So. Four policemen put 40 bullets in somebody, and that's supposed to be "normal". What the hell?
Police training demands they shoot to kill. The notion of using a firearm merely to wound is mostly a TV fiction. Especially with a subject they believe to be armed (as with this case, where someone called 911 reporting a gun), if the police start shooting, they're going to make sure the target can't react. Their concern will be that even a fatal shot might leave the target with 10-15 seconds with which to get off a shot in reply.
That this is probably a reasonable thing for the police to do is, for me, a strong argument that most police should not be armed with guns. But that gets us into an unproductive discussion about American gun culture and gun control.
Something that is incredibly fucking stupid, and there are plenty of countries who do very well without this misguided use of of lethal weapons.
The point here, though is not to deny police their right to self defense, the point is to train them in a way that their first action to exercise that right is not with as much force as possible, but with as much force as is necessary.
Clearly emptying multiple magazines into someone speaks of fear, rather than necessity, and I do not wish to be policed and protected by the fearful.
But to your larger point, I agree: building a society in which there is little to none violence is a desirable goal.
Step 1: Ensure every police patrol vehicle has a shotgun locked in the trunk.
Step 2: Take away handguns from all patrol officers.
California cops honestly had me wondering why anyone would ever really need to walk around looking like they'd stepped out of a Hollywood shoot-em-up movie, with two handguns, a rifle, and another larger weapon strapped to their back.
Maybe they were there for a cartel bust or some shit I didn't know about, but that simply was not appropriate for ordinary beat policing. Luckily, I was white enough that they didn't give me crap for staring at them.
Gonna need a lot more Policemen. Because, attrition.
Any evidence of this point?
>and there are plenty of countries who do very well without this misguided use of of lethal weapons.
Many countries choose to not use guns. There is a vast difference between not using guns and trying to shoot to wound. If you want to protest against the police using guns, speak directly to that.
There's plenty of more stories of where that one came from. Were you unaware of that?
It ultimately comes down to the relationship that you want the populace to have with their police force. A policy of shoot-to-kill tells the populace, that ultimately the lives of police are more valuable than that of any other citizen, and you better be terrified to be caught in any situation with the police where stress-levels are elevated.
A policy of shoot-to-disable, where killing an offender is a possibility, but it's a policy of using this lethal force as as a last resort, sends a message that the police actually care about the people they are trying to protect.
I'm not protesting police using guns, clearly there are situations where it's necessary to match and up the force of a threat. And clearly there are situations where police are justified in killing a human being.
I take issue to the police being justified in using lethal force as a first resort.
Surely we can train them better than "just try to hit the general area of where the suspect is, it's fine if you hit them in the head".
This is a question of accuracy and situation awareness, not of intention when shooting.
>That doesn't even sound like shoot-to-kill that sounds like they were afraid to death.
My question was directly related to the comment made about shooting to kill, not about when to shoot.
>There's plenty of more stories of where that one came from. Were you unaware of that?
Stories about shooting when you shouldn't, not about shooting to kill.
>A policy of shoot-to-kill tells the populace
No, the policy of shooting too soon, without assessing the situation, is the cause of the problem. There is a distinction between when to shoot and how one shoots once they have made the decision. My question was focused on a comment made about the latter.
>I take issue to the police being justified in using lethal force as a first resort.
And I agree they are too quick to shoot. But my question was directed to a comment made about how they shoot once they shoot, now about when they shoot.
Where is the evidence (or argument) that shooting to kill is, and I paraphrase, something that is incredibly stupid? Arguments supporting knowing when to shoot, knowing what is around the target you are shooting, knowing how to shoot such that you hit the target do not answer this question.
From the point of an officer in danger, a killed adversary is one where they can be 100% sure that the danger from that particular individual is eliminated. That's just good policy if your main objective is to save police officer's live above all.
If you're concerned that the general populace in general and the criminals with guns do not forfeit their chance at life for being in the wrong place at the wrong time or indeed be violent criminals out with guns to kill people, then that approach of "if you see a lethal threat, try to kill it", becomes less desirable, because innocent people get killed.
And while you are free to argue the difference of "shoot-too-soon" vs. "shoot-to-kill", the issue is, you might agree, that the outcome of shooting-too-soon-in-the-head and shooting-too-soon-in-the leg are decidedly different.
In the end arguing about whether the training someone to assess a situation before acting on it, is a little moot in general: Many of these situations involve incomplete information and the immediate need to act on it. In this case the officers say that, due to the guiding laser, they were under the impression to be in imminent danger. I sympathize with their lack of information to take easy decisions on.
