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Relapse wrote:
There is a huge spike in police being murdered this year. This memorial page gives a rundown of officer deaths in 2016 and how they died. A large portion was from being shot: https://www.odmp.org/search/year

I'm not sure how huge that spike is. Right now the number is at 39 officers shot this year. That's about 5 per month, which means that assume all else remains equal, we'll be at 49 cops shot this year. That's up over last year but not a huge outlier, historically:

2016: 49 (projected)
2015: 41
2014: 49
2013: 33
2012: 50
2011: 73
2010: 60
2009: 50
2008: 41
2007: 70

and so on. And will all else be equal? I doubt it. 15% of the YTD shootings were all in a single, hopefully isolated, incident - those are fairly rare. I think the Dallas shootings are probably the #2 biggest single loss of officers in the line of duty after 9/11 (I'm guessing here though).

Obviously any number of shootings is too many.

 d-usa wrote:

Relapse wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:
People trying to commit "suicide by cop" can still shoot at and kill cops in the process.

Except this guy had an unloaded gun and wasn't pointing it at anyone or overtly threatening anyone.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Relapse wrote:
To play devil's advocate, I see the other side of this in that if he was wrong, it could have gotten him and the other two officers injured or killed.

But he wasn't wrong and the two other officers weren't in any danger. Even if the gun was loaded the man was pointing it in a safe direction and was engaged in a conversation with the fired cop in a manner that was deescalating the situation. Unles the man pointed the unloaded gun at the other cops there wasn't an immediate threat to them even if the gun was loaded.

Someone who is potentially hostile with a gun pointed in a "safe" direction can very quickly put a bullet through a person. There is a huge spike in police being murdered this year. This memorial page gives a rundown of officer deaths in 2016 and how they died. A large portion was from being shot: https://www.odmp.org/search/year

If three officers are on scene, one of them is talking to the guy and two of them being afraid of the guy, then it may just be possible that two of the officers could have their weapon drawn and aim at the suspect ready to fire if he made an actual aggressive movement such as raising the weapon to point it at them. This would let the officer that made the initial contact and who has already established a relationship with the guy continue with his current approach while the other officers provide backup and the ability to quickly neutralize any thread as it develops.

But if we pretend that the only two solutions are "kill the guy that is holding a gun and who is not pointing it at anybody" and "keep your weapon in your holster while talking to the armed guy so that if he decided to raise his weapon you cannot respond and have to let yourself get killed", then there really is no point to keep the discussion going.

A really novel idea would be to try to understand what it was the cops thought they saw, or perhaps read some of the stories in the link I provided, such as where the cops tried to use non lethal force and got killed for their troubles. This could give a clue why the other two officers weren't so inclined to give the potential shooter a chance to kill them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ouze wrote:

Relapse wrote:
There is a huge spike in police being murdered this year. This memorial page gives a rundown of officer deaths in 2016 and how they died. A large portion was from being shot: https://www.odmp.org/search/year

I'm not sure how huge that spike is. Right now the number is at 39 officers shot this year. That's about 5 per month, which means that assume all else remains equal, we'll be at 49 cops shot this year. That's up over last year but not a huge outlier, historically:

2016: 49 (projected)
2015: 41
2014: 49
2013: 33
2012: 50
2011: 73
2010: 60
2009: 50
2008: 41
2007: 70

and so on. And will all else be equal? I doubt it. 15% of the YTD shootings were all in a single, hopefully isolated, incident - those are fairly rare. I think the Dallas shootings are probably the #2 biggest single loss of officers in the line of duty after 9/11 (I'm guessing here though).

Obviously any number of shootings is too many.

I read there was a 78% spike. I'll try to find the article.

Here it is: http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/17/us/police-shooting-deaths-july-2016/

Some of the cop killers were legal gun owners, best way cops could protect themselves is to kill anyone that says "I am licensed to carry and I am carrying". They can pull that gun out and kill pretty quickly.

It's also very easily to quickly escalate from compliance at a traffic stop to running over and killing the cop, so it's better to kill people in their cars after they pull over.

I don't really care about how quickly something can escalate, if he's not a threat right now you don't kill him. It doesn't matter one bit how much of a threat he can be 5 seconds later, you don't kill people based on the potential for a threat. If someone can't live with that they need to go switch to a profession with more certainty, because you can't be a cop if you think you need to kill because someone might be a threat later.

 d-usa wrote:
Some of the cop killers were legal gun owners, best way cops could protect themselves is to kill anyone that says "I am licensed to carry and I am carrying". They can pull that gun out and kill pretty quickly.

