Police shoot an "armed" middle school student

[Makon]

The American justice system merely performs the duty of its office. Like it or not, America is nothing like Europe. A UK cop in America would be a body bag by the end of the day.

What Europeans never realize is that American crime is FAR different from European crime. European cops never have to deal with the brutality of Mexican cartels nor American gangs. You see a cop decked out in SWAT gear with a heavily armored APC? That isn't American nationalism, that is NECESSARY. The influence of the cartels extend far into the American school system. Its a recruiting pool. As a result, juvenile crime is a very real. The idea of a teen getting his hands of an gun (even as much as an assault rifle) from a gang gun runner is not unheard of, and can be very common depending on locale. The nearer to the border you are, the worse the violence becomes.

Why foreigners have such a hard time understanding this, I will never know.

Excellent post.

For anyone else wanting education along the topic lines from the quoted post, I would highlight this section of history...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout

That is the sort of crime and violence our police face, but also was 15 years ago. Cartels and other crime organizations haven't exactly gone away in that time span either. Key notes...

The North Hollywood shootout was an armed confrontation between two heavily armed bank robbers and officers of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in the North Hollywood district of Los Angeles on February 28, 1997. Both perpetrators were killed, eleven police officers and seven civilians were injured, and numerous vehicles and other property were damaged or destroyed by the nearly 2,000 rounds of ammunition fired by the perpetrators and the police.

Local patrol officers at the time were typically armed with 9 mm or .38 Special pistols on their person, with some having a 12-gauge shotgun available in their cars. Phillips and Mătăsăreanu carried fully automatic rifles, with ammunition capable of penetrating police body armor, and wore military grade body armor of their own. Since the police handguns could not penetrate the bank robbers' body armor, the patrol officers' efforts were ineffective. SWAT eventually arrived with weapons that could penetrate and several officers also appropriated AR-15 rifles from a nearby firearms dealer. The incident sparked debate on the appropriate firepower for patrol officers to have available in similar situations in the future.

That is why our police have a zero-tolerance policy towards hostile threats.

 

[instantbenz]

(WOLVERINES!)

You can recover from a shot with a beanbag round in about 5 seconds or fewer depending on where you are hit, and you dont have to recover fully to aim a gun either.

And you know, its impossible to tell what 15 year old has experience with what. A number of my classmates in middle and high school were damn good with firearms as we live in a rural area, but hey if where you live the cops are equipped with something that tells them exactly how skilled a person is with an item before they have to encounter the individual perhaps you can have your goverment ship a few over to the US as those would be very useful for avoiding these sorts of situations.

1. Good reference. I was sad Cod sullied it with a chapter title.
2. recovery from any shot at any impact zone is not specific, but you're right about aiming after. just because a person is knocked down doesn't mean they can't shoot
3. this is the type of thing that legitimizes these instances. there's always a bigger fish and the authority should always have the bigger gun (if they're just). the race will never be over. the gangs in town carry automatics, the po in town should too.

op: kids in elementary school are playing cod now. they know how dangerous a weapon is. there are no excuses on either side. the kid knew he was brandishing a dangerous weapon and the po knew they had to defend themselves. bingbombboom ded kid

 

[Mayamellissa]

this was a tragedy but looking at it here is what is obvious: a) the gun looked real enough to the cops. B) This kid had apparently gone off the deep end. C) There have been WAY too many student shooting incidents of someone waving a weapon around and challenging them for them to treat it with anything but the utmost amount of seriousness. D) There was not just one officer who was shooting. You don't have one specific officer who is supposed to take down a suspect. If you did there would only be one armed officer accompanied by cannon fodder/meat shields.

I don't know what happened to make this apparently model young man do what he did but the parents and others want to blame the police? How about looking for why the kid did what he did or what he was doing that caused him to think "I'll get a pellet gun and punch someone out! Then I'll challenge the police but they won't hurt me: I'm a kid!" This story screams of suicide by police officer.

 

[GeneWard]

I feel more sorry for the police officer in this case. He, perfectly justified, shot a kid who was pointing a replica weapon at him, which was indistinguishable from the real thing, and he's going to have to live with that for the rest of his life. Unless he has a pretty cold heart, that will emotionally wreck him. And the kid needed a better outlet for his petty frustrations than beating someone up and then pointing a gun at a police officer.