But they point is: if they had decided to shoot to disable instead of kill, he would still be alive today, as would they be.
And even considering an actual armed adversary who was trying to take their lives, shooting to disable him would, often enough, still get them out of immediate danger to reassess how to apprehend the person and bring them to justice, instead of delivering a death sentence on the spot.
You might disagree, but a government policy which willingly accounts for the death of innocent people by direct force of the executive, to me, is fucking stupid.
You might argue that that's reverse, that a shoot-to-incapacitate policy would backfire, as officers would draw their guns more often perhaps, and I would agree. It's not the only thing wrong with policing today.
If you want the police not to prioritize threat elimination over everything else, you need to not equip them with hand-held firearms.
In this case, it's worth remembering that the victim was reported, in a 911 call, to have been carrying a pistol. Not a taser. The police came to the park to confront an armed subject. Upon finding him, they told him to show his hands. He refused, and then pulled out his weapon.
The police would have had just moments to decide what to do. You can imagine the level of adrenaline they were dealing with was such that they could probably taste it.
The police obviously made the wrong decision. But they were set up, by circumstances and by a system that forces police to make split-second life-or-death decisions like this routinely.
Under stress the fight-or-flight response kicks in and a lot of fine motor skills and training goes out the window. An instructor of mine said that when the adrenaline hits, at best you have half of your trained skill, lose a lot of fine motor control, and won’t be able to think coherently for thirty to sixty seconds. You’ll do what was trained to the point of being automatic or is simple. Police officers typically get somewhere around one hundred hours of firearms training during academy and anywhere from eight to fifty hours of annual retraining, practice, and/or recertification. This is a lot less than needed to become or remain proficient. Had someone asked any of the officers immediately afterward how many times they pulled the trigger they probably would have answered two or three times or that they don’t know.
As a civilian, we are expected to exercise restrain when using lethal force when defending ourselves. Multiple bullets and reloading would be used as evidence as intent to murder.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_...
Germany's shot rate isn't lower simply because individual German police are stingier with their bullets.
On average, per use of deadly force, the german police fires about 1/20th - 1/40th in terms of number of bullets. One reason for that is that the german police is trained to use deadly force as last resort and rather retreat than fire.
Shooting 40 bullets at a person in a park instead of trying to clear the area is unlikely to happen here. (or anywhere in europe, for that matter)
So to me, 1 bullet, 20 bullets, 40 bullets, who cares? Dead is dead. If you don't want police shooting people by mistake, disarm the police.
My attitude towards this might be different from a lot of other nerds. In my experience, nerds tend to be firearms enthusiasts. I hate guns.
[1] the kid on the playground in cleveland, the guy in the supermarket aisle, ...
NO NO NO NO NO!
In the US in civilian life, and this includes police although they don't really count as that any more, the goal is to stop them. Deliberate killing is reserved for the judicial system after due process.
Now, if you're not lucky enough to either have a target who stops after the first hit (this is very common) or gets a Central Nervous System hit, you're going to have to keep shooting until they lose enough blood or are otherwise physically disabled, and there's a good chance that'll result in death. Especially since it's not unheard of for that to require a magazine dump, and if multiple police are engaging the target, you'll get this sort of "40 bullets!" outcome.
Again, to be clear: I think the police should largely be disarmd. I do not think patrol officers should routinely be armed with handguns.
I think it is monstrously silly to suggest that the solution to police shooting problems could somehow involve police being more judicious with the number of shots they take. The problem is the guns, not the way that they're used.
This amount of gunfire always suggests an emotional component to me, hatred or something.
That's only very generally speaking, of course. I can imagine situations where dozens of shots are rational.
I don't know everything that happened, and haven't developed an opinion overall, but it isn't as simple as rounds fired / number of officers.
Officers are (correctly) trained that if they are in a situation which warrants them shooting, they should use all of the bullets currently loaded into their gun.
The issue is that in the US, officers seem to come to the conclusion that killing the person is warranted way too quickly.
For 2012 the stats for the german police are: 36 bullets fired at humans, 20 injured, 8 dead. 54 bullets fired as warning shots. So it's possible to incapacitate. Stats for other european countries are similar.
Firing 40 bullets at a single human, some of them after the suspect has been hit multiple times and is on the ground (and still missing the majority of shots) seems excessive.
This source [1] [2], a police detective with 26 years of experience, contradicts it directly:
"Officers are told to shoot until the threat is neutralized, down, and no longer a threat to themselves or the public. They are not trained to empty the magazine into a target."
[1] http://www.hlntv.com/video/2014/08/19/police-protocol-your-q...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Brooks_%28journalist%29
But that was apparently not the case here.