08:36 – We’re hoping for another semi-normal day around here. Barbara’s mom was on her own last night, and as far as we know did okay. Frances is going to visit their dad today. When Barbara was over yesterday, he seemed to be doing a bit better than he had been. Unless things change, which is always possible, Barbara plans to spend the day at home, cleaning house and doing kit stuff. And playing with Colin.
09:23 – Here’s the kind of headline that really pisses me off: Hofstra student was killed by police, authorities say
No, she wasn’t. She was killed by a bullet fired by police, but the police didn’t kill her. The guy holding her hostage killed her. The cop who fired the bullet that killed her was desperately trying to stop the guy from harming her or anyone else. Blaming the cop for a bad outcome in a desperate situation is simply contemptible.
Sorry, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. The cop fucked up, really bad. Trying to save someone, by shooting them, is not the way.
The bad guy started the shoot-out. The cop did the best he could. What would you have had him do? Let the guy shoot him, the hostage, and other innocent bystanders?
Have you ever shot a pistol? More particularly, have you ever returned fire with a pistol while someone was shooting at you? I can tell you from experience that it’s nothing like shooting at a range, as can anyone who’s ever been in that situation. The cop did the best he could, and I’m sure he’s devastated by the outcome. Again, blaming him is contemptible.
I’m on the fence on this one, regarding blaming the cop. Yes, absolutely, the burglar, Smith, was guilty of murder. (Or would be, if he hadn’t died, too.) The cop’s potential guilt is different. Did he panic? How much time did he spend on the range? Did he need to fire eight shots? And was that shooting himself dry? Knotty questions with no good answers because of the multi-privilege legal system, the blue wall, and similar problems.
I think that for me the deciding factor is how I’d be treated if I were a non-cop in the cop’s position. Let’s say I was picking up a bail jumper, he grabbed a human shield and threatened both her and me, and I shot and killed them both. I have do doubt I’d be charged with murder by the same police department which is currently not charging the cop with murder. The only non-fatuous distinction I can see is that Smith was committing a burglary when confronted whereas the notional bail jumper might have been more-or-less minding his own business at the time of confrontation. The fatuous distinction, of course, is that we have one law for the ruling class and another for everyone else.
What SteveF said, and I’d add these two brief points:
1.) All we have to go on for info is the police reports and a couple of wit statements filtered through our notoriously unreliable media system here.
2.) I wouldn’t wanna second-guess the cop who was at the scene and faced with the situation there and had to make a split-second decision.
That all said; nobody had been hurt or killed yet. No one has said that the perp fired any shots first or any shots at all. My thing is, like the doctors, first, do no harm. The guy was apparently a loose cannon and not being rational; I believe in talking as long as you can before the last-resort lethal force. Had I been the cop I would have been very reluctant to fire at the perp in that situation, even had I been a grizzled close-quarters-combat vet of many years and a super-accurate shot. Why not keep talking and try to calm the bastard down and play for time; maybe he’ll break down and give it up, stranger things have happened. Maybe a SWAT sniper can get into position and drill him with a good chance of success. (although that doesn’t seem likely because they had moved to the basement.)
It would be cool to have somebody like Mas Ayoob look at this, but of course Mas would visit the scene, do the ballistics and forensic measurements and tests, interview the police involved and the witnesses, etc. We got diddly, other than the nooz reports, and like I say, hard to fault the cop if you weren’t there, etc. I’d also like to see a test run on the perp’s piece-of-shit gun and to know why exactly the cop hadda empty his mag, where I suspect the shitty ammo and shitty training, if any.
SteveF is right; if it was him or me or Bob who shot the perp and the girl, the cops would hang us out to dry.
Guns don’t kill people, criminals kill people.
However, regarding police batons, it is a different story than with guns. Note the killing of Kelly Thomas in Fullerton, CA last summer and then a similar in Bakersfield, CA earlier this month. Also, the effect of the baton swings on deleting cellphone video files?
