drbob
1661
Surprised no one posted this yet. The single taser they have ready fails to work. So what do the 5 cops at the scene do to capture their single suspect when he raises the metal bar he’s holding?
Back off and try again with the taser?
Release the police dog they have on hand?
Surround him five on one and subdue with batons?
Shoot him 10 times & injure a bystander with a stray bullet?
All caught on video. Warning graphic.
News article about the shooting.
While its an unfortunate situation, I don’t see that as police misconduct.
It looks like the guy was a few feet away from a cop and starting a swing. Each cop that fired presumably fired 3-5 rounds (shockingly, they don’t coordinate by mind-meld to conserve bullets).
Sadly, real-life is not a squad-based TBS where you get to seamless coordinate a set of behavior for a group of five cops.
Rather than the heat-of-the-moment reaction, I’d focus more on some other things, like why the cops allowed so many bystanders to be in close proximity to the situation (a safety risk for the bystanders and the cops). That, in many ways, ramped up the urgency of the situation.
That guy had a crowbar. He could have killed an officer with a blow to the head. If some guy was swinging at me I’d probably pull the trigger too.
The main problem there is with cops shooting rapidly with one hand. Either you have the dog or the gun, choose one and be ready to use it properly. You’ll also notice that the guy doesn’t go down after being shot the first five times, which tells you exactly why placement counts a hell of a lot more than volume or caliber. That said, I really would have preferred seeing the cop that was targeted with the crowbar back away while the dog was used. Also, why are you five feet away from a guy with a crowbar when you have a gun? Isn’t a wider perimeter advised in that scenario?
This is partly the issue I was referring to: they had bystanders so close that they couldn’t really back up much more without exposing a bystander. Why they didn’t clear that whole parking lot out is a mystery.
But, in the moment when that guy started swinging with the situation the way it was, I don’t think shooting him was unreasonable. I certainly wouldn’t expect the cops (even five to one) to close in for a melee beat down. One conk on the head with that crowbar and you got dead cop. Ranged combat in that situation, man.
Watch the video more closely. The first cop fires five times, the guy crumples to the ground. The second cop then opens fire. No “mind-meld” required. One is tempted to use the word “execution” to describe the second cop’s actions.
There are obviously cases where the police need to use lethal force. It’s not clear that this is one of them—why do they have to approach a deranged man with a large blunt weapon so closely, for example? And the second officer needs to explain why he felt he needed to pump bullets into a man lying on the ground.
I agree that if the standard is “need to use” lethal force that this, and other cop shootings, would come into question. Personally, I think that’s too high a standard. Rather, I believe the standard is whether their use of force was reasonable, in view of the situation.
Clearly there are possibilities for avoiding the need to shoot in this situation (and almost any other). The issue is whether doing so would present a substantial risk to the cops or others.
On additional shots, all I can see is that the guy is behind the car when the second set of shots are fired. Depending on what went on behind the car, I can see where something unjustified might have happened. Frankly, my comments are more focused on the propriety of shooting in the first place. If we’re parsing to the point that the first shots fired were reasonable but the second set were homicide, I concede that’s up in the air.
EDIT: Skedastic’s post that I was responding to pulled a ninja smoke bomb!
Stepsongrapes’ comments look funny because I deleted my comment in between. The cops do not fire in unison; one fires five times, then the other fires five times. A question is whether the second officer is justified in opening fire. I initially didn’t notice that the guy does not fall over after being shot by the first officer: if you look closely, you can see his head above the car at the moment the second officer starts firing. I think it’s a questionable shooting, but not obviously bad.
Also, I feel I need to comment on the dog question. Police dogs are just as valuable as human officers. Letting the dog loose on someone with a three foot metal pipe who has demonstrated the will to use it is putting a fellow officer into an unnecessarily dangerous situation.
If the guy had decided to run, then the dog has a distinct advantage. Otherwise it’s just a really bad call.
If this is reflective of official police policy or procedure, I personally find that unreasonable. A dog is not equal to a cop. A dog is not even equal to a criminal. If employing the dog would have neutralized the suspect (even at risk of injury to the dog), it should be used.
Here, I don’t think it is reasonable to expect the K9 cop to be certain that releasing the dog, instead of shooting, would have been sufficient to avoid injury to him and his fellow officers.
You may find it unreasonable but K-9 units are absolutely considered police officers. They are highly trained professionals, sometimes even more so than their fellow human officers.
And, to show my hand on the shooting question, that dude had about 20 opportunities that day not to get shot to death. He passed up on all of them.