It's also very easily to quickly escalate from compliance at a traffic stop to running over and killing the cop, so it's better to kill people in their cars after they pull over.

I don't really care about how quickly something can escalate, if he's not a threat right now you don't kill him. It doesn't matter one bit how much of a threat he can be 5 seconds later, you don't kill people based on the potential for a threat. If someone can't live with that they need to go switch to a profession with more certainty, because you can't be a cop if you think you need to kill because someone might be a threat later.

If you read the links provided, you will see how quickly a situation can escalate, making the decision to shoot someone with a drawn gun more understandable.

Relapse wrote:
To play devil's advocate, I see the other side of this in that if he was wrong, it could have gotten him and the other two officers injured or killed.

I was under the impression that the two officers arrived after he did, so they would have knowingly put themselves in danger by entering the situation. They needlessly complicated matters and he suffered for it.

 Dreadwinter wrote:

Relapse wrote:
To play devil's advocate, I see the other side of this in that if he was wrong, it could have gotten him and the other two officers injured or killed.

I was under the impression that the two officers arrived after he did, so they would have knowingly put themselves in danger by entering the situation. They needlessly complicated matters and he suffered for it.

I'm pretty sure procedure for this kind of situation is to get as many officers on the scene as possible as opposed to leaving someone on their own.

Relapse wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Some of the cop killers were legal gun owners, best way cops could protect themselves is to kill anyone that says "I am licensed to carry and I am carrying". They can pull that gun out and kill pretty quickly.

It's also very easily to quickly escalate from compliance at a traffic stop to running over and killing the cop, so it's better to kill people in their cars after they pull over.

I don't really care about how quickly something can escalate, if he's not a threat right now you don't kill him. It doesn't matter one bit how much of a threat he can be 5 seconds later, you don't kill people based on the potential for a threat. If someone can't live with that they need to go switch to a profession with more certainty, because you can't be a cop if you think you need to kill because someone might be a threat later.

If you read the links provided, you will see how quickly a situation can escalate, making the decision to shoot someone with a drawn gun more understandable.

It's never understandable to shoot someone based on a potential future thread, end of story.

If you can't handle that you have zero business with a badge and a gun.

When a situation escalates, you escalate your response, not any sooner than that.

 d-usa wrote:

Relapse wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Some of the cop killers were legal gun owners, best way cops could protect themselves is to kill anyone that says "I am licensed to carry and I am carrying". They can pull that gun out and kill pretty quickly.

It's also very easily to quickly escalate from compliance at a traffic stop to running over and killing the cop, so it's better to kill people in their cars after they pull over.

I don't really care about how quickly something can escalate, if he's not a threat right now you don't kill him. It doesn't matter one bit how much of a threat he can be 5 seconds later, you don't kill people based on the potential for a threat. If someone can't live with that they need to go switch to a profession with more certainty, because you can't be a cop if you think you need to kill because someone might be a threat later.

If you read the links provided, you will see how quickly a situation can escalate, making the decision to shoot someone with a drawn gun more understandable.

It's never understandable to shoot someone based on a potential future thread, end of story.

If you can't handle that you have zero business with a badge and a gun.

When a situation escalates, you escalate your response, not any sooner than that.

Read the links.

Relapse wrote:
I'm pretty sure procedure for this kind of situation is to get as many officers on the scene as possible as opposed to leaving someone on their own.

But shouldn't any latecomers be under the command of the first officer on the scene? If he's already working on it the others shouldn't interfere unless he says so.

I can give you links of legal gun owners killing cops. Should we kill them?

The one link you posted is a guy who resisted arrest, who then got tazered, and who continued to resist arrest and killed a cop.

This relates to the guy who was talking to the cop while holding a gun how?

If the first cop would have killed him as soon as he noticed he was armed it would be a story. The fact that he was able to continue a peaceful interaction with him makes the action of the other cops wrong. Let him continue to talk and engage, provide him with backup by aiming and being ready to pull the trigger to kill him if he makes the wrong move, and go from there.

Yeah, it's very unclear to me why the first cop was peacefully de-escalating the situation, the second 2 cops show up, shoot him, and he's the bad guy. They were free to take cover, hell even draw and target the guy from cover while the first cop did his thing. Ultimately the only life that needed to be at risk was the first cops, and he clearly was OK with that risk. It's kind of amazing to me that he got fired for that.

