Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Interesting to have this come out when yesterday the Sunnyvale police drove their tank over to a house where someone had called in reporting a murder, they asked the person to come out and then immediately shot him dead.

Three things bothered me about this;

1) WTF does the Sunnyvale police force need with an Armored Personnel Carrier? Seriously.

2) How is it you go from 'come out with your hands up' to shooting the guy dead as soon as he is visible?

3) What is the motivation for responding that 'hard'? You send a couple of squad cars, not a military unit.

So it looks like we need to change things slap down the police again. (this happened in the early 70's as well apparently (didn't live here then) when they initially were gearing up to fight drugs).

View on HN

One possible explanation is fear.

I've had a few interactions with United States police and compared to their Canadian and European counterparts they always struck me as exuding bravado to cover up for basic insecurity or downright fear (with a few exceptions, but not many).

In situations where they know their counterparty is armed an overly aggressive response with a military vehicle and a summary execution of the suspect makes sense when you look at it from the perspective of scared people.

It's the same thing that drives 'force protection' when dealing with the citizens of some occupied country.

I blame "Safety First".

A police department that puts the safety of it's officers first has a rational incentive to bring overwhelming force to bear on every situation every time.

The doctrine of "safety first" needs to change. It needs to apply to the community MORE than the officers charged with protecting it. Clearly, the doctrine of overwhelming force puts the interests of the police ahead of the community they serve, which is plainly evil, even ignoring the potential for abuse in a full-blown tyranny.

Safety first is fine, so long as the police are part of the community they are policing. When they are not, then the tensions and the stakes will be more like those facing soldiers of an occupying army, with some of the bad consequence that comes with that.

The problem is that "(officer) safety first" is fundamentally in conflict with the "serve and protect" mantra that gets peddled by every PD in the country. Sometimes the police can have both, but when they can't and have to make a choice, that choice makes very clear where their priorities lie.

Generally I disagree with over-militarization of the police force, but a few points:

1) I spend a lot of time listening to emergency band scanners. Considering the low violent crime rate in Sunnyvale, I'm pretty shocked how often the Santa Clara Sherrifs Dept are called to stand-offs and hostage-type situations. If it is resolved without fatalities, perhaps it doesn't make it into violent crime statistics, but I'm not that appalled that Sunnyvale PD feels the need to own one.

2) KTVU reports that he he came out with a firearm and ran towards them.

3) KTVU reports that they responded with a couple of squad cars, but the man disregarded orders to come out with his hands up. As a murder had been reported, calling SWAT is reasonable, IMO.

Again, I agree that police forces in general are over-militarized, but we need to represent the facts accurately.

edit: Why the down-votes? He has an alternate explanation that I've acknowledged, and that he didn't provide initially.

  > Again, I agree that police forces in general
  > are over-militarized, but we need to represent
  > the facts accurately.

We agree on the militarization, I am concerned about factual accuracy, in part because I've got a personal connection with eye witnesses to this event, and their statements do not agree with the official narrative. That is perhaps the most unsettling part here. This is further complicated that it is the second time in 18 months where this has been the case for me.

Some additional back story.

1) The event was witnessed in its entirety by friends of ours who live there. They describe the sequence differently than the official sequence of events.

2) A previous officer involved shooting, on my street, was also reported as a 'charged with weapon, officer defended themselves and shot the suspect.' which was also reported very differently by the people who were standing on the curb behind the guy that got shot (and nearly caught in the cross fire). This guy had a knife and was 15 yards away from the officer when they were killed.

The similarity between both events is that there had been a 911 call, and police responded 'ready to fight.'

I've got a number of concerns with respect to the training and rules of engagement our public safety officers are operating under. I'm a big fan of the classic 'old west' rule that first shot is offense, second shot is defense. Meaning that if you fire first you are the guy doing the shooting, if the person fires back at you they are defending.

Clearly I get to follow this one, its in my 'backyard' to use the vernacular. It is certainly going to be a hot topic of discussion at the BBQ we host for the folks running for City Council. (strangely the police report through the city manager which is another topic of discussion for the BBQ)

> strangely the police report through the city manager which is another topic of discussion for the BBQ

Why is that strange? In California, in the usual case (i.e., not in charter cities with a different arrangement), the city manager is the appointed operational head of the city of government, and the city council (including the Mayor, who is effectively just the presiding officer of the council) is a (part-time) legislative body.

