You have yet to show how the nude student at the police office with no one else around is a high risk to other students.
When I was a student drugs and alcohol were being used by many for the first time and there was a number of times when people had to be calmed and cared for by mates. But maybe that is a Scottish thing
Actually, a point blank shot (less than 5 feet) is usually the most accurate.
Secondly, you keep talking about these cuffs. You do realize that every police officer has at least one set, right? And they carry them all the time, right? You also realize they're not magical, right? They don't possess some sort of wizardry that will instantly calm someone down.
I know all about cuffs, how you should have they, how to carry them, how they work, how effective they are. I know about them not having magic powers of calming, indeed many hate being cuffed. But what they do do very effectively is restrain and reduce risk.
Even one cuff on the student and a cop with any decent training who is worth their salt and you have a restrained student. Both is better.
Cool. In the US or elsewhere? Oh, right, not the US. So, your OPINION is going to greatly differ from that of US officers.
Why is it not on while you're on duty? You should have it on at all times to be prepared.
Since it took you a full minute to get there, the person banging was fleeing a group of thugs who've now shot him, and he's bleeding out on your front door step, and you're looking down the barrel of a .357 revolver.
BANG!!! .357 goes off, and now you and the victim are now bleeding out on the front door step of the police precinct. Good job officer!
And now that you're bleeding out, and you forgot your radio inside on your desk, you're ******!! Congratulations officer!! You protected zero lives, and now the group of punks is fleeing, while you're bleeding out!
(I am not advocating your death, just illustrating what could happen here in the US.)
Nope, his lacking LTL tools limited his options, as did the actions of the suspect.
The police officer's potential for hitting his adversary during armed
confrontation has increased over the years and stands at slightly over 25% of
the rounds fired. An assailant's skill was 11% in 1979.
In 1990 the overall police hit potential was 19%. Where distances could be
determined, the hit percentages at distances under 15 yards were:
Less than 3 yards ..... 38%
3 yards to 7 yards .. 11.5%
7 yards to 15 yards .. 9.4%
In 1992 the overall police hit potential was 17%. Where distances could be
determined, the hit percentages at distances under 15 yards were:
Less than 3 yards ..... 28%
3 yards to 7 yards .... 11%
7 yards to 15 yards . 4.2%
New York City police statistics show that simply hitting a target, let alone hitting it in a specific spot, is a difficult challenge. In 2006, in cases where police officers intentionally fired a gun at a person, they discharged 364 bullets and hit their target 103 times, for a hit rate of 28.3 percent, according to the department’s Firearms Discharge Report. The police shot and killed 13 people last year.
In 2005, officers fired 472 times in the same circumstances, hitting their mark 82 times, for a 17.4 percent hit rate. They shot and killed nine people that year.
In all shootings — including those against people, animals and in suicides and other situations — New York City officers achieved a 34 percent accuracy rate (182 out of 540), and a 43 percent accuracy rate when the target ranged from zero to six feet away. Nearly half the shots they fired last year were within that distance.
So, if the student is a risk to other students, then so is the cop with his gun out.
That you're twisting my words, and TragicMonkey's words also.
Expect to be shot and SHOULD be shot are two different things.
IIRC, I stated early on ITT, that the officer should have had LTL options available to him, but for one reason or another, didn't have a tazer and didn't deploy his mace.
I support the officers decision 100%, at least at this time. If further information comes out that proves the officer acted incorrectly, I of course will revise my opinion.
Right so in this case the student should expect to be shot and should be shot. Thanks for the clarification.
I do not think he had any idea he was going to be shot, since it has been pointed out many cops never use their guns and many arrests are affected without guns being shot. Furthermore he was off his face and not acting rationally.
Do you understand that his possible failure to have his other equipment on him, which may not be the case now anyway, contributed to what happened?
I still think you have failed miserably to show the only option was to shoot the student.
