Cops kill Costco pizza lady....

Police arrest man with a knife in London

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFddlI9QHJk

The mounted officers contain and control, listen to the commands of the female officer. The man is surrounded and a tazer fired and then the surrounding police pounce. There are armed police there, but guns remain in holsters.

Here is exactly what I was speaking of.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX5CPx4RKWw

A man armed with a machete is contained, a wheely bin is used to try and disarm him. There is negotiation of sorts in that the man is told clearly to drop the knife and he is going to be arrested. As back up arrives he is eventfully overwhelmed, pounced upon and arrested. The police have batons and some have a shield. I do not see CS being used and no one has a gun.
 
Nessie said:
However, considering the German police shoot so few people and they are always armed, there is clearly something in the tactics used. Maybe US police reach and fire quicker than German police do?
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Or perhaps it is the perps, not the police, that drive the violence?
 
Giz said:
Or perhaps it is the perps, not the police, that drive the violence?
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Or most likely both as they feed off each other. More violent criminals make for a more violent police and so on.

OECD crime statistics do not suggest Germany is a particularly low crime country.

http://www.civitas.org.uk/crime/crime_stats_oecdjan2012.pdf

Indeed Germany has a much higher rate of assaults than the USA. I am quite sure it is the prevalence of guns that makes the USA more deadly than Germany. Germany, like the rest of the Western World has gone to great lengths to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, nuts, angry people and youths. It has 30.3 guns per 100 people, making it the 15th most heavily armed civilian population in the world. The gun homicide rate is 0.19 per 100,000 which is 15 times lower than the USA.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/jul/22/gun-ownership-homicides-map
 
Nessie said:
Police arrest man with a knife in London

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFddlI9QHJk

The mounted officers contain and control, listen to the commands of the female officer. The man is surrounded and a tazer fired and then the surrounding police pounce. There are armed police there, but guns remain in holsters.

Here is exactly what I was speaking of.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX5CPx4RKWw

A man armed with a machete is contained, a wheely bin is used to try and disarm him. There is negotiation of sorts in that the man is told clearly to drop the knife and he is going to be arrested. As back up arrives he is eventfully overwhelmed, pounced upon and arrested. The police have batons and some have a shield. I do not see CS being used and no one has a gun.
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Am I wrong in thinking that had those videos been shot in the US, the knife holder would have been shot by the police?
 
marplots said:
Am I wrong in thinking that had those videos been shot in the US, the knife holder would have been shot by the police?
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In the first video, I feel your assessment would be wrong unless the taser had failed. I think the guy with the machete probably would have been shot though, although he may not have been so brazen with the machete if the officers were armed.
 
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Skibum said:
In the first video, I feel your assessment would be wrong. I think the guy with the machete probably would have been shot though, although he may not have been so brazen with the machete if the officers were armed.
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I was thinking, in the first video, US cops would have had guns drawn and as soon as he lunged (almost simultaneous with the taser shot), the perp would have been shot. However, with an officer that close, maybe not.

In the second, weren't the cops armed (some), but didn't pull their guns out?
 
I do not think any of the police in the machete incident were armed with either tazer or gun. Even if they were, it is an example of what I mean by contain and control.
 
A factor you may not be considering... It sounds like in order to "contain and control", you need a lot of personnel. This is likely to not be available in many police jurisdictions. Especially on a busy night.
It's not unusual at all to respond to some sort of disturbance or suspicious person call, and to find out that your backup unit is 10 minutes out.... Or longer in many rural areas.

Or, that there is simply no backup available. Everybody is out.

In my previous department, covering a large county, we never had the luxury of two-man cars and frequently an entire precinct was out on a busy night.
On more than a few occasions I was given emergency calls that required 30 minutes travel time at "code three".... And I was the only officer responding.
 
I don't mean throwing up a cordon. I mean the police need to keep in contact with the person with the knife and as far as possible others out the way.
 
Bikewer said:
A factor you may not be considering... It sounds like in order to "contain and control", you need a lot of personnel. This is likely to not be available in many police jurisdictions. Especially on a busy night.
It's not unusual at all to respond to some sort of disturbance or suspicious person call, and to find out that your backup unit is 10 minutes out.... Or longer in many rural areas.

Or, that there is simply no backup available. Everybody is out.

In my previous department, covering a large county, we never had the luxury of two-man cars and frequently an entire precinct was out on a busy night.
On more than a few occasions I was given emergency calls that required 30 minutes travel time at "code three".... And I was the only officer responding.
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Good point. When we expect our officers to take independent action with only the resources they have available, they may very well respond with violence as a kind of "trump card."

But that makes me wonder why it is we demand quick resolution in the first place? I'm thinking of some departments who have changed their policies on car chases so that police may break off a chase - in essence, dialing down the immediacy and the danger.

Do US LEOs feel more pressure to make an arrest or otherwise resolve things quickly than UK LEOs do? Are we stuck in a kind of hero/cowboy mentality? I'm wondering if it might be possible to deescalate instead. In fact, one could argue doing so (as in the breaking off a car chase example) would make officers safer.
 