> A previous officer involved shooting, on my street, was also reported as a 'charged with weapon, officer defended themselves and shot the suspect.' which was also reported very differently by the people who were standing on the curb behind the guy that got shot (and nearly caught in the cross fire). This guy had a knife and was 15 yards away from the officer when they were killed.

A knife is a deadly weapon. I think that's downplayed quite a bit when everyone is worried about guns. 15 yards may be a bit a a distance to start shooting, but there's a lot of information left out that to assume is negligible would be a mistake. For example:

Did the suspect advance from behind cover or were they in plain view for a period before advancing?

How far was the suspect from other bystanders? Were others in possible danger?

In this case, what does "charged" mean? Running full-tilt, or advancing at a quick pace?

Were the bystanders looking at the situation from the beginning, or talking among themselves until someone noted something was happening and they all redirected their attention?

These are all just some of the details that may or may not be noticed by individual bystanders, and may or may not have affected their view of the situation. Eye-witness testimony is notoriously unreliable for other reasons as well (discussion can make people believe they saw things they didn't).

That's not to say the police accounting is infallible, just to suggest that all testimony needs to be examined closely.

The Tueller Drill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill) tells us to deal with a potential adversary with an edged weapon within 21 feet with utmost seriousness (do a search on the phrase and watch some videos, they're chilling). Given the rough eyewitness estimate of "15 yards" and whatever the officers estimated we can't dismiss the possibility the shooting was entirely justified.

I had not been aware of that. Thanks.

I completely agree with you, especially that all testimony has to be examined closely. The knife case the guy was literally standing in the middle of the intersection (that was wear the blood stain was left) So about as 'out there' as you could get.

If I thought it was a simple problem I'd have a simple answer (that would be wrong [1]) I'm more interested in fixing the process, understanding what in the officer's training lead him to shoot at that moment in time, what other options were considered, and what changes should we put in place to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.

[1] "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken

> This guy had a knife and was 15 yards away from the officer when they were killed.

Google "Tueller drill." You'll be surprised by what you find. Now, 45' is a bit further than that 21' that is usually cited as the "this guy can run and stab you before you can stop him" distance, but I can see why a situation very similar to what you describe was assessed as a good shoot.

(Test it yourself and see. You'll be surprised.)

The Tueller drill distance only applies to holstered handguns.

It essentially means that, as an armed person, if somebody has a knife, is threatening you, and is less than 21 feet away, then your gun should be out of your holster and pointed in their direction right away, because if you wait for them to actually charge you, the knife will probably be sticking out of your chest by the time you can draw and fire.

It certainly doesn't mean that you should shoot the guy right away or anything, but someone with a knife being shot from 20-30 feet away is not necessarily a bad shoot.

It's a bad shoot if you've got your finger on the trigger and they aren't charging you.

Watch some Tueller Drill videos: it's very clear you've got to really have your act together to survive them, and it shouldn't be hard to image someone with their gun already in their hands failing and getting a mortal wound.

1) The event was witnessed in its entirety by friends of ours who live there. They describe the sequence differently than the official sequence of events.

Then you need to explain how up front. right now I'm no wiser and your position is basically 'trust me, other evidence is wrong.' I agree with you about the more general point of police militarization being bad, but to do something about that you're also going to have to stand up for limitation on the 2nd amendment.

It may be hopeless, I'll write it again.

I have no opinion on whether or not the shooting was justified.

No doubt these folks will be part of the DA's process for investigating all officer involved shootings. And theirs and any other testimony will end up in the official record.

The shooting itself, the video of the shooting, and the reporting of the shooting left me with questions and concerns.

Those concerns are around how we're training our officers and what instructions we are giving them with regard to the use of deadly force.

I'm also concerned about their equipment. You dress people up and equip them like soldiers and they start thinking like soldiers. That is, in my opinion, a bad mindset for a Peace Officer.

I'm also interested in what process my city government has in place to make sure that if we do have a problem it will be addressed. And insuring that process is working.

As I already said, I agree with you about the more general point of police militarization being bad. You don't need to convince me of that.

I'm questioning your challenge of the available facts in this specific case, based on other information that you have chosen not to reveal.

And that is the thing isn't it?

When you write "this specific case" you are talking about a guy that got shot by the police.