 

[Sovvolf]

All repliers completely missed my point. Why did I even bother.

Another victim of the American "Justice System"...This is just getting pathetic. Wasn't there a similar incident with a Nerf gun just a month ago?

Reading this thread I realized that americans deserve their 'justice' system. Evidently, they support and adore it.

What I do love is the fact that those who are looking down upon this seem to offer no solutions to the incident. When asked they either jump into Hollywood logic of warning shots or shooting at the arms and legs or they simply ignore it or change the subject.

I'm British and I'm defending the actions because I know that in that situation, they had two choices, either shoot him, or allow themselves and others to get shot. They tried to talk to him, they tried to get him to drop the weapon, he wouldn't.

The teen then took aim at the police officers, as in pulling the gun up, putting it in firing position and aimed directly at the cops. This was at the time a real gun to the officers and the teen was ready to fire it.

Put yourself in that position, what do you do? Get shot, then once your gone he can go on a killing spree through the school before more than likely suiciding it or spending an eternity in prison?

Or do you take him out to ensure the safety of the other say? 12-16 year olds in the school along with teachers?

Yeah I read your post and no, I don't believe he deserved, they're few people in this world that do. I believe he needed help, he needed psychological help. However that's his parents failing for not spotting this. The police did the best they could in an horrible situation and I can't blame them for that.

The few points you made in your post seem to have been "He hadn't killed anyone yet" which is a brilliant point to make isn't it? Wait for him to kill someone so we could have two body bags instead of one. The fellow was going irate and screaming that he was going to kill people so free from the power of hindsight, that was his intent.

The real victim here is the cop for having to do it. I can;t imagine he's dancing pleased with himself for having to take the life of a 15 year old, probably even less so once they found out it was a pellet gun. Kind of reminds me of Powl from Die Hard.

 

[Hennofletch]

*Rolls up sleeves and wades in*

Okay just to stop the America hate from some people on this board, I'm from the UK. There I said it, they say that's the first step to recovery.

In the UK we have armed police officers but they are in the minority. As guns are not as common here, the bulk of our police have the luxury of being unarmed.

BUT in this circumstance armed officers would have responded and would have almost certainly shot this kid. If Unarmed cops showed up and this guy had a real gun they would be dead. End of.

In the US where guns are much more common, it is imperative that cops are armed. Going unarmed against a gunman is suicide.

Guns are a fact of life. To try and wish them away are naive to say the least.

I'm not a gun nut, I'm from the UK and in this instance I'd have shot the kid. Then I'd have booked some counselling to deal with the nightmares.

*Retreats to a position of cover*

 

[Shifty Tortoise]

The shots were perfectly justified, it's what the officers were trained to do in the situation, blame their training. In hindsight it may have been better to fire a warning shot, scare him into dropping the pellet gun.

What type of ammunition does one fire for a warning shot?

One of the cardinal rules of firearm safety is KNOW YOUR TARGET AND WHAT LIES BEYOND. So what would be the 'target' of this warning shot? The hard concrete floor were the bullet could easily ricochet? The soft ceiling that may potentially have people above? A wall where the bullet might penetrate and do the same?

Bottom line: Not only do you not fire 'warning' shots, you REALLY do not fire warning shots in a building full of innocent people. The barrel of a gun pointed at your face is warning enough, not to mention repeated commands to 'drop your weapon'.

He had plenty of opportunities to rethink his actions, not least of which was to not bring an object closely resembling a firearm to a school. The police did everything right to resolve what (so far as the information they had indicated) was a potentially deadly situation, and as a comedian once said: you can't fix stupid.

Use blanks.

Police do not carry blanks. Try again.

Hindsight, do you know what that is? Stop lecturing me on police protocol and firearms safety. In a perfect world the police would have better plans for situations like this, but that's the beauty of hindsight

 

[Malty Milk Whistle]

*Rolls up sleeves and wades in*

Okay just to stop the America hate from some people on this board, I'm from the UK. There I said it, they say that's the first step to recovery.

In the UK we have armed police officers but they are in the minority. As guns are not as common here, the bulk of our police have the luxury of being unarmed.

BUT in this circumstance armed officers would have responded and would have almost certainly shot this kid. If Unarmed cops showed up and this guy had a real gun they would be dead. End of.