Now on something completely different:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-19/push-to-ban-unvaccinated-children-from-nsw-preschools/4698786
I like the Orwellian name of the anti-vax people:
“Greg Beattie from the Australian Vaccination Network, which opposes immunisation, says it could trick parents into vaccinating.”
When I was a kid, vaccinations were required before a child could attend any public school. It should still be that way.
As far as I can recall vaccinations just happened when I was a kid. Probably some parents were stupid enough not to want their kids vaxed but I never knew any.
“Also, the effect of the baton swings on deleting cellphone video files?”
I had read previously that one can set one’s cell phone to automatically stream the vid to a computer or server somewhere while recording the cops mashing somebody into the pavement or tasing somebody repeatedly until they’re a twitching, drooling vegetable on the ground. So the footage would exist at least until the phone itself got smashed.
I say this knowing full well that probably most cops do their job without this sort of thing going on, as it did not when I was doing that work, but we seem to have more incidents occurring and to me it smacks of inadequate and/or faulty training, coupled with a couple of generations of people weaned continuously on tee-vee where savage violence and mayhem can happen to human bodies and nobody’s evidently the worse for wear. And we have young males loaded for bear wearing uniforms and carrying weapons and a whole corps of people who feel that because they’re doing holy work for the State, they can do anything they want.
OFD, re the Hofstra shooting, someone elsewhere raised an interesting question: are cops trained to shoot until they’re dry? I realize your own training was, um, two or three years ago, but maybe you can provide some insight.
The other commenter raised another question: If cops (or some cops) are trained to shoot themselves dry, would that help in the defense when a “civilian” is charged with unnecessary force or some other bullshit charge for firing any more than the minimum possible number of shots? (With the observation that in NY the minimum possible is usually found to be zero. Some courts in NY not only deny the “stand your ground” principle but have found a duty to retreat even from within your own home. I love New York. I’ve mentioned that before, right?)
Yeah, New York is one of the absolute worst states for people who have to defend themselves. IIRC, a New York court once determined that someone defending himself in his own home was required to retreat beyond “the last closed door” before using lethal force. Oddly, Vermont is pretty bad in this respect, too.
North Carolina is in the majority of states, which are reasonable about it. NC is stand-your-ground with no significant exceptions. Wherever you are in NC, if you’re legally entitled to be there, you’re entitled to use lethal force without first retreating to protect yourself, your family, or other innocent bystanders.
“Oddly, Vermont is pretty bad in this respect, too.”
Where did this tidbit come from? I am not familiar with it; not saying it doesn’t exist, just that I have not seen it anywhere up here. As you know, we have the most liberal (in a good sense of the word) firearms laws in the country, i.e., none. I also don’t recall any “castle doctrine” cases up here in the fifteen years I’ve lived here.
Re: cops trained to shoot until they’re “dry.” I was never trained to do that in decades of mil-spec (including military police and special operations) and street cop gigs. If anything, we were trained to conserve ammo and, if anything, use the double-tap method. On entry/breaching ops, if following the point, pop the bodies on the route once more each as you make your way; it sucks getting shot in the back by someone you thought was dead. This business of cops and soldiers nowadays of emptying their mags even after bodies have stopped twitching has always bothered me. And I believe it stems, again, from the shitty training and the use of the crunchenticker ammo that encourages, no, *mandates* the spray-and-pray “philosophy” of tactical CQ gunfighting.
As for anything at all helping civvies like us in these situations after the fact, legally, it all depends on the local courts and the people working your case. A lot of places in the country would see these as lawful shoots and not even bother you with any hassles. Other places not so much, and they’ll put you through a ringer. Mas Ayoob and others recommend that you shut the fuck up when the cops arrive except for repeatedly declaring that you felt your life and/or someone else’s life was in immediate danger and you were scared shitless and did what you had to do. Emptying a mag kind of hurts this scenario. Using dum-dum homemade ammo hurts your case.
In other words, try, if that is possible, to use the minimum force necessary to effect the saving of life and limb when said life and limb is imminently threatened by lethal force. To me that does not mean scurrying like a goddamned cornered rat out the back door when the goblins come in through the front, but it also means I still have to exercise some judgement as to my response, in a matter of seconds, just like that cop on the street. I’m assuming they mean me and mine serious harm and I’m gonna blow their shit up, immediately. And I’ll tell the responding officers that when they get here; or maybe I’ll just bury the fuckers out back and tell no one at all.
