Posted on 12/03/2009 7:21:58 AM PST by Notoriously Conservative
Watch the video and what do you see? Officers ordering the suspect to put the assault rifle down. It appears that he is complying but then he is shot anyway. Is that what you see?
Watch the video again and watch the suspect's right hand while he places the rifle down with his left hand.
What you don't see, but the officer behind the suspect does see, is the suspect pulling a hidden handgun from his rear pants with his right hand. Watch as the bad guy goes down, the handgun is still in his right hand.
Just a reminder, what you think you see at first does not always tell the truth. It really makes you appreciate the police, and the risks they take to protect us.
(Excerpt) Read more at notoriouslyconservative.com ...
This appears to be a staged video. Perhaps a training video?
It certainly could be. I don’t know the story behind it.
However, that includes law enforcement officers - hence, while one should never blindly accept that the cops shot the person for no reason without further information, in the same vein one should never give the police officers total concurrence just because a cop said it happened a certain way. Thus, I agree with the statement that we shouldn't just accept the 'proof-cops-are-b@st@rds' videos on blind faith ...maybe there is something off camera we did not see/was not captured. At the same time, police officers are human beings, and thus can also be liars and schemers (e.g. the old lady shot down and the cops planting some drugs on her to try and somewhat justify the error).
I personally analyze both ways.
What struck me as odd was the contact officer's tactics, especially given the weapons involved. One should not leave cover and approach an armed suspect straight on. Especially when he is armed with an assault rifle.
It’s a police training video, not a real event.
They created a situation where a viewer might reach a different conclusion.
It proves a singular point.
This is a training video. The easiest way to tell is that after the perp is shot, the officer in front begins to re-holster his weapon, even though the perp is still holding a gun in his right hand. In a real shooting, the guns stay out until they *have* to be put back in their holsters.
Typically, a police officer will re-holster quickly when there hasn’t been any shooting, and another office has his gun on the perp. But if real bullets have been flying, the guns stay out.
Another cue is that only three bullets are discharged. If police shoot someone, they often intend that they stay shot.
The big technical question I would ask the officer behind the perp is “What were your aiming points?” This is a good thought problem, but not for an obvious reason that most people don’t think about shooting someone in the back. The real reason is the *other* officer in front. The bullets could have gone through the perp and hit the other officer.
Regarding your question on aiming points: Police are being taught that the old concept of “center mass” as an aiming point, be modified to “center OF mass.” It’s a subtle change, but it means that one shoots at the mass center of whatever is presented to him as a target. Front or back doesn’t really matter; if the shot isn’t taken, the perp’s threat becomes the act.
And, as always, police are not taught to shoot to kill or wound; they are trained to shoot in order to stop the threat. This implies that shooting continues until the threat is stopped. A perp on the ground with gun still in hand may still be a threat, depending on what the hand is doing.
I was thinking more along the lines of “white dot, black dot” theory.
That is, that when you are shooting at a target, you focus on the center, or small “white dot” of the target, and tend to ignore everything else around it, the big “black dot”. However, if in a case like this, you are shooting at a person, you want them to be the small “black dot”, and to pay attention to the big “white dot”, or everything else your bullets *may* hit, if you miss, or the bullets go through the person.
And I will be the first one to say this is hard as heck to do. It is also a police “nightmare scenario”.
An officer is across the street, watching a playground full of children, when a perp walks between the cop and the playground, then pulls a gun and starts shooting at the cop. What does the cop do?
Universally, they want to duck for cover, while drawing their gun and returning fire. Then they remember that playground...
Yeah, I was wondering why the camera man was so close and why he/she didn’t flinch when the cop opposite him/her shot the suspect. He/she would have nearly been in the line of fire were it a real video.
Ideally, repetitive training under conditions that try to simulate reality, their actions become instinctive to the point that cops just put the front sight on the center of the mass they see and squeeze twice, looking for effect, and go from there.
Good cops know about the playground before reacting because they’re trying to think a step or two ahead.
You’re right about it being hard. Somewhere in a nearby city, there is a bathtub with a hole in it, the result of my own effort to hit the center of the perp’s mass under stress.
Stats show that the “typical” shooting occurs in low light conditions, at a distance of about seven yards. That’s a formula for stress.
Thankfully, the only police shooting I was ever near was when I was in high school, shopping in a small store. The shooting was outside, bright light, about two in the afternoon, about as justifiable as it gets, with an armed maniac charging the officer from a hundred feet away while screaming that he was going to kill him, in the middle of an open street with almost no traffic.
You know it’s a slam dunk when half a dozen witness all agree.
And yet, after much of the rest of the police department showed up, what got me was an old, grizzled sergeant taking the officer through the process. Particularly after all the pertinent details, he took him to a squad car, opened the door, sat him down with his feet on the ground, and then said: “Aim that way”, loud enough for me to hear in the doorway.
I heard that and was puzzled. But, sure as a gun, about four minutes later, the cop threw up—right in the direction of the storm drain.
The voice of experience.
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