And when I write "this specific case" I'm talking about how the Sunnyvale Police respond to a 911 calls about some guy who claims to have killed someone in his house.

Because we're talking about different things, the responses don't make any sense to the other person in the conversation.

No, that's not the thing, and you don't get to characterize what I mean in order to support your rhetorical argument. I'm disappointed that you chose this approach.

I most certainly am talking about how the police responded, and saying that it makes rather more sense when you include the full context of the call.

You originally wrote Sunnyvale police drove their tank over to a house where someone had called in reporting a murder, they asked the person to come out and then immediately shot him dead. You left out the fact that the caller identified himself as the person who had committed the murder, and you've been trying to change the subject ever since.

I have no problem with the police driving an armored vehicle* to an address where the caller has identified himself as a murderer. In a situation like that there's a high probability of getting shot at and I don't expect the police to go in defenseless. This is totally different from an innocent third party calling in to report the discovery of a murder.

* This is a Sunnyvale PD armored personnel carrier: http://media.nbcbayarea.com/images/654*488/swat.raid.2.jpg This is a tank: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/M1_... They are nothing alike.

Thanks for sharing - I wasn't aware you had different and (potentially) more reliable sources.

Good grief Chuck, how many ways are you going to mischaracterize what happened in one sentence? The guy called the police saying that he had committed a murder, and indeed police found the body of a woman in the house. Per a neighbor's testimony, the police turned up with sirens wailing, and about an hour later later shots were heard (of them killing the guy).

According to the police (whose account of events is open to question) the guy refused to come out at first and then charged them.

Now, I am not excusing the fact that they shot him, and I am not willing to take their account of things at face value absent evidence. But leaving out the facts that the guy reported himself to be a murderer, and that this report seems to have been true, and that there was a considerable interval between the arrival of the police and the shooting of the suspect, is spectacularly misleading.

I realize this might be the result of error rather than intention, but you should apologize to people for having only provided them with half the facts.

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/08/08/sunnyvale-stando...

[...] What sounded like gunfire had been heard earlier at the home, and a person called police around 8 a.m. and said he had killed someone inside his home in the 600 block of San Pedro Ave., Capt. Dave Pitts said.

At 8:53 a.m., a SWAT vehicle was driven onto the front yard of the home. Roughly 10 SWAT officers wearing bulletproof vests then approached the front of the home. A few moments later, a voice could be heard on a loudspeaker saying “Come out with your hands up.”

A team of about six SWAT officers entered the home about 10 a.m. and within seconds, several loud gunshots were heard. [...]

>But leaving out the facts that the guy reported himself to be a murderer,

Sorry to interrupt with a slightly different issue, but anybody can call the police, tell them some story, and cause SWAT to show up at your location. SWAT-ing is a thing. It happens. So is SWAT teams mistakenly showing up at the wrong address, and all sorts of other human errors. It happened to Brian Krebs recently, and it can happen to anyone.

So, without regard to whether there is an actual heinous criminal pedophile terror suspect holed-up in his house, or whatever else is going on; we do want SWAT teams to err on the side of professionalism and restraint, not on the side of driving armored vehicles into peoples' houses, killing their pets and generally terrorizing their victims.

You won't have to look long to find plenty of examples of police acting with complete disregard for the safety of suspects, suspects' property.

Yes, and that's a problem, but that's not what's at issue here.

It is certainly my issue here :-)

What, that third parties could call in a SWAT team? Why not make that your issue on one of the (sadly numerous) examples of this actually happening, as opposed to one where it seems to have actually been appropriate?

For a recent example of a third-party essentially calling in a SWAT team on someone, see: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/03/the-world-has-no-room-fo...

There's been a recent spate of this for political reasons: https://www.google.com/search?q=brett+kimberlin+swatting+or+...

I've read the paper. I know the people who live across the street and were standing outside and watched the whole thing go down. The accounts differ.

As with most things, what is reported, what people saw, what people thought they saw, and what actually happened can often be disjoint. I'm interested in the DA's report (although those take a loooooong time to come out)

I have fundamental questions though about the rules that our public safety department is operating under. And I will get those answered.

One, what is the justification for driving around in an armoured vehicle? There is so much information on how what you do "just before" a situation can totally change the way you react in a situation, it seems unreasonable to roll into a situation like a squad of marines rolling on to the beach head.