In the US where guns are much more common, it is imperative that cops are armed. Going unarmed against a gunman is suicide.

Guns are a fact of life. To try and wish them away are naive to say the least.

I'm not a gun nut, I'm from the UK and in this instance I'd have shot the kid. Then I'd have booked some counselling to deal with the nightmares.

*Retreats to a position of cover*

I think i have found a sane Englishman! KILL HIM NOW, BEFORE THE DISEASE SPREADS!

 

[ElPatron]

Also, "a semi-auto pistol is not as big a threat as a full-auto rifle"? Ummm... Last time I checked, a .223 (a round a lot of recreated rifles use) is smaller than a .45 round (a standard pistol round). Sure, the distance the rifle can cover is larger, but at the point that that will matter, the cops won't be using pistols.

PROTIP: High-school level physics tell you about Kinetic Energy, right?

Which is equal to 1/2 * m * v^2

Velocity squared.

The .45 ACP is known for being heavy and slow. It's a good man-stopper. When you are talking about pistol calibers, anything at least as powerful as 9x19mm is adequate. 9x19 has the advantage of speed over .45 ACP, but it is still quite slow.

5.56x45 (and not .223 because it is more oriented for civilian use and thus it is rated for lower pressures) will be shot out of a 20in barrel at around 3100 feet per second.


In fact, it is so fast that unless you are really skinny, it will tip over and fragment inside you, creating a huge temporary cavity, and an ugly exit wound.



Bullet diameter does not mean a lot when you are talking about "killing potential" if you dissociate it from the speeds achieved by a projectile., and a semi-auto rifle is more threatening than a pistol. A handgun requires a lot more training than a rifle and the rile will always be more powerful and more accurate.

Hindsight, do you know what that is? Stop lecturing me on police protocol and firearms safety. In a perfect world the police would have better plans for situations like this, but that's the beauty of hindsight

Wow, you are really good at masking your arguments.

A moment ago you were implying that police officers should carry blanks for warning shots.

A blank in the magazine will mean that a police officer who might try to defend other citizens will now be firing a blank without a projectile. Which will result in someone dying because he couldn't shoot in time.



PLUS, BLANK FIRING GUNS WORK DIFFERENTLY. BLOWBACK OR RECOIL OPERATED, A PISTOL WILL NOT FUNCTION WITH A BLANK.

It will require the police officer to chose to use lethal force, draw, flick the safety off (if there is one), pull the trigger and fire the blank, pull the slide to chamber a real round, aim at the perp and fire again.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

The cops should have found another option, but the kid should have known better, that's my two cents on the subject.

Snipped for length

...Er, sorry, that wasn't my intention, maybe I should have thought out my words better...

 

[Ursus Buckler]

It's a shame that events transpired the way they did, but kids should have a degree of respect for the law and sorry, but if some kid pulled a gun and pointed it at you in a school you'd shoot him down too. And really, is it so tragic that there's one less idiot in the world...

 

[Niall Pitcher]

Meh, there's another 15 kids to replace him anyway *destroyed by angry mothers*
Besides, British police get yelled at enough for tackling IRA members ^^;

 

[IronicBeet]

It sucks that the kid died, but I can't exactly fault the cops. He was waving and pointing what looked like an actual handgun at them, he'd shown aggressive behavior from the get-go, and he ignored their warnings to put the gun down. It's a tragedy, like I said, but seriously, don't blame the cops for not wanting to die.

It also sucks that a bunch of idiots are going to use this to shout "Oh so nice living in a police state" and stuff like that.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

What gets me is the firing of *3* bullets. Use one to disable the target, not 3 to risk killing. Especially a child. It's a little uncalled for.

1 shot to disable is non existent. if the person is still alive they can and will pull the trigger. Congratulations, rather than saving an innocent and condemning a guilty, you condemned an innocent to save a guilty.
There is no such thing as a disabling shot. Never. Any gunshot wound on the body can result in death from massive blood loss, but never before they have the chance to return fire.

Most humans don't have the willpower to fire back after they've had a bullet rip through there cheast.
Most of the disable comes from shock, and you'd expect that from a 13 year old kid. 3 bullets was overkill.

I'd go out on a limb and say I'm the only person in this thread who has been in this situation.

I try not to be aggressive in my arguments but that "that's too many shots" thing is a steaming hot pile of bullshit.

