly weapon is an item which is designed to be used, or in the method in which it is used, is capable of inflicting death or serious bodily injury. A tire iron can definitely qualify as a deadly weapon.
You're right in that distance is your friend. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out..you can only retreat so far. Hard saying, not knowing what exactly happened. I wouldn't mind reading the officers' reports on it - curious to see the situation from their perspective.
FWIW, you can fight through pepper spray, and Tasers are not always effective. It would've been nice if one of the officers did have a Taser, but they'd need another with deadly force as an immediate option should the Taser fail. I don't know any cops who are itching to shoot someone...
Ten shots..could be five per officer. I can lay out five shots very, very quickly..under stress, I could see how that could happen.
Bingo...
imported_Baloo
Golden Member
Used to be that disobeying a cop was not grounds for the death penalty. The guy is dead, that weighs far more heavily than swinging a tire iron. Your friends are right on this one, except you are not an idiot.
BeauJangles
Lifer
First, hitting someone in the leg isn't that easy. Second, it isn't much safer as there are major arteries (femoral) that, if pierced, will kill someone in minutes.
jonks
Lifer
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12....html?pagewanted=print
December 9, 2007
The Nation
A Hail of Bullets, a Heap of Uncertainty
By AL BAKER
AFTER almost every high-profile fatal shooting by the police, a flurry of questions follows hard on the hail of bullets. Premier among them is, Did they have to kill him?
This often implies a more subtle subtext that goes to the heart of police training: Is there a middle ground? And is it possible to shoot to wound?
The answer, law enforcement officials and experts agree, is no, but not because the only alternative is shooting to kill.
While popular culture has embedded both extremes ? the hardened mantra of ?shoot to kill? and the benevolent private eye (think Barnaby Jones) who expertly inflicts only a flesh wound ? the truth is that neither practice is a staple of police guidelines. In fact, the most likely result when a policeman discharges a gun is that he or she will miss the target completely. So an officer could no sooner shoot to wound than shoot to kill with any rate of success. In life-or-death situations that play out in lightning speed ? such precision marksmanship is unrealistic.
In New York, many other municipalities and some federal agencies, guidelines instruct officers to shoot to ?stop? ? and in particular, to stop an assailant who poses a deadly threat to the officers involved or civilians.
?We do not train our agents to shoot to wound or to shoot the gun out of someone?s hand, we train them to shoot to stop the threat,? said William G. McMahon, the special agent in charge who heads the New York field division of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ?In the milliseconds a law enforcement officer has to react during a life-threatening situation, aiming to wound is not an option.?
Agent McMahon faced tough questions a few weeks ago when a federal officer in the Bronx shot a suspect in the head, after the suspect had brandished a hand grenade and sped away in a car, dragging the agent 20 feet. That followed two fatal police shootings in Brooklyn, one in which the victim pulled out a hair brush that the police said looked like a gun, and another in which the victim wielded a broken bottle in his hand. Both shootings raised questions about the use of deadly force.
New York City police statistics show that simply hitting a target, let alone hitting it in a specific spot, is a difficult challenge. In 2006, in cases where police officers intentionally fired a gun at a person, they discharged 364 bullets and hit their target 103 times, for a hit rate of 28.3 percent, according to the department?s Firearms Discharge Report. The police shot and killed 13 people last year.
In 2005, officers fired 472 times in the same circumstances, hitting their mark 82 times, for a 17.4 percent hit rate. They shot and killed nine people that year.
In all shootings ? including those against people, animals and in suicides and other situations ? New York City officers achieved a 34 percent accuracy rate (182 out of 540), and a 43 percent accuracy rate when the target ranged from zero to six feet away. Nearly half the shots they fired last year were within that distance.
In Los Angeles, where there are far fewer shots discharged, the police fired 67 times in 2006 and had 27 hits, a 40 percent hit rate, which, while better than New York?s, still shows that they miss targets more often they hit them.
Bad marksmanship? Police officials and law enforcement experts say no, contending that the number of misses underscores the tense and unpredictable nature of these situations. For example, a 43 percent hit rate for shots fired from zero to six feet might seem low, but at that range it is very likely that something has already gone wrong: perhaps an officer got surprised, or had no cover, or was wrestling with the suspect.
?When you factor in all of the other elements that are involved in shooting at an adversary, that?s a high hit rate,? said Raymond W. Kelly, the New York police commissioner. ?The adrenaline flow, the movement of the target, the movement of the shooter, the officer, the lighting conditions, the weather ... I think it is a high rate when you consider all of the variables.?
John C. Cerar, a retired commander of the New York Police Department?s firearms training section, was more tempered in his assesment of the hit rates. ?They?re acceptable,? he said. ?In pristine conditions, you are going to get better hit ratios.? He said handguns were an imperfect weapon. ?As long as the handgun is the main tool for the police officers to use, you are going to have misses,?? he said.