Vermont is one of a handful of states that has no specific Castle Doctrine law.
Regarding the Hofstra shooting:
“Records show Smith, 30, was released from prison in February after serving more than 8 years in the slammer for attempted armed robbery, and cops said he quickly violated parole, prompting a warrant for his arrest.
The career criminal also served time previously for crimes including auto theft.”
Why is the cop who did the shooting at fault? How about the parole board felons who authorized his release? Why are they not charged and arrested for aiding and abetting?
“Vermont is one of a handful of states that has no specific Castle Doctrine law.”
Then I reckon it is simply assumed here that we are allowed to stand and fight aggressors and I will act accordingly and not flee, ha, ha. Like I was going to, right?
“Why are they not charged and arrested for aiding and abetting?”
From your lips to the Attorney General’s ears, Slim, ha, ha, like that’s gonna happen, too. I’d happily and cheerfully arrest the parole board, or in other cases, the shrinks and social worker types who release these animals onto the rest of us with apparently no accounting and no oversight by anyone. And I’d have them serve the sentences of the felons and wack jobs they let go—from scratch. If any of their released goblins kill somebody, then they get killed, too. We’ll then see a more rigorous examination of who gets out and when. Meanwhile release all the non-violent prisoners; then we’d have the room and the will and the finances to really ratchet down on the violent ones among us. For a change.
I’ve been out all day, so I didn’t respond earlier.
I expect the cop to work within his capabilities. If he isn’t practicing shooting with a pistol, he should NOT be issued one.
Yes, I shoot pistols, mostly revolvers. Which is why I can form an opinion about it.
Look at it this way, had the bad guy shot the girl, then the girl would be dead, and the bad guy could also be dead. Instead, we have a cop who, full of great intentions, has fucked up his own life, while taking the life of the person he was supposed to save.
I was prompted to upgrade to Firefox 21.0 today. I recommend skipping that. First thing that happened after the upgrade restarted Firefox was a massive crash. Of course, I was looking at this:
http://main.aol.com/2013/05/13/victoria-james-bikini-pictures_n_3275496.html
That wouldn’t have anything to do with it, would it?
” If he isn’t practicing shooting with a pistol, he should NOT be issued one.”
That’s just it, Bill; they don’t get nearly enough practice/training with firearms and never did, even going back to my days on the job in the Iron Age. Yet there they are, and there we were, with revolvers back in my day, and the crunchentickers now with 14-round mags, etc, and that spray-and-pray tactic. And asked to make split-second decisions like that sometimes, with occasionally, as in this case, tragic results; two dead and several permanently traumatized and a lifetime of grief for the surviving family of the victim. He took a shot, which in my opinion, stipulating that I wasn’t there, I would not have taken, and he missed. Then he riddled the perp like a frigging swiss cheese, either out of panic or because the guy was still viable and a danger and it took that many rounds to put his ass down. Again, we weren’t there.
The problem here is that the guy had allegedly begun pointing his gun at the cop and that’s when the cop fired. What to do? Wearing a ballistic vest? Should you be required to eat a round and give him one up on you before you return fire? I think not.
It’s a truly horrible choice whether the perp is pointing the gun at the victim’s head or yours but up till then he has not fired it, and has not hurt anybody; can we somehow bring down the level of panic and fear and tension a notch first, before the lethal force? I don’t know, wasn’t there. I sure as hell would have hesitated before attempting to nail the guy when he’s got the girl that close to him, even given I was an excellent shot and experienced close-quarters vet.
Bob’s original point was his anger at the way the story got put out, i.e. ‘police kill young woman’ or whatever it was, and he was right about that. It was a fucking accident, that maybe coulda been avoided but who’s to know now?