Spetulhu wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I'm pretty sure procedure for this kind of situation is to get as many officers on the scene as possible as opposed to leaving someone on their own.

But shouldn't any latecomers be under the command of the first officer on the scene? If he's already working on it the others shouldn't interfere unless he says so.

It depends on what they thought they saw, I imagine. Best thing that could happen in this link is if someone who is a cop could pitch in on what the training is for this kind of thing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
I can give you links of legal gun owners killing cops. Should we kill them?

The one link you posted is a guy who resisted arrest, who then got tazered, and who continued to resist arrest and killed a cop.

This relates to the guy who was talking to the cop while holding a gun how?

If the first cop would have killed him as soon as he noticed he was armed it would be a story. The fact that he was able to continue a peaceful interaction with him makes the action of the other cops wrong. Let him continue to talk and engage, provide him with backup by aiming and being ready to pull the trigger to kill him if he makes the wrong move, and go from there.

I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.

Another incident from the link that shows you don't know what can happen: https://www.odmp.org/officer/22733-police-officer-douglas-scott-barney-i

Here, another officer was killed while questioning a suspect. He attempted to taste him when the suspect tried resisting. Once again, the taser failed and the officer was killed: https://www.odmp.org/officer/22745-deputy-sheriff-derek-geer


Here's an incident where an officer tried talking to an armed suspect and was killed: https://www.odmp.org/officer/22749-senior-deputy-mark-logsdon

Relapse wrote:
To play devil's advocate, I see the other side of this in that if he was wrong, it could have gotten him and the other two officers injured or killed.

Of course, and that's why policing is hard. You have to make judgement calls in a split second when there are lives at stake.

The absurdity in this case is the guy got the call right - he had great instincts and explained his positioning extremely well after the fact. He seems like the kind of guy that you'd want in a police force.

But he gets fired for that call. And while it isn't said outright, it seems to be that the police dept is saying there is no discretion possible in this situation, officers are expected to shoot. That's kind of terrifying.

Relapse wrote:
I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.

It kind of sounds like you're arguing for cops to shoot everyone they encounter, since they can't react before someone could potentially draw and fire.

Obviously there needs to be a middle ground there. Police are supposed to protect and serve, and while there is some danger of being shot on the job, ultimately you're not in a war zone. If you want a job without risk, be a librarian or a technical writer.

Relapse wrote:
Someone who is potentially hostile with a gun pointed in a "safe" direction can very quickly put a bullet through a person. There is a huge spike in police being murdered this year. This memorial page gives a rundown of officer deaths in 2016 and how they died. A large portion was from being shot: https://www.odmp.org/search/year

"Huge spike" is something of a stretch. It's more 'tiny uptick in fairly noisy data that none the less has shown a major decline over time'.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Relapse wrote:
I read there was a 78% spike. I'll try to find the article.

Here it is: http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/17/us/police-shooting-deaths-july-2016/

Yeah, you shouldn't put too much stock in big sounding percentages that are just showing single year movements in sub-categories.

Relapse wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I'm pretty sure procedure for this kind of situation is to get as many officers on the scene as possible as opposed to leaving someone on their own.

But shouldn't any latecomers be under the command of the first officer on the scene? If he's already working on it the others shouldn't interfere unless he says so.

It depends on what they thought they saw, I imagine. Best thing that could happen in this link is if someone who is a cop could pitch in on what the training is for this kind of thing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
I can give you links of legal gun owners killing cops. Should we kill them?

The one link you posted is a guy who resisted arrest, who then got tazered, and who continued to resist arrest and killed a cop.

This relates to the guy who was talking to the cop while holding a gun how?

If the first cop would have killed him as soon as he noticed he was armed it would be a story. The fact that he was able to continue a peaceful interaction with him makes the action of the other cops wrong. Let him continue to talk and engage, provide him with backup by aiming and being ready to pull the trigger to kill him if he makes the wrong move, and go from there.

I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.

Another incident from the link that shows you don't know what can happen: https://www.odmp.org/officer/22733-police-officer-douglas-scott-barney-ii

So we are in fact pretending that the only two options are "kill" and "don't draw your weapon and get killed"?

So your two examples now are a guy who was actively resisting arrest, and a guy who drew his weapon and killed a cop who wasn't expecting a confrontation.