I do think that if you attack a police officer, you should not only EXPECT to be shot, but if you do that to me (being a concealed weapons permit holder, and armed 99% of the time) you will be shot.
I'm not going to make distinctions and exceptions about who shouldn't expect to be shot, or who cops are not allowed to shoot, since sometimes those people are the worst risk to an officer's safety. For instance, a manic depressive people, with no desire to live, and is too chicken to take his or her own life, is VERY dangerous to an officer and their safety. Ever heard the expression "suicide by cop"?
I want all of our police officers going home to their families, and if some crazed turd wants to try to hurt an officer, they should expect to be shot.
Take it as you will though. You'll claim that I said all people with mental illnesses should be shot, and the rest of us will all point and laugh because we KNOW that is not true.
Please explain that apparent contradiction as highlighted in bold.
It appears that whilst you would shoot anyone who attacks you and expect the police to do the same, it is not clear if you would or would not shoot people with mental health issues (drug induced or not, temporary or not) who attack you.
Or do you seriously think I meant just go out and shoot people with mental health issues, like you would hunt ducks?
I differentiate between people deliberately out to harm the police or others, or those after suicide by cop from those who are experiencing a mental health or drug induced episode who do not know what they are doing and are indeed in need of help.
He did not say stand down or not do anything, he said wait a very short time so back up arrives.
In this case as soon as the cop opened the police office door he could see the only person about was the nude student. So waiting till back up arrives is at that point an option.
If the nude student was attacking someone or chasing after someone, waiting for back up would not have been an option and the cop should have been acting. Meanwhile if the dispatcher is doing their job, they should be calling in back up.
I would be interested to know if the CCTV of outside the office could be monitored inside the office, so you look to see what has happened first. A few seconds assessing a situation before deciding what to do is preferable to just charging in blind.
Anyways I agree the cop shouldn't have shot the student. I also agree the that the course of action was within bounds, though those bounds are extreme. Suck for the cop, sucks for the student but it happened and I don't think the police officer should suffer anymore than that. If the officer didn't shoot him we'd only be complaining that the officer kicked him really hard because he wasn't in his right mind to begin with. Is that fair? No, but no action would be fair in any intervention of this guy. Even if she decided the guy was near-harmless and she risked just taking him on with cuffing the danger she'd submit herself too would likewise be unfair with the absence of hindsight.
I would expect a police officer to arrest and restrain the student and then get medical assistance for him. That is a fair and reasonable response. It is what would be correctly expected of the police in the UK.
Got them from where ? You are still making a number of assumptions, in this case that they were nearby.
They are connected since some here state the cop was right shooting the student, but to claim so they need to show it was the only option for him. So far no one has done that, no one can show shooting someone high on drugs is the only option available.
Again, those two things are not in any way connected. Saying that a cop had no other option but to shoot a drugged person in this scenario is not like saying that shooting drugged people is the only option all the time. You seem to have a problem differentiating stuff like that.
Considering you've done it again in the post I just made, after may corrections by other people, which you've ignored, I can't give you the benefit of the doubt, anymore.
YOU don't know that either, and neither did the cop, who was the person in the situation at the time. You are creating a fantasy where the naked guy would have simply stopped at 5 feet for no reason, while previously not showing any indication of having the intention to stop. In other words, you are making every effort to shape reality to your preconceived conclusion.
I wouldn't. If an individual continues to close with me while I am telling him to stop, I am not going to wait to see what happens, as "what happens" is unpredictable and may include a sucker-punch or a gun-grab or an attempt at manual strangulation.
As I said before, we on our department are fully-equipped in the continuum of force department. If I had time, I'd use pepper spray. In my experience, it's very effective. If the fellow was too close, I'd just hit him to create space.
I'm a pretty good "hitter" with many years of MA experience.
I wasn't there so I don't know how the situation played out and I surely don't know what the officer's state of mind was.
If he "perceived" that he - or someone else - were in immediate threat of grievous bodily harm from that student, then he had every right to shoot.