Second, what is the standard used for engaging deadly force? How is that established, trained, and on what basis was it arrived at?

Third, what is the process for evaluating the training effectiveness and its implementation in our police force? What does it tell us about this event?

Fourth, in our policy what precedence to we place on safety, is it citizens first or officers first?

As I mention elsewhere, it was the combination of events that got me asking these questions, not just this one. So it goes from "hmm, that was a sad story" to "hmm, is there a problem here that needs to be fixed?"

I know how to fix problems, step one is verify that it is one. That is where I am now.

This bit annoys me though:

  > I realize this might be the result of error
  > rather than intention, but you should 
  > apologize to people for having only 
  > provided them with half the facts.

Given that I know some of the eye witnesses, and I know that the reported story wasn't the same as the their story, I felt like the folks with 'half the facts' might be people who only read it or watched it in the news. So I consider myself to be in possession of slightly more facts than those folks, but I make no claim as to the overall percentage. And that leads me to the second annoyance.

As I wrote, (and was misread), the thing that bothered me wasn't the shooting. I recognize that there is no way at this stage for me to have any sort of informed opinion about the justifiabilty of that shooting. What bothers me is how the police responded. And to a lesser extent the equipment they brought with them.

Since nobody disavowed this as some rogue event, I must conclude that they responded as they were trained to do. And it is that which has me bothered. Trying to understand how we are training our cops to respond, and what is the motivation for training them in that way.

Sorry you missed all that.

EDIT: formatting

If you have extra facts then share them instead of arguing that mere possession of same makes you right.

This bit annoys me though:

Well, too bad! You don't say what facts you have from your neighbors, and you haven't contradicted the claim that the guy called police to report himself as having killed someone and that the body of a woman was found in his house. Now those are salient facts and you know it; you should not have omitted them from your original description of the situation.

What bothers me is how the police responded.

If anyone calls up the police saying that they've killed a person the police are setting out with a possibility that they're going to be encountering an armed and dangerous individual. There's a huge difference between 'I'm calling to report a murder' and 'I'm calling to tell you I just killed someone.' You originally reported this as an example of the first situation, which is clearly not the case.

I didn't miss anything here. Now if your neighbors' report of the facts is substantively different, then by all means share their version, but since the 9-11 calls is a matter of public record and can easily be obtained by the media I'm going to take the claim that the dead guy called in saying he'd killed someone at face value. How you can omit that from your summary is just beyond me.

As someone who used (almost 10 years ago) to be involved with my state's emergency preparedness infrastructure (I worked in public health at the time), and who worked closely with law enforcement, firefighters, and paramedics in that capacity, I can answer your fourth question easily: officer safety comes first. That's official and unofficial policy of almost every PD in the nation. I'm not convinced it's the proper approach, and neither are a minority of LE I've spoke to about it, but there's a whole rationale behind why officer comes first.

I do complete share your concerns about police militarization and police brutality. I've actually seen it much, much closer up than vast majority of people here, and not in the capacity I refer to above; it's not pretty, yet it's very routine for most LE.

Every event I have been involved in that was reported by the media has had basic matters of fact incorrectly reported. Basic stuff that gives no political advantage, like the type and color of a car involved in a wreck; not stuff that you could argue is to support bias, like the number of people at a political rally. If they can't bother to get basic facts right, I have difficulty extending trust to them on matters that require interpretation.

Hermosa beach also has an armed vehicle. On busy weekends they park it in the middle of the street in central downtown so everyone sees it. I assume the reasoning is to intimidate people which is quite messed up.

What I want to know is who gives them this much money, and why?. I thought the US economy was still in pretty poor shape, and they pretend to argue for months of stuff like $80 billion sequester, when they're probably giving more than that per year to police departments to buy military equipment like this and be trained by the DHS and the Israeli military.

Again - why? Why is the police becoming para-military? Do they fear another major protest and want to respond in force? What's the motivation behind all this.

"What I want to know is who gives them this much money, and why?"

Nobody gives the police this money. The police take the money from people they arrest. It is called asset forfeiture, it is legal, and it is widely used by police departments to pay for all that expensive military equipment they use.

"Why is the police becoming para-military?"

To gain more power over the population, to arrest more people, and to funnel more money to the well-connected corporations that benefit from this sort of tyranny.