And this counters the "we have one officer who was de-escalating a situation, let the two other officers draw their weapons and aim and be ready to pull the trigger" how?

Again, I'm saying that killing him "just because" and ignoring the progress cop #1 was making is just as stupid as not doing anything to anticipate a situation that could escalate. But there are options available besides "kill him", mainly having other officers who arrived take a defensive position while drawn their weapon and aiming them ready to pull that trigger if needed.

If you think your only response available is lethal force, you shouldn't be a cop.
If you think you can't apply 6lb of pressure with your finger in the time it takes someone to raise their weapon, aim, and fire, then you shouldn't be a cop.

 Ouze wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.

It kind of sounds like you're arguing for cops to shoot everyone they encounter, since they can't react before someone could potentially draw and fire.

Obviously there needs to be a middle ground there. Police are supposed to protect and serve, and while there is some danger of being shot on the job, ultimately you're not in a war zone. If you want a job without risk, be a librarian or a technical writer.

What I am advocating is not automatically saying a cop is at fault for shooting someone in a situation where someone has a drawn gun. This is especially true when we are only getting part of the story. Maybe one of the other officers interpreted a twitch as a move to aim the gun and thought it was time to shoot.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:

Relapse wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I'm pretty sure procedure for this kind of situation is to get as many officers on the scene as possible as opposed to leaving someone on their own.

But shouldn't any latecomers be under the command of the first officer on the scene? If he's already working on it the others shouldn't interfere unless he says so.

It depends on what they thought they saw, I imagine. Best thing that could happen in this link is if someone who is a cop could pitch in on what the training is for this kind of thing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
I can give you links of legal gun owners killing cops. Should we kill them?

The one link you posted is a guy who resisted arrest, who then got tazered, and who continued to resist arrest and killed a cop.

This relates to the guy who was talking to the cop while holding a gun how?

If the first cop would have killed him as soon as he noticed he was armed it would be a story. The fact that he was able to continue a peaceful interaction with him makes the action of the other cops wrong. Let him continue to talk and engage, provide him with backup by aiming and being ready to pull the trigger to kill him if he makes the wrong move, and go from there.

I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.

Another incident from the link that shows you don't know what can happen: https://www.odmp.org/officer/22733-police-officer-douglas-scott-barney-ii

So we are in fact pretending that the only two options are "kill" and "don't draw your weapon and get killed"?

So your two examples now are a guy who was actively resisting arrest, and a guy who drew his weapon and killed a cop who wasn't expecting a confrontation.

And this counters the "we have one officer who was de-escalating a situation, let the two other officers draw their weapons and aim and be ready to pull the trigger" how?

Again, I'm saying that killing him "just because" and ignoring the progress cop #1 was making is just as stupid as not doing anything to anticipate a situation that could escalate. But there are options available besides "kill him", mainly having other officers who arrived take a defensive position while drawn their weapon and aiming them ready to pull that trigger if needed.

If you think your only response available is lethal force, you shouldn't be a cop.
If you think you can't apply 6lb of pressure with your finger in the time it takes someone to raise their weapon, aim, and fire, then you shouldn't be a cop.

You are ignoring the link where a cop tried to talk down an armed suspect and was killed for his miscalculation. I respect you a lot, D, but if you are going to not even bother reading the links I am spoon feeding you from the main link, we have nothing to talk about.

Relapse wrote:
What I am advocating is not automatically saying a cop is at fault for shooting someone in a situation where someone has a drawn gun.

I don't think many people do that. Most people side with cops even in far more ambiguous situations then "guy had a gun in his hand". Look at how many threads on here are full of people defending cops who have shot unarmed people, if not the low statistics of cops being indicted for bad shoots (let along convicted).

I think there is generally a very strong presumption of a righteous shoot when the suspect had a gun in their hand. I'm a pretty harsh critic of modern policing, which has often embraced a bunker mentality like an occupying force in hostile territory. Even from that mindset I don't think you have to point a weapon to open the door to lethal force.

In an ideal world, I'd like to think the 2 cops who showed up would have seen that the first cop was peacefully de-escalating the situation and had taken up supportive cover, ready to shoot if needed - the only life at risk would have been the cop who was OK with that situation. That's some pretty omniscient after-the-fact quarterbacking though. If you arrive on a scene and there is a guy clearly holding a gun, it's an uphill battle to convince me that it wasn't a righteous shoot.