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Bikewer said:
A factor you may not be considering... It sounds like in order to "contain and control", you need a lot of personnel. This is likely to not be available in many police jurisdictions. Especially on a busy night.
It's not unusual at all to respond to some sort of disturbance or suspicious person call, and to find out that your backup unit is 10 minutes out.... Or longer in many rural areas.

Or, that there is simply no backup available. Everybody is out.

In my previous department, covering a large county, we never had the luxury of two-man cars and frequently an entire precinct was out on a busy night.
On more than a few occasions I was given emergency calls that required 30 minutes travel time at "code three".... And I was the only officer responding.
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This is a big difference between the UK and the US.

When you're in the middle of nowhere in the US, you're a lot further from somewhere than you would be in the UK.
 
3point14 said:
This is a big difference between the UK and the US.

When you're in the middle of nowhere in the US, you're a lot further from somewhere than you would be in the UK.
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A bit OT, but having to drive across Pennsylvania with an intern from Hong Kong was quite amusing, in that I80 across PA is rather "not in the middle of anything". It was apparently quite an experience for someone who grew up in a forest of apartment towers.

Yes, it is harder to muster concentrations of force in the USA, but in the busy part of Virginia? Still, that's not quite germane, since the concentration of force was apparently not mustered here.

While I continue to think this was a misapplication of force, I am also waiting for the other shoe(s) to drop here.
 
jj said:
A bit OT, but having to drive across Pennsylvania with an intern from Hong Kong was quite amusing, in that I80 across PA is rather "not in the middle of anything". It was apparently quite an experience for someone who grew up in a forest of apartment towers.

Yes, it is harder to muster concentrations of force in the USA, but in the busy part of Virginia? Still, that's not quite germane, since the concentration of force was apparently not mustered here.

While I continue to think this was a misapplication of force, I am also waiting for the other shoe(s) to drop here.
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I thought I read there were eight cops on scene. Is that wrong?
 
3point14 said:
This is a big difference between the UK and the US.

When you're in the middle of nowhere in the US, you're a lot further from somewhere than you would be in the UK.
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Scotland has many police who work alone, especially in rural areas and on the islands. De-escalation and negotiation is an essential skill.

Police who work in squads like support units are far more likely to go in hard, no matter the need.
 
Nessie said:
Scotland has many police who work alone, especially in rural areas and on the islands. De-escalation and negotiation is an essential skill.
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And most of those (with the possible exception of those on islands) are still going to be closer to backup than John Q Officer in Nowheresville, Texas. Texas is chuffing huge!

Police who work in squads like support units are far more likely to go in hard, no matter the need.
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What makes you say that? I mean, I think it makes sense, but can you demonstrate it?
 
3point14 said:
And most of those (with the possible exception of those on islands) are still going to be closer to backup than John Q Officer in Nowheresville, Texas. Texas is chuffing huge!
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The same skill set is still needed.



What makes you say that? I mean, I think it makes sense, but can you demonstrate it?
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No, it is an observation.
 
Nessie said:
The same skill set is still needed.
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I accept that, but I think the isolation is going to increase the number of times it is necessary for a LEO to use deadly force. Where those in urban or suburban locations can contain and wait for backup, that option is not available to those in far more isolated areas. It's going to influence the statistics.


No, it is an observation.
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Simple observation is legendary for being subject to bias. Do you have anything more than that?
 
Bikewer said:
A factor you may not be considering... It sounds like in order to "contain and control", you need a lot of personnel. This is likely to not be available in many police jurisdictions. Especially on a busy night.
It's not unusual at all to respond to some sort of disturbance or suspicious person call, and to find out that your backup unit is 10 minutes out.... Or longer in many rural areas.

Or, that there is simply no backup available. Everybody is out.

In my previous department, covering a large county, we never had the luxury of two-man cars and frequently an entire precinct was out on a busy night.
On more than a few occasions I was given emergency calls that required 30 minutes travel time at "code three".... And I was the only officer responding.
Click to expand...

The thing is that she was already contained because she was in a room separated from anyone else. To get out she would have had to exited via a doorway. All the cops had to do was block that doorway off and she wouldn't have been a threat to anyone. This is how the police in NZ would have handled it, you don't enter a room with a hostile person in it, you stay at or in the doorway, with the ability to pull the door closed if they advance on you, then you talk them down. They aren't going anywhere trapped in the room, and they aren't a threat to anyone either, so it then just becomes a case of waiting them out. As soon as you enter a room with a drawn gun, you reduce your options to almost nil, it's stupid.
 
PhantomWolf said:
The thing is that she was already contained because she was in a room separated from anyone else. To get out she would have had to exited via a doorway. All the cops had to do was block that doorway off and she wouldn't have been a threat to anyone. This is how the police in NZ would have handled it, you don't enter a room with a hostile person in it, you stay at or in the doorway, with the ability to pull the door closed if they advance on you, then you talk them down. They aren't going anywhere trapped in the room, and they aren't a threat to anyone either, so it then just becomes a case of waiting them out. As soon as you enter a room with a drawn gun, you reduce your options to almost nil, it's stupid.
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Unless the Costco break room was in violation of fire code or tiny, there would have been at least two exists from it. Why do you think they went in with guns drawn? At least one had to have had their taser out.

It doesn't invalidate the point that if things when down as you're speculating then there were better practices that should have been followed.
 
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