I guarantee that was what his training taught him and I would think that is the law where he resides.
The problem that I have is how things have changed over the years from back when I was a cop.
For the first 5 years or so I had a .38 special S&W Model 10 - 5" bbl revolver in a full flap cavalry style holster worn on a Sam Browne service belt - with shoulder strap. That shoulder strap was quite a liability in a grappling match with some yahoo - but I digress. No baton (until 1979). No OC spray (pepper spray) . No Taser.
Self Defence Training at Depot consisted of a lot of ground fighting - no holds barred - with usually one or two injuries per troop serious enough to cause a "backtroop" or even discharge due to injury. Tough luck. You had to learn to fight and endure pain or you didn't make it through training. Period.
We shot the old PPC for qualification. We were taught to NEVER draw our sidearm unless we were certain we were going to fire it. Period.
The concept of drawing your weapon "just in case" was considered ludicrous as it was only going to put you in a situation of fighting one handed in the vast majority of cases. That was absolutely true - in my experience spanning over 30 years.
I still remember Ron Woolgar yelling: "If you draw your gun to threaten someone - you're either going to have to shoot an unarmed person one day or you're going to get it shoved up your arse!
I - like a lot of my fellow officers - patrolled very large areas with very little manpower. At times - my back-up could be 45 miles away. Or, at home in bed.
If I had drawn my sidearm every time a large drunk or drugged up idiot decided that he was going to knock my head off - I would have been battered to a pulp very quickly. Or, I was going to have to explain why I shot and killed someone on an almost weekly basis.
One fought a lot. It came with the job. You learned to sew your torn shirts and buttons, compare your scars at the regimental balls, and as you got more experience - how to talk or cajole your way out of a lot of trouble.
When I became a firearms instructor - I taught it the same way I learned it. However, things had changed by the mid 1980's. Policing was now being taught with the concept of FEAR being a very real part of the job. Fear of being shot, fear of being stabbed, fear of getting in a fight for your life. Fear, fear, fear.
I heard the concept of "going home safe every night" from a course I took from Massad Ayoob (a part of training me to train our newly forming ERT or what the US called SWAT). I remember thinking that the job I had was much more safe than those of loggers or construction workers or fishermen whose dead or maimed bodies I was all too often tasked to help recover.
As the fear increased - the agitation for greater firepower and alternatives to using deadly force increased.
The use of these things spiraled out of control. By the time I left the Force - newer police officers were actually stating: "I don't get paid enough to fight" Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6" and other such ludicrous things.
Vigilance has given way to fear. And, as a famous author famously wrote: "Fear is the mind killer".
If all confrontations involve fear for your life or physical well-being - then you should stop being a police officer. Life is too short to live in fear.
Besides - your fear can shorten the life of someone when a thoughtful assessment of the situation may have saved their life.
edited to add: I guess I should add that IF the information that we have been given so far is accurate - I doubt very much that I would have had my weapon drawn at any time during this scenario. The day that I feared a fight with an unarmed naked guy of that size - should have been the day after I quit the job. After all: Old age and treachery overcomes youth and skill.
I disagree. We pay police to accept a certain degree of risk in exchange for their pay, and since that degree of risk is substantially less than the risk people who cut down trees or work on fishing boats accept in return for their pay there is absolutely nothing unreasonable about that.
If there's a tiny chance a police officer might get killed trying to wrestle briefly with a small, drugged-up, naked athlete before backup arrives then I'm sorry but they should take that risk. It's what they get paid for.
They chose to take a job where every now and then they have to accept a small risk to their own lives in order to protect others, including naked and drug-crazed others. That was their decision. Nobody made them take the job. Once they've taken it they don't get to decide "Actually, now I've decided that I want absolute safety for myself at the expense of public safety, I think I'll kill people if that in any way mitigates risk to myself".
I agree with the above. To me, there's a distinct difference between what a random person should do in a situation, and what a police officer should do.