Still nuts that the first cop got fired though.

Relapse wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Some of the cop killers were legal gun owners, best way cops could protect themselves is to kill anyone that says "I am licensed to carry and I am carrying". They can pull that gun out and kill pretty quickly.

It's also very easily to quickly escalate from compliance at a traffic stop to running over and killing the cop, so it's better to kill people in their cars after they pull over.

I don't really care about how quickly something can escalate, if he's not a threat right now you don't kill him. It doesn't matter one bit how much of a threat he can be 5 seconds later, you don't kill people based on the potential for a threat. If someone can't live with that they need to go switch to a profession with more certainty, because you can't be a cop if you think you need to kill because someone might be a threat later.

If you read the links provided, you will see how quickly a situation can escalate, making the decision to shoot someone with a drawn gun more understandable.

Funny how in other countries police don't get shot all the time then despite them following "shoot only when absolutely needed". Simply having gun doesn't lead to being shot immediately but by your logic it should get shot fast. Funny thing is rate isn't higher than in USA even relative to population sizes...

Relapse wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.

It kind of sounds like you're arguing for cops to shoot everyone they encounter, since they can't react before someone could potentially draw and fire.

Obviously there needs to be a middle ground there. Police are supposed to protect and serve, and while there is some danger of being shot on the job, ultimately you're not in a war zone. If you want a job without risk, be a librarian or a technical writer.

What I am advocating is not automatically saying a cop is at fault for shooting someone in a situation where someone has a drawn gun. This is especially true when we are only getting part of the story. Maybe one of the other officers interpreted a twitch as a move to aim the gun and thought it was time to shoot.

An armed person standing on their own property isn't illegal. Refusing to drop a pistol you're holding and pointing in a safe direction fast enough to satisfy a police officer shouldn't be a capital offense warranting a summary execution. I have had numerous conversations over the years with dozens of armed people that were strangers to me, as long as the guns are pointed in a safe direction it's not a big deal. Giving police officers leeway to kill somebody based solely on the possibility of him/her presenting a threat to officer safety in the near future that has yet to manifest is insane. It tramples on our liberty and the concept of innocent until proven guilty while treating citizens as hostile combatants prior to them presenting a clear immediate threat. No citizen is allowed to shoot an armed person simply because they're armed and therefore present a possible future threat and neither should any cops. In the OP situation the first cop on the scene didn't feel threatened and felt he had the situation in hand therefore there was no reason for the backup cops to shoot a man simply for being armed. If somebody points a gun at a cop or any other person that person should expect to get shot, I don't have a problem with a lethal response to a lethal threat but nobody deserves to be killed just because he/she didn't drop a gun pointed in a safe direction fast enough. That's just fear biting.

Prestor Jon wrote:

Relapse wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.

It kind of sounds like you're arguing for cops to shoot everyone they encounter, since they can't react before someone could potentially draw and fire.

Obviously there needs to be a middle ground there. Police are supposed to protect and serve, and while there is some danger of being shot on the job, ultimately you're not in a war zone. If you want a job without risk, be a librarian or a technical writer.

What I am advocating is not automatically saying a cop is at fault for shooting someone in a situation where someone has a drawn gun. This is especially true when we are only getting part of the story. Maybe one of the other officers interpreted a twitch as a move to aim the gun and thought it was time to shoot.

An armed person standing on their own property isn't illegal. Refusing to drop a pistol you're holding and pointing in a safe direction fast enough to satisfy a police officer shouldn't be a capital offense warranting a summary execution. I have had numerous conversations over the years with dozens of armed people that were strangers to me, as long as the guns are pointed in a safe direction it's not a big deal. Giving police officers leeway to kill somebody based solely on the possibility of him/her presenting a threat to officer safety in the near future that has yet to manifest is insane. It tramples on our liberty and the concept of innocent until proven guilty while treating citizens as hostile combatants prior to them presenting a clear immediate threat. No citizen is allowed to shoot an armed person simply because they're armed and therefore present a possible future threat and neither should any cops. In the OP situation the first cop on the scene didn't feel threatened and felt he had the situation in hand therefore there was no reason for the backup cops to shoot a man simply for being armed. If somebody points a gun at a cop or any other person that person should expect to get shot, I don't have a problem with a lethal response to a lethal threat but nobody deserves to be killed just because he/she didn't drop a gun pointed in a safe direction fast enough. That's just fear biting.