I was using Chrome to look at them pics, Chuck, and no problems with anything crashing. Must be FF 21. Jeez, I thought they just released 20. English major and English teacher, huh? Nothing remotely like that in my many years as an AP English student, English major in college, English grad student and teaching assistant, etc., etc. Nothing.
Excuse me now as I mop up this bit of drool on the keyboard…
If I were the male students in her class, I think I would hang the principal or whoever fired her.
If I’d been one of the male students in her class I’d be mowing her lawn, shoveling her snow, doing her laundry, whatever she needed. Maybe she wouldn’t do a certain shot for Hustler but what about me, a 16-year-old bundle of High-Grade T?
I am not ever going to have a landline again, if I can help it, but the problem with cell phones is that I do not carry mine with me at all times at home. Often I will lay it on my desk upon arrival, then will be in the kitchen doing something with a podcast blaring, and cannot hear the cell phone ringing in the other room.
Panasonic to the rescue with their
http://shop.panasonic.com/shop/model/KX-TG7873S
link-to-cell series of phones. Mine arrived on Fri while I was away all day, and I installed it yesterday; it is going to work out fine. I just lay the mobile within 10 feet of the base station, and the Panasonic auto-links by Bluetooth to the cell phone. It rings on all the remote stations, including the one housed in the base station. Already it has saved me from missing calls, and the sound is pretty much as clear as landline phones—which tells me that sound quality issues may be more related to the cell phone itself than the network.
My particular model will handle a landline phone, too, but there is an option to disable that, which means I do not have to select ‘answer the cell’ when the phone rings; it automatically answers or places calls on the cell phone when I pick it up. It will even handle 2 cell phones, as most families usually have more than 1. This is a beauty of a phone system, and I can also answer using the base station alone, if I just hit the speakerphone button. The handsets can be set to announce the caller identity with a synthesized voice, but I have to get contact-sharing working first. I have never been disappointed with Panasonic phone equipment and accessories, and this one looks like a winner, too. They even sell a key fob that will emit a sound if you forget where you left your keys, which sound can be activated from any of the extension phone keypads. I very seldom misplace my keys, but when I do, they are really, really lost, and that usually happens when I will be late for work if I don’t find the keys pronto. I may just buy that thing.
Thanks for the product recommendation, Chuck. Assuming my wife stops annoying me for a period greater than twelve hours, I’ll get her one. She’s always complaining about missing cell phone calls at home and she’s always misplacing her keys.
Well, up here cell phones get routinely lost; chargers ditto; and half the time the cell coverage is lousy here all along this 100-mile-long lake shore, evidently, so our landline is the go-to phone for always clear calls. Oh yeah–keys are also lost routinely, along with contact lenses, lens solutions, pocketbooks, purses, wallets, etc., etc. etc. Truly amazing stuff; I am the Designated Finder.
58 here now, with gale-force wind gusts off the Lake and varying intensities of rain showers. Mrs. OFD snoring in the other room and also apparently talking in her sleep; better go in and record this stuff so I am no longer accused of lying about it.
Chuck wrote:
“I was prompted to upgrade to Firefox 21.0 today. I recommend skipping that. First thing that happened after the upgrade restarted Firefox was a massive crash. Of course, I was looking at this:
http://main.aol.com/2013/05/13/victoria-james-bikini-pictures_n_3275496.html
That wouldn’t have anything to do with it, would it?”
Sacked for bikini shots? Geez. What a nark.
I rebooted the computer yesterday, and had to kill FF (21.0) just now because it froze solid. I don’t even remember being asked if I wanted to upgrade.
OFD wrote:
“Excuse me now as I mop up this bit of drool on the keyboard…”
You should have seen my Year 12 maths teacher. Tall. Very tall. Legs that went on forever. Very long brown hair. Nice rack, and didn’t mind showing it off, so I’m told.
You’d want to do a PhD in maths if you had her as a teacher. And she was really nice too.
“If I’d been one of the male students in her class I’d be mowing her lawn, shoveling her snow, doing her laundry, whatever she needed. Maybe she wouldn’t do a certain shot for Hustler but what about me, a 16-year-old bundle of High-Grade T?”