A random person would be within their right to shoot in this case, because they have the right to protect themselves when their life is threatened, by whatever means necessary.
The threshhold for killing should be higher for police officers, because society grants them privileges which would be far too easy for them to abuse.
Imagine if any civilian could stop anyone else on the street and demand that they identify themselves. Imagine if any civilian could require any other car to pull over, if they noticed a headlight out. We don't want a society where bullies run amock, so when we as a society grant the right to some people to be bullies because it's useful to society as a whole, there's a price to pay that comes with that privilege.
Shouldering some risk, rather than shooting anyone who threatens your life, is part of the price that one pays, when society allows you to wield power every day that it doesn't grant to others.
Got them from where ? You are still making a number of assumptions, in this case that they were nearby.
Again, those two things are not in any way connected. Saying that a cop had no other option but to shoot a drugged person in this scenario is not like saying that shooting drugged people is the only option all the time. You seem to have a problem differentiating stuff like that.
which to me makes far more sense than he had them stashed away somewhere which meant he could not get them, as many assumed. Police on duty should never be far from their equipment.
Which bit about it was others who appeared to say they think drugged people and people on mental health episodes should expect (that has been deemed the correct word) to be shot. Which bit do not follow I have been trying to get confirmation of that for pages now?
I have also been saying from the start Collar should not have been shot, and neither should those high or with mental health episodes, unless as an absolute last resort.
I have also been saying from the start, why use a gun at all, since UK police don't have them, German police don't use theirs as well as other US cops and people in jobs where they deal with drugs and mental health.
The message from Sheriff Ayres, is got a gun, use it, no matter.
" A copy of the university's weapons policy, released to The Associated Press in response to an open records request, shows an officer's actions in cases where force is necessary should be based on how much a suspect resists. Deadly force is justified only when a suspect has the intent, ability and opportunity to kill or injure someone else, the policy states.
The policy says that an officer's attempt to control a situation "should match (the) level of resistance then move up or down as resistance changes." But Ayers declined comment on how the guidelines are interpreted when an officer is confronted by someone who doesn't have a weapon, yet could present a threat."
That is the UK policy and we can do it, the German police can do it, many US police can do it, why exempt Officer Austin?
Considering you've done it again in the post I just made, after may corrections by other people, which you've ignored, I can't give you the benefit of the doubt, anymore.
YOU don't know that either, and neither did the cop, who was the person in the situation at the time. You are creating a fantasy where the naked guy would have simply stopped at 5 feet for no reason, while previously not showing any indication of having the intention to stop. In other words, you are making every effort to shape reality to your preconceived conclusion.
I was doing so in response to your fantasy designed to shape reality to your ideal. If you can say we do not know one thing, so can I. I should also be able to do that without criticism, or else that criticism applies straight back at you.
Fact is Collar did not go with in 4 or 5 feet of Austin. He did not rush (as the original Uni Press release claimed) Austin. It is unclear if he ever did adopt a fighting stance (again as the Uni Press release claimed)
That makes my conclusion of Collar maybe did not intend to attack as a more reasonable one than your claim he may have attacked.
If Collar had been rushing at Austin, had adopted clear fighting stances, had got within 4 feet during one of the rushes at Austin, I would be inclined to agree with your conclusion. As it is based on the facts, I do not.
Got them from where ? You are still making a number of assumptions, in this case that they were nearby.
Again, those two things are not in any way connected. Saying that a cop had no other option but to shoot a drugged person in this scenario is not like saying that shooting drugged people is the only option all the time. You seem to have a problem differentiating stuff like that.
Despite having it and the logical fallacy he's using explained to him a number of times. Just to be clear, it's a straw man. Saying shooting the kid was justified in this one scenario is not the same as saying it is right to always shoot all drug-addled suspects. I don't think Nessie has been able to provide any evidence of someone claiming such in this thread, yet he keeps ascribing or trying to ascribe it to the other side.
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