Unless that's enough to fully fund the police it's easy enough to divert funds based on that extra income.

> Why is the police becoming para-military?

Becoming? In the 1990s, when I was in college, state and local police recruitment information overtly described the organizations as paramilitary. Armed police forces are inherently paramilitary organizations, and always have been.

They're getting another influx of military equipment and personnel with combat experience (and expectations shaped by that experience) because the US military is gearing down after a over decade of greater-than-usual war.

A lot of things like Humvee's and APC's come from retired or surplus military equipment. Your sheriff's department isn't buying those things with your tax money.

The Army does, and then gives it to the sheriff's department when they're done with them.

There was a lot of DHS money that went out to local jurisdictions to buy paramilitary equipment after 9-11. A lot of that was probably lobbied for by manufacturers and distributors of said equipment.

You really can't figure it out? www.infowars.com

i live in sunnyvale, a few miles from where this occurred.

i first want to say that our 'police' are honestly the nicest and most caring of all departments i've dealt with. i've interacted w/ them a dozen or so times over the last few years. after a tragic event a year or two back, one of the officers took it upon himself to check in w/ me after a few weeks and again after a few months to see how i was doing and offer support.

additionally, sunnyvale's 'police' are actually 'public safety officers' additionally respond as trained firefighters and EMTs. they carry the gear for fire/medical in the trunk of their squad cars.

for your questions,

#1 it's a "santa clara county regional rescue vehicle".

#2 after an hour+ he came out armed. police are protecting neighboring houses in addition to themselves. i'm pretty sure the guy wanted to die.

#3 they did respond w/ just a couple of cars. they summoned SWAT after it was apparent he wasn't going to come out, and he's already admitted to killing someone in the house.

it's sad that he was killed, but he already stated he'd killed on person and he came out armed. SWAT did what they were trained to do, and neutralized a threat. 6 or 7 shots were fired from rifles of highly trained personel. in a dense residential setting, i'd much rather have SWAT pulling the trigger than by a hoard potentially nervous cops w/ less training. you often read stories that police fire 40+ rounds when someone makes a similar move.

for the record, i'm not a fan of the militarization of police in the US by large. but i just wanted to put in a word of defense for sunnyvale as they've been the most restrained and caring of all the departments i've known.

good article on cost and performance benefits of cross-trained public safety workers in sunnyvale:

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/01/local/la-me-sunnyval...

The Sunnyvale police report that the man "charged them with a gun"[1] to which the only logical response by police is to shoot him.

Now, if the man hadn't responded in a threatening way and had come out peacefully, then the police probably wouldn't have shot him. If they did, then this would be a bigger deal than you're making it out to be.

Taking a tank to the house was probably overkill, but I think the police are under a "use it or lose it" mentality when it comes to their toys.

[1] http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_23821648/sunnyval...

He called the cops himself, and charged on them with a gun (seemly without firing).

I think this was suicide by cop... And the cops that have some sort of extreme fear of the population (perhaps justified, considering how badly the US population had been treated recently?) did what the guy wished.

I agree with point #1, saw an APC rolling around in my town. Very confused. My town has below-average rates of violent crime compared to both the state and the nation.

Although rather than being worried about our police becoming militaristic (they are pretty good, I feel), I was mostly concerned with who paid for it!

Well, ultimately, you did. But really, there were funds made available through the Department of Homeland Security for local police departments to purchase military surplus armored vehicles (and weapons, helmets, etc.), as part of the post-9/11 anti-terrorism push.

IMO, the money would have been better spent on training instead of hardware. The NYPD budgets 150 rounds a year per officer for firearms proficiency testing & training. The NYPD is also known for violating the civil rights of the people they interact with -- if only they knew more about the law...

The NYPD suffers from a severe lack of a local gun culture---the city has a bit over 50,000 each of legally registered handguns and long guns, and there aren't many places to shoot---as you note does very little proficiency training, I myself shoot around 200 handgun rounds per range visit, their leadership is notoriously gun ignorant and saddled them with Full Metal Jacket (FMJ) rounds for a long time, and still uses the heavy New York trigger modification, and the force is notorious for a very large fraction being poor in gun fights.

There was a recent incident where ALL the civilian casualties were from the cops, and most specifically we believe from one who screwed up big time, the other did the right thing for himself and others, to the extent we could determine.