She does nude according to that article and is looking for a gig with Playboy. I’d volunteer to scrub her back in the bath. Dirty job but someone has to do it. But not when I was 16. I was only interested in girls +/- a year of my age.
OFD wrote (and edited for brevity only): “It’s a truly horrible choice whether the perp is pointing the gun at the victim’s head or yours but up till then he has not fired it, and has not hurt anybody; can we somehow bring down the level of panic and fear and tension a notch first, before the lethal force? I don’t know, wasn’t there. I sure as hell would have hesitated before attempting to nail the guy when he’s got the girl that close to him, even given I was an excellent shot and experienced close-quarters vet.
Bob’s original point was his anger at the way the story got put out, i.e. ‘police kill young woman’ or whatever it was, and he was right about that. It was a fucking accident, that maybe coulda been avoided but who’s to know now?”
Given the way the story broke, yeah I can see Bob’s anger, but that’s the fault of journalists. They go for the juicy headline, not the most accurate.
Yeah, we weren’t there, and I’m not a cop. One of the bigger reasons I’m not a cop is my inaccuracy when shooting pistols. I won’t put myself in the situation this poor cop found himself. Please don’t get me wrong. I have sympathy for the cop, split second decisions yadda yadda, but now his life is truly going to be a mess, and it didn’t benefit the victim. Maybe the LEOs should take the Hippocratic Oath and promise to do no further harm? Certainly, they shouldn’t be issued firearms they cannot control. If police forces are handing out lethal weapons without proper training, well WTF? Stop!
I don’t know if he thought he was a TV Cop or not, but the Law of Unintended Consequences is a Bitch. One thing for sure, he better not be given a pass, or every future hostage will be shot on sight, as being simply more expedient. “Kill them all, God knows his own”, and all that. And if this gets glossed over for being an accident, well I can also accept that, but I don’t ever want this cop to be re-issued a side arm, and if I was to ever suffer a similar accident, that I receive similar treatment. I just want the cops to be treated like everyone else would be.
Funny, or perhaps oddly, I received this joke in my inbox just a couple of days ago:
How do you tell the difference between a Canadian Police Officer, an Australian Police Officer and an American Police Officer?
QUESTION:
You’re on duty by yourself walking on a deserted street late at night.
Suddenly, an armed man with a huge knife comes around the corner,locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, raises the knife, and lunges at you.
You are carrying a Glock 40 and you are an expert shot, however you have only a split second to react before he reaches you. What do you do?
ANSWERS:
CANADIAN POLICE OFFICER
Firstly the officer must consider the man’s Human Rights.
1) Does the man look poor or oppressed?
2) Is he newly arrived in this country and does not yet understand the law?
3) Is this really a knife or a ceremonial dagger?
4) Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire him to attack?
5) Am I dressed provocatively?
6) Could I run away?
7) Could I possibly swing my gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand?
8) Should I try and negotiate with him to discuss his wrong doings?
9) Does the Glock have appropriate safety built into it?
10) Why am I carrying a loaded gun anyway, and what kind of message does this send to society?
11) Does he definitely want to kill me, or would he be content just to wound me?
12) If I were to grab his knees and hold on, would he still want to stab and kill me?
13) If I raise my gun and he turns and runs away, do I get blamed if he falls over, knocks his head and kills himself? .
14) If I shoot and wound him, and lose the subsequent court case, does he have the opportunity to sue me, cost me my job, my credibility and the loss of my family home?
AUSTRALIAN POLICE OFFICER:
BANG!
AMERICAN POLICE OFFICER:
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! ‘click’…Reload…
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
(Sergeant arrives at scene later and remarks: ‘Nice grouping!’).
Nice one Bill. The Australian cop would probably want to fire half a dozen shots, or preferably use the Tazer, but would be billed for excessive use of ammo.
Looks like we have a potential SteveF in western Sydney:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-20/13-yo-bashed-with-baseball-bat/4699320
“If police forces are handing out lethal weapons without proper training, well WTF? Stop!”