Citizen?s rights advocates insist the statistics point up the need to train officers to recognize and employ other, less deadly options. ?The low hit rate provides another reason why they should do everything possible to avoid having to shoot in the first place, given the likelihood they are going to hit something or someone other than their intended target,? said Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Mr. Kelly pointed to examples of excellent marksmanship, including a 2003 incident in which a City Council member was killed at City Hall. An officer fired six times at the assailant from about 45 feet away; four or five of the shots hit the gunman and killed him.
Interviews with police officials in Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles show that when the police do shoot, they are trained to aim at ?center mass.? That gives the officer a margin of error, because missing the target can mean hitting bystanders. In stressful confrontations, experts said, the goal was to have the officer fall back on his training to aim for the center.
?You want instinct to take over,? one federal agent said.
New York police officials say that their policy manual includes several directives instructing officers to use the minimum amount of force necessary. For instance, the guide bans warning shots in deadly physical force situations ? because police don?t use bullets as deterrents, and because errant shots can be dangerous. They also cannot shoot at a moving vehicle unless a deadly threat is coming from something other than the vehicle, like a gunman.
New York officials say they believe their officers use more restraint than the police in other major cities do. The police reports on gunfire do not include a breakdown of the victims? race, which is often an inflammatory aspect of New York police shootings.
Mr. Dunn said the policies in the manual are ?pretty good? in spelling out abstract rules on deadly force but added: ?I am struck at the lack of practical direction about how to minimize the circumstances in which deadly force can be used.?
Candace McCoy, a professor of criminal justice at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, said that officers must be intimately familiar with the neighborhoods they patrol, and understand its natural perimeters, so they can intelligently contain an incident and defuse it short of using deadly force. They can find an in-between tactic, experts said, such as using a Taser, a baton or pepper spray.
But too often, Professor McCoy said, such middle ground for officers disappears. Once it does, and bullets start to fly, there is no telling where they will land.
?You take Olympic shooters, and they practice all the time, and they can hit a fly off a cow?s nose from 100 yards,? said Mr. Cerar, the retired commander. ?But if you put a gun in that cow?s hand, you will get a different reaction from the Olympic shooter.?
Wow, I'm surprised how many people don't understand how close 10 feet really is. Thats about three steps away. We're taught in ccw class that basically if someone is coming at you with a knife within 21 feet, you MIGHT be able to stop him, but you are still going to get cut. This is half that distance with a weapon that can extend his reach. Raise his arm and he's basically half the distance to the officers already. That means 1-2 steps and he is within striking distance.
I rant about cops all the time, about the double standard between law enforcement personnel and civilians but in this case, I don't see myself jumping down their throats.
The article has incomplete information, says 10 holes in his body but not how many total fired.
I'll withhold my personal judgment until I find out more, but so far I know one thing.
It takes one dumb motherfucker to do what he did.
I rant about cops all the time, about the double standard between law enforcement personnel and civilians but in this case, I don't see myself jumping down their throats.
The article has incomplete information, says 10 holes in his body but not how many total fired.
I'll withhold my personal judgment until I find out more, but so far I know one thing.
It takes one dumb motherfucker to do what he did.
dbk
Lifer
I wonder how much threat the police felt with the holding that tire iron. Is it because they're trained to put the threat down that they fired all those shots? Were they just waiting for the theoretical "go" sign? Ultimately, the guy did not comply with the police officers' orders, so he's to blame.
Why not experiment? Have a friend of yours walk 8-10 paces away from you. Have him hold a tire iron or another heavy, blunt, one-handed object over his head. Have him pose as if he is prepared to lunge at you and attack you. Now imagine it was the real deal, and he's ready to kill you.
You ever see what a tire iron can do to a car door or the hood of a car? Imagine that same tire iron caving in a persons head, with grey matter splattering out after the first strike.
Why did they fire that many shots? You shoot until the threat is neutralized. Whether that means the person is completely incapacitated but alive, or that they are in fact dead, it makes no difference.
QueBert
Lifer
police have special privileges here in the states, weather they were right or wrong can be debated. But, if a dude with a tire iron was coming at me and I shot him I would be in jail, end of story. I might be found innocent, but I also might end up staying there for a good number of years. These Cops won't even been investigated, not even if they have a history of excessive force. Cops knows they can get away with whatever they want, especially when they can just add "I felt my life was in danger" to the story. If a cop is fucking with me for no reason and has a gun/weapon drawn I cannot use that same excuse, I shoot a cop I'm going down hard. I respect what cops do for a living, but a lot of them know they are above the law and act accordingly.
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