150 rounds a year is probably approaching an order of magnitude too low. You need 1000's of repetitions to achieve conditioning that can overcome combat stress.

I suspect this had lots to do with the Fruitvale Station incident. Taser cartridges cost 30 or more times more than bullets, so the conditioning strength of taser use was a whole lot weaker than the conditioning strength of firing the pistol. I see this as a big problem.

Nah, see the reply I made in this subthread. The people who run the NYPD are cheap, stupid about guns, and don't give a damn about any civilians who aren't politically powerful or the like, e.g. they run one of the most restrictive concealed carry permitting systems in the nation. Plus there's a lot of pro-criminal sentiment in the city's movers and shakers.

Ah, I now remember there's a recent RAND report on how badly this is done.

But you're generally right about the required amount of training, and that explains the various Federal unit cartridge procurements that have raised so many eyebrows (mostly because people don't know they're indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity ones, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDIQ). I only looked closely at the one for the fish police as I like to call them (NOAA armed officers who police things like sea fishing, see http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/ole/), it attracted attention due to a clerical error listing it under weather forecasting, and running the numbers resulting in appropriate quantities for training, obviously a lot more than the NYPD's 150/year.

Exactly how many repetitions do police get with TASERs, then?

No idea whatsoever, besides us all noting TASER rounds are fantastically more expensive, i.e. I suspect we'd not be surprised if most officers in the nation have practiced firing 1 or 0 rounds. As an (fire-)armed citizen, so called "less lethal" weapons are not particularly practical to cart around, or wield while checking out a bump in the night while also carrying a flashlight, so I have not seriously studied them and e.g. the way they're deployed and used by police.

They're still potentially lethal, so as a citizen without all the protections police have I might as well use the most effective means of self-defense, I'll be judged the same if an adversary dies and very likely if not. Especially since I'm not expected to intervene in situations like the police are.

On the other hand this has little to do with the Fruitvale Station incident, the error there was in drawing the wrong weapon and not recognizing that before pulling the trigger (when I looked at the officer's face his expression of horror was very clear).

It could be addressed by simply putting it in a hard or very strange place to draw from, so the muscle memory of drawing the two is sufficiently different. Even a waist cross-draw with it located on the non-dominate side of the body, since it's less lethal, and wouldn't be effective at all again body armor, weapons retention is less of an issue. That was my first thought after seeing the incident (well, there's also second guessing the decision to escalate the level of force used, but I didn't seriously consider that; again, as a civilian, all this will never come up).

I find a flashlight and OC spray incredibly useful, and very rarely (in the US) would ever carry a ccw handgun or rifle/shotgun without a light (mounted to weapon or for use in hand) and also pepper spray. And a knife, which is incidentally a retention tool for the firearm, but mainly utility (except when I had my overt body armor, where I carried a large fixed blade near to on-vest pistol).

Without a non-lethal option, you're stuck. There are situations which don't warrant a lethal response, or which don't absolutely require a lethal response, but where if you get close, weapon retention becomes a serious issue, turning the whole thing into a lethal force justified encounter. Which is a huge problem for police who open carry handguns; less of an issue if you CCW.

Tasers are huge, and unless openly carried or in a house, are basically the same form factor as a handgun. If I were a high-risk person (smaller, female, disabled, etc.) in a place where I couldn't or wouldn't carry a handgun, it would be an option. It might also be an option in a place where use of force but non-lethal force was likely, like a mental hospital, bar, etc. Otherwise, the optimum seems to be OC/knife/light, and then handgun.

Do you have a flashlight that you like for EDC? I have not been able to find a flashlight that I am happy with. It seems you get to pick two of the following: size, light-output/general quality, and cost. The first two are straight forward but the cost criteria might be unique to me. I don't want to have to treat the light like it is a sacred totem and/or I don't want to have to worry about losing the light.

I do not face the same quandary with a pocket knife. I always have either a Spyderco Tenacious or Persistence on me. (Depending on local laws and wardrobe requirements) Size and quality criteria are easily met with the tenacious/persistence. The kicker is they cost ~$45 so I don't have to worry about losing them and I never feel guilty abusing them if I need to scrape or pry something. The cherry on top is that I can throw a zip tie on the thumbhole and I essentially have an auto opener that is legal where actual auto-opener would not be.