These conversations you say you had with armed strangers, what was their nature? Was it a dangerous situation and what capacity were you acting in? I can say I've had conversations with armed strangers also, such as when I would be out hunting, at a shooting range or during military exercises. I can say from experience none of these compare to a situation with an agitated person holding a gun who could possibly shoot me in the next second.
Something we need to also realize is that we don't know what the other officers saw happening. I said it earlier, one of them might have misread a twitch as a point where the gun was being aimed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ouze wrote:

Relapse wrote:
What I am advocating is not automatically saying a cop is at fault for shooting someone in a situation where someone has a drawn gun.

I don't think many people do that. Most people side with cops even in far more ambiguous situations then "guy had a gun in his hand". Look at how many threads on here are full of people defending cops who have shot unarmed people, if not the low statistics of cops being indicted for bad shoots (let along convicted).

I think there is generally a very strong presumption of a righteous shoot when the suspect had a gun in their hand. I'm a pretty harsh critic of modern policing, which has often embraced a bunker mentality like an occupying force in hostile territory. Even from that mindset I don't think you have to point a weapon to open the door to lethal force.

In an ideal world, I'd like to think the 2 cops who showed up would have seen that the first cop was peacefully de-escalating the situation and had taken up supportive cover, ready to shoot if needed - the only life at risk would have been the cop who was OK with that situation. That's some pretty omniscient after-the-fact quarterbacking though. If you arrive on a scene and there is a guy clearly holding a gun, it's an uphill battle to convince me that it wasn't a righteous shoot.

Still nuts that the first cop got fired though.

What would be interesting is to get the stories of the other two officers. Did they see a situation that was palming down, or a twitchy, agitated person who made a sudden move that was interpreted as threatening? Was there a policy for such situations to protect fellow officers that was violated?
These are things I would like to see answered in an article that isn't as obviously biased as the one in the OP.

It doesn't matter what their nature was. What you are saying is that anybody with a gun talking to police can expect to be executed for having a gun. Something that all 2nd amendment lovers should be horrified by.

These situations are all different, even the one you linked about the cop trying to talked down the armed man. The people are different, the situations are different, the environment is different. Treating them all the same is absolutely ridiculous. The people living in the area that these cops operate should be frightened, because this means that the cops are always going to shoot first.

Relapse wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

Relapse wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I took it from the other link I posted, which is full of stories of people drawing and firing before the cop can react, let alone dealing with someone who already has a gun in hand.

It kind of sounds like you're arguing for cops to shoot everyone they encounter, since they can't react before someone could potentially draw and fire.

Obviously there needs to be a middle ground there. Police are supposed to protect and serve, and while there is some danger of being shot on the job, ultimately you're not in a war zone. If you want a job without risk, be a librarian or a technical writer.

What I am advocating is not automatically saying a cop is at fault for shooting someone in a situation where someone has a drawn gun. This is especially true when we are only getting part of the story. Maybe one of the other officers interpreted a twitch as a move to aim the gun and thought it was time to shoot.

An armed person standing on their own property isn't illegal. Refusing to drop a pistol you're holding and pointing in a safe direction fast enough to satisfy a police officer shouldn't be a capital offense warranting a summary execution. I have had numerous conversations over the years with dozens of armed people that were strangers to me, as long as the guns are pointed in a safe direction it's not a big deal. Giving police officers leeway to kill somebody based solely on the possibility of him/her presenting a threat to officer safety in the near future that has yet to manifest is insane. It tramples on our liberty and the concept of innocent until proven guilty while treating citizens as hostile combatants prior to them presenting a clear immediate threat. No citizen is allowed to shoot an armed person simply because they're armed and therefore present a possible future threat and neither should any cops. In the OP situation the first cop on the scene didn't feel threatened and felt he had the situation in hand therefore there was no reason for the backup cops to shoot a man simply for being armed. If somebody points a gun at a cop or any other person that person should expect to get shot, I don't have a problem with a lethal response to a lethal threat but nobody deserves to be killed just because he/she didn't drop a gun pointed in a safe direction fast enough. That's just fear biting.

These conversations you say you had with armed strangers, what was their nature? Was it a dangerous situation and what capacity were you acting in? I can say I've had conversations with armed strangers also, such as when I would be out hunting, at a shooting range or during military exercises. I can say from experience none of these compare to a situation with an agitated person holding a gun who could possibly shoot me in the next second.
Something we need to also realize is that we don't know what the other officers saw happening. I said it earlier, one of them might have misread a twitch as a point where the gun was being aimed.