Yes. Been going on like this since OFD worked the gig, last year was 1986. One-hour annual qualification with stationary Feebie paper targets then; they had just started with the moving targets and night firing when I left. I’d had better training fifteen years earlier in the AF in east TX. They may well have state-of-the-art targets and tactical gunfighting classes now but it’s only a couple of hours once a year, still; the brass says they don’t have the money for the ammo or the training instructors. But they have it for all kinds of other bullshit, just like our national regime.
Some years ago, too, I used to see hiring requirements for these jobs and psych testing was always mentioned; I don’t see that anymore, but I have seen what appear to be real psychos out there in uniform and doing cop work.
The joke about the different nationality cops is at least correct concerning ours. 14-round semi-auto pistols that they’ll spray all over the landscape and/or empty into the perp (hopefully just the perp) and any post-shooting investigation is done by them and always a whitewash.
RE: 13 yr old bashed with baseball bat.
I’m a bit confused by the police telling him to call 000 right away, rather than defend himself. Does he do that between hits of the bat? Or does he wait until after he is dead?
Apparently he called his brother to ask what to do. The brother told him to call the cops, which he should have done straight away as there were three of them and one of him.
“The joke about the different nationality cops is at least correct concerning ours. 14-round semi-auto pistols that they’ll spray all over the landscape and/or empty into the perp (hopefully just the perp) and any post-shooting investigation is done by them and always a whitewash.”
We have whitewashes in Canada, too. One fairly recent case had an RCMP officer shooting a prisoner in the back of the head, while the perp’s hands were cuffed behind his back. The official verdict was “defense”. I called it execution.
Depends what the prisoner was in prison for. Might just be a case of saving the taxpayer some moolah.
I think my favorite-ever extract from a real police report on an officer-involved shooting was from probably back in the 40’s. The officer wrote, and I quote, “… so I fired three warning shots into his chest.”
I’m with OFD here. I wasn’t there, and I refuse to Monday-morning quarterback the guy who was. I’d bet he did the best he could in the circumstances. The outcome was horrible, but one of the things they teach in business school is that decisions and outcomes are not necessarily related. That is, one can make a bad decision that has a very good outcome (such as buying a lottery ticket), and one can make a good decision that has a very bad outcome, which may well be the case here.
Incidentally, he supposedly fired eight shots, which means it’s unlikely that he “emptied his gun”. If I had to guess, I’d guess his first shot killed the girl. It may well be that the bad guy pointed his gun at the cop, the cop pulled the trigger aiming for the guy’s head, and the guy pulled the girl in front of him just as the cop fired.
One of the things we used to practice was snap-shooting at short distances. The idea is that you convince the bad guy to lower his pistol as you lower yours. Once both pistols are down, you snap yours back up and shoot him in the head. With a lot of practice, it’s possible to get pretty good at that, but even then it’s a last ditch maneuver. And I doubt this cop had much, if any, practice at snap-shooting.
Re: the kid being told to call the cops. Yeah, they always tell us that shit but neglect to mention the average ETA data; I timed it once up here some years ago for a 911 call we made (B&E suspects long wanted appeared to be in the ‘hood) and it was a full six minutes, which by itself isn’t bad; they may have come from the other side of town. But it was long enough for the perps to bail out to the interstate, most likely. Or some back road in the north woods. In some big cities it’s more like twice that for response time, or as in Chicago and other places, the cops just don’t bother coming at all. How you like them apples? Yeah, homie, you on your own!
But we still pay their salaries and OT and for their toyz anyway. Like we pay for the teachers and get back kids who are illiterate and innumerate but feel great about themselves until they don’t and then go on a killing spree before offing themselves. All hail Our Nanny the Almighty State! Ave Caesar! Sieg Heil!
Re: snap shooting. Yep, neat trick but very tricky to pull off; in this case the guy was evidently a raving lunatic and perhaps not amenable to such nuanced persuasion.
OK, rant off; good thing I don’t drink coffee, eh?
Make mine decaf—my doctor’s orders for everyone over 50.