Yeah, uh, no. They are not, full stop, period, end of discussion, unless you mean in some monetary training dollar amount trivia. It’s a fucking dog. I love dogs but I’ll gladly kill a hundred of them before I would kill a human.
H.
I’m just telling you what I know of how many police departments and K-9 handlers think about working dogs. You are totally entitled to your opinion on the matter.
It is an interesting question though, would you rather have a good dog or a bad human?
Hypothetically I mean, is it better to allow a serial killer who shows no remorse the opportunity to kill a dog who’s job it is to save people by dragging them from burning buildings? Is the human > dog in all situations? Mind you that is a pretty overblown example, but I am curious.
What you believe they think, in their personal opinion is in no way equivalent to:
Police dogs are just as valuable as human officers. Letting the dog loose on someone with a three foot metal pipe who has demonstrated the will to use it is putting a fellow officer into an unnecessarily dangerous situation.
You’re clearly stating that A. There is no difference in value between the life of a dog and the life of a human, and B. That rather than endangering a dog it is better to kill a human.
You’re welcome to walk it back with no strings attached, but at the moment you have two completely contradictory ideas working in this thread.
Almost, but not quite. I stated that police dogs are as valuable as human police officers. I will grant that not everyone will agree with this.
I in no way intended to imply that in general dogs lives are of equal value to human lives.
That’s dependent on which human and which dog.
If an individual is showing intent to do massive bodily injury to a police officer (a situation where use of deadly force is often justified), then allowing him to do that harm to a highly trained police dog (who is essentially the handler’s partner) instead is not what I would call a good trade off.
drbob
1676
To me if a society is going to arm it’s police “need to use” should be the absolute minimum standard for the use of lethal force (i.e if other options are in any way conceivable the gun should remain holstered) Any lower standard leads to situations like this where someone looses their life because the cops too quickly resort to firepower.
As others have said, the police tactics here were all wrong. They had the element of surprise, they outnumbered the suspect 5 to 1 and they had a police dog. I feel that given those advantages, regardless of the behaviour of the suspect, failing to come up with a non lethal solution should constitute gross misconduct, perhaps even manslaughter.
So you have a sliding scale where at some point of training/belly-scratching a dog’s life becomes more valuable than a human’s? Or do you just really, really hate the police?
That’s dependent on which human and which dog.
If an individual is showing intent to do massive bodily injury to a police officer (a situation where use of deadly force is often justified), then allowing him to do that harm to a highly trained police dog (who is essentially the handler’s partner) instead is not what I would call a good trade off.
False equivalence. You’re trying to turn this into an argument about a human police vs. a dog police when the real issue is the dog vs. killing the suspect human. Just say “I’d rather they killed a person than to have a dog hurt.” and we can be clear on where we stand.
I feel like you absolutely can find situations to justify a dog’s life being more valuable than a humans. I don’t know why that is so shocking. Humans who display a willingness and means to kill or maim other humans have far less value in my mind than a dog who’s purpose is to save other humans lives.
Am I saying that this case is that black and white? I am not. I don’t know what kind of day that guy was having. I don’t know if he was really deep down a good human being or not. I don’t know if that dog had a really checkered past, maybe stealing coke from the evidence room or something. I do feel that if a situation arises where you find yourself making a swing with a 3 foot metal pipe at a police officer when he and 4 of his colleagues have their guns drawn on you, you probably ought to expect them to react with deadly force. But maybe I’m just old fashioned.
I can understand you wanting to be reductive and dismissive since you so clearly disagree with me, but my point still stands.
I’m pretty sure your view is not the currently accepted legal view.
I honestly don’t know how you could enforce the above standard pratically- you’d either have too many cops dying/getting injured/quitting or you have too many cops in jail. For example, I do not agree that police should have a policy of requiring officers to try and physically subdue that guy (by batons as you said) in that particular situation. He has clearly shown that he will be doing his hardest to hurt or kill one of those cops.
Call me optimistic, but I think that the majority of cops are trying to do a good job. I think its a tough job and emergency situations are a lot tougher to handle in the moment, even with extensive training, than most people think.
It’s reasonable to say that mistakes (from a professional standpoint) were made in this situation. I think you’re then left with asking yourself how do you plan to address or punish those mistakes. Could this have been handled better? Almost certainly. Are we certain enough about that to punish (which is separate from retrain, etc.) these officers? Are we sure that there was malice involved, and if not, is something less than malice enough to convict one of these cops of a crime?
Put another way, I certainly wouldn’t want to be in the situation that those cops were in (even presuming that I had the right level of training). I’m definitely not 100% sure that I would have done better.
Wow, that is some la-la land shit right there.