I carry a NovaTac 120T or 120P and a Kershaw Ken Onion Shallot (damascus) when I'm wearing "field" type clothing, and a little Fenix P2D and a Ken Onion Leek (d2 composite) more often. I have about 15 leeks (and gave out about 50 as gifts); I love assisted openers, and they're a great design, with great steel (especially the CPM M4 or D2 versions).

I tend not to lose things when actually wearing them; it's when they go into storage that it becomes a problem, and I've solved that with labeled/inventoried plastic bins and baggies. So, I didn't really care about cost (maybe $100?). I got Fenixes when slickdeals said Amazon/etc. had them on sale (some around $10), and I got some other stuff from PXes in Iraq and Afghanistan (where it was also cheap -- like the Cold Steel SRK was $49, so I got a bunch).

(on the other; I don't have a California CCW because I don't live in San Mateo County (the only Bay Area county which is vaguely lawful in how it issues CCWs); for states where I can, Ruger LCR or G19 depending on clothing, rarely a 1911. If I move to San Mateo, probably Sig P938.)

The only lights I've been amazingly impressed by are the Surefire shotgun foreends I put on my Mossberg 590s, and the kickstarter programmable rechargeable light (hexbright).

I carry a Preon penlight with 2AAAs. It is a pain in the butt with the switch being too easy, but I also stick a pepper spray pen next to it in my pocket, and that's enough to keep it from getting pressed accidentally.

For a knife, I most often carry a Kershaw Cryo or a Ken Onion Ripple. I have no illusion about using either for self defense.

See this page: http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/knifelies.html

A lot of that applies to guns as well.

And for whoever downvoted me for political reasons, I am a 2nd amendment supporter. It just so happens I'm against a lot of the macho BS that surrounds guns as well. Logic and principle demand both.

Yeah, a lot of the stuff on that page is true, but you can address it through "situational awareness" -- i.e. not letting a high-threat person get close enough to you to suddenly stab you.

The very specific case of someone grabbing a gun is the one area where I feel comfortable using a knife in self defense. Other than that it would be my absolute last choice (unarmed, even, might be better).

I'm generally in my house, in my car, or in an office somewhere -- all fairly secure environments, where I have 10-15 seconds to draw, or possibly even grab a long arm. My goal is to have a house/office on enough land that it takes >60sec for even SWAT to get to the front door after initially being noticed (a 150mph helicopter might be difficult, though), and maybe 30+ seconds to breach it (minimum).

The C2 Taser is not huge, and it has a flashlight form factor.

As an (fire-)armed citizen, so called "less lethal" weapons are not particularly practical to cart around, or wield while checking out a bump in the night while also carrying a flashlight, so I have not seriously studied them and e.g. the way they're deployed and used by police.

The C2 TASER is a flashlight.

I would not go around my house searching for the bad guys, in any case. You hole up in your safe room and dial 911 from behind cover. Massad Ayoob recommends against going on the prowl to search out the bad guys. The pros don't even do that alone without backup. He notes that it's also a good way to get yourself shot when the cops do arrive on the scene.

The C2 TASER doesn't look like it would be easily used with a handgun. I've got a small Surefire with an activation button in the back and a lanyard so I can let go of it if needed.

One needs to distinguish between "a bump in the night" that might be an intruder but probably isn't, and a known intruder. It's impractical to call the police for every instance of the former, and nowadays down right unwise unless absolutely necessary ("Don't talk to the police"). But I would of course hole up and call them if I'm sufficiently certain.

> The C2 TASER doesn't look like it would be easily used with a handgun.

No, you should have a light attached to your handgun, or use the technique of separating centermass from your light. The point I was making is that the C2 Taser is its own weaponlight, which you indicated you didn't know.

> One needs to distinguish between "a bump in the night"...I would of course hole up and call them if I'm sufficiently certain.

Going forth in the dark of night and presenting yourself to an intruder is probably not going to be the best strategy, especially if it's an intruder. Your home safety plan should probably include procedures for identifying an intruder without putting yourself in harm's way. For myself, I can usually tell by the sound. If I can't, I'm locking the door and I have a means of blocking it as well. If they bust through, then they face the consequences.

In California, the law is that a citizen has a "duty to retreat." You can only legally use deadly force against someone if you've already tried to do so, or you think it's not an option.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com