Everybody else has got to control our lives while we are not permitted to control our own. American Express has changed their entire website and the way I log in to it. In the past, when I called up the bookmark for their site (which—for my own safety—I hide in a place that is not where the standard bookmarks are kept), it formerly automatically filled in my username and password.
No more. Now those fields are blank. If I begin typing my username, it will offer an autofill answer, but last time, I was forced to change my password. No longer will Firefox update that password when it is changed, thanks to Amex scripting. I contacted Amex about this, and the response is that they are well aware of the change, and it was done “for the user’s own safety and financial interests”. Okay, screw me and do it your way.
Separately, with Firefox being the occasional topic here, I decided to try an experiment a couple months ago. There were 3 windows that I never closed, each with at least 5 tabs. I have never closed those windows and only exited Firefox in the manner that saves the session and reopens it with the same windows and tabs. Between the time I started the experiment and now, 2 of the windows have dropped out and only 1 now remains. Actually, I did not pay attention to when they dropped out, and I have had a couple crashes, but even so, Firefox claims to be able to resurrect windows and tabs even after a crash. I’m betting the last window won’t last a month.
“Depends what the prisoner was in prison for. Might just be a case of saving the taxpayer some moolah.”
18 yr. old drunk.
Nah, just a bad cop.
“Front Sight’s Tuesday Blog: No More Police Incompetence!”
http://www.ignatius-piazza-front-sight.com/2013/05/21/front-sights-tuesday-blog-no-more-police-incompetence/
“And PULL he did. He not only pulled the trigger, he mashed it, yanked it and jerked the trigger. EIGHT times as a matter of fact, with one of those trigger pulls resulting in the death of the hostage, 21 year old Andrea Robello, a college student at Hofstra University in Long Island, NY. ”
” “The big question is, how do you know, when someone’s pointing a gun at you, whether you should keep talking to them, or shoot?” said Michele Galietta, a professor of psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who helps train police officers. “That’s what makes the job of an officer amazingly difficult.””
“Really? There is no “big question” when someone is pointing a gun at you, especially if they have a hostage. There is only one response, an immediate response that should be trained into every officer. The proper response is to focus on the front sight and prrreeeesssss the trigger for a surprise trigger break, delivering a single round to the cranio-ocular cavity of the hostage taker. End of encounter. Simple result is a dead hostage taker and an unharmed hostage.”
Boy, that guy is wrong on so many levels that it’s difficult to know where to begin. He assumes a shitload of stuff about the shooting that is not in evidence. Presumably, he’s guessing, but if so he sure didn’t make that clear.
And he expects every cop to be perfect at shooting? Get real. In the first place, 99% of cops, not to mention 99% of the rest of the population, will never meet his standards, regardless of how much training they get and how much and how often they practice. In the second place, who’s going to pay the hideously high costs of training every cop to his idea of perfection?
Now, granted, probably 90%+ of street cops have not attained what Cooper called “basic proficiency”. Many of them are probably incapable of reaching that level regardless of how much time and money is spent on training them. But even getting all cops up to one step beyond beginner would cost more than our society is willing to pay. Not to mention that there’s not 1% of the ammunition available that would be necessary.
And he honestly believes that the average cop will do 50% as well in a shootout as he does on the range? Give me a break. Maybe 10%, if he’s lucky.
I respectfully disagree. Ignatius Piazza’s place gives a four day course or it’s equivalent that all police should have to take as a part of their basic training. That said, stupid happens. When I took the course earlier this year and went in the fun house on day three, all I remembered was two shots to the torso. And one shot to the head, not eight.
A department or agency would have to give that four-day course once a month all year, every year, to make certain that every cop would meet that standard. No one is gonna pay for that.
Bear in mind the perp was hugging the victim close, probably head to head, with his gun out and moving around from ground floor to basement at the same time. I maintain that the late Jeff Cooper, the late Ed McGivern or their modern-day equivalents, if any, *might* be able to pull off that shot. Not some average schmo street cop, probably in his very first and only such incident. Had they been in the open or in front of a window, maybe a really good sniper coulda done it; still, I would not have green-lit the sniper. To jaw-jaw is better then war-war.