The situations were hunting, range trips, training classes, gun stores and social occasions, which are all the same type of locations wherein people have been shot (sometimes lethally). Again, there is a huge difference between being armed and being an immediate threat. Being armed makes you a potential threat but until that potential is realized pre-emptive action isn't warranted or lawful for citizens and exemptions shouldn't be made for cops either. Killing people is a last resort not a pre-emptive measure used because the person might be armed or is armed and might pose an immediate threat at some future time. We've decided as a society that we're all innocent until proven guilty, we all get the benefit of the doubt and as such we shouldn't make police policy that treats the exception as the rule.

Those two stories Relapse provided are the fuel for how we train cops to react, so their first instinct is to think that everyone is about to draw and fire at them. They take those few instances and tell every cop that this could happen to you at any moment so always be ready to escalate first.

I honestly don't blame cops for then going out and shooting people because they are doing exactly what we are training them to do.

I put the fault at the feet of the training we offer to our police force. That is a systematic problem and not an individual problem. There is no point blaming the cops for doing what we are training them to do.

Instead, we need more State and Federal guidelines for what training cops get, and try to de-emphasize the "Bulletproof Mind" approach and instead use a De-escalation approach. Departments that adopt it can then be awarded with different federal assistance dollars than those who choose to use their own guidelines.

 Dreadwinter wrote:
It doesn't matter what their nature was. What you are saying is that anybody with a gun talking to police can expect to be executed for having a gun. Something that all 2nd amendment lovers should be horrified by.

These situations are all different, even the one you linked about the cop trying to talked down the armed man. The people are different, the situations are different, the environment is different. Treating them all the same is absolutely ridiculous. The people living in the area that these cops operate should be frightened, because this means that the cops are always going to shoot first.

Exactly my point with the links. Some people here are acting like it's a cookie cutter treatment that an an armed and potentially dangerous individual should be reasoned with on the basis of a heavily biased news story. As the link I posted shows in it's various stories about officer murders, there are times reasoning is not an option and police end up dead. It's boils down to an in the moment interpretation of what is going on.
Obviously the circumstances matter,but we don't have any real source we can trust on what was happening here. The author of the article obviously has an axe to grind and slanted the reporting against the police.

The first response to seeing someone with a gun should not be to shoot them, unless they are in the process of shooting at people, in which case a shooting may be justified.

Also, how have they slanted the reporting against the police when the article is written in support of a police officer?

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
The first response to seeing someone with a gun should not be to shoot them, unless they are in the process of shooting at people, in which case a shooting may be justified.

See, I feel like this goes too far in the other direction. I don't think it's reasonable to require police to actually be under fire before using lethal force. I'm not sure exactly where the needle should be there, but it's slightly before that.

Prestor made a good point that having a gun out on your own property isn't illegal (although brandishing is, but that's an escape into semantics). While I said previously that I think a gun in the hand is within the envelope for lawful, reasonable lethal force, I will definite concede that context can really, really sway things here and it's not at all black and white. When I say "I don't think you need to wait for the gun to be pointed at you", I'm meaning, like, a guy screams "I'm going to kill you pigs" and pulls a gun, not "cops stop a guy in the woods holding a hunting rifle and shoot him on sight because he had a deer gun".

Really hope the ACLU comes in on this officer's side.

Fething despicable.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Really hope the ACLU comes in on this officer's side.

Fething despicable.

While I agree I don't see what action they could bring, other than moral.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Really hope the ACLU comes in on this officer's side.

Fething despicable.

While I agree I don't see what action they could bring, other than moral.

Wrongful termination? Accusations of slander?

Unless there is an element of this that we have not seen(i.e. if the two Barney fething Fifes had the gun in question pointed at them when they rolled up), everything about the way this was handled violates the standards that many police departments put forth for their officers.

The officers arriving after the initial point of contact in a situation like this? They're generally told to stay back if an officer is engaging the suspect. The goal is to keep the suspect contained and calm, not exacerbate the situation.
The officers arriving after? They're generally told to listen to the initial responding officer in regards to what they want the responding officers to do.

This officer should be held up as an example of policing at its finest, not thrown out because two fething yahoos decided to John McClane it up. Those are the two who should be out on their asses.