First of all how many officers do you think fired a gun?
Of course he'll be hit with more bullets we don't have a psychic mindlink letting us know who has fired a gun in .1 seconds it takes to decided to defend yourself.
Also you don't get a pop-up in your sunglasses that says "KILL CONFIRMED" after you've shot the guy.
You keep shooting till he goes down. You don't shoot to wound. You shoot to kill.

Secondly I have seen the aftermath of many many gun fights. If your theory of 'people drop the gun' held water I wouldn't see so many where two guys get shot or the angle of gunfire changing as one guy hits the ground and... just no.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Real life is not movies or video games.

First of all: They did say the kid was given a chance to lower his weapon, and he was warned.
Second: Negotiation is always top priority. Do you think they actaully want to kill someone unless they damned well have to? You have to live with that for the rest of your life, and saying "He would have done the same thing to me" In situations like that rarely ever helps, especially sense the gun was FAKE. Unless that officer that shot him is a souless bastard, he will probably live with regret for the rest of his life.
Third: I don't watch TV to a heavy extent. I watch how I met your mother, and some cartoon shows.

 

[Raesvelg]

Bullet diameter does not mean a lot when you are talking about "killing potential" if you dissociate it from the speeds achieved by a projectile., and a semi-auto rifle is more threatening than a pistol. A handgun requires a lot more training than a rifle and the rile will always be more powerful and more accurate.

The common complaint about the 5.56x45 is that it lacks stopping power, which is technically true, but that's entirely due to the restrictions placed upon military rounds under the Hague Conventions. Full metal jacketed rounds tend to punch through the target, and even those that tend to yaw and fragment bleed out their energy over a considerably longer period of time than a properly designed frangible round might.

Short version; muzzle velocity matters quite a bit, but ammunition type can have an equal measure of importance. A pistol with the right ammunition is probably at least as deadly as a rifle using the arguably wrong ammunition, within short ranges and in competent hands, of course.

Anyhoo.

Honestly, I have to chalk this one up to natural selection in action. Kid was stupid, kid got shot, kid died, kid loses the chance to pass on the idiot gene.

 

[IronicBeet]

Senordesol and Kopikatsu are perfect examples of why the rest of the world hates America, It is better to kill a child than to teach them how to interact with the world. I have a scenario, everytime a child is threatening or hurts anyone in any way. Lets kill their parents, the parents clearly raised the child to be violent and if they accidently reproduce again there is no way to tell that the child won't be a murderer, instead of correcting them and fixing the situation we can solve all our problems with guns and murder. The point is the child never hurt a single person he just had a gun that was made to look real. Why not approach the situation with a collective good instead of an OMG he has a gun fire stance.

I have an idea no more guns. Bam all problems solved, kid wouldn't have been holding something that would have confused the cops, cops wouldn't have had the capacity to shoot him. I am such a genius.

Its not that he is just a kid its that the pontential threat of death shouldn't be answered with death, nor should a response of death. There is never a reason to kill unless they openly desire death.

Holy Christ, how the hell do you think the world works? He was holding what looked like a gun, he had already shown aggressive behavior, he was POINTING SAID GUN AT THE POLICE, and he was shouting that he was going to kill everyone. If that were a real gun and he had shot the person trying to "teach him a lesson" (On the verge of a fucking firefight), would you be okay with them shooting him then? Well, that's great, but now there's two bodies instead of one. They did what was absolutely necessary. Could a tazer have worked? Maybe, but it also might have made his muscles contract and pull the trigger aiming at one of the police before he went down. Could a beanbag gun have worked? Maybe, but it wouldn't be stopping him from shooting someone after he went down. They aren't just going to knock someone out.

And you honestly think that "no more guns" is an attainable solution? Have you been living inside a bubble all your life? There's no magic button someone can press that spontaneously makes all the guns in the world disappear. If they banned the police from using guns, guess what? Then it would just be criminals who could get their hands on them. Alright, now the US have the same gun rules as in the UK, but they have to deal with every dime-a-dozen thug on the street having access to guns easily. Great, now the only time they can control gun crime is when they call the SWAT in. That's a great idea you've got there, buddy. No more guns! Why didn't anybody else think of that?!

No, wait, they did. In elementary school.

 

[ccggenius12]

What is the level of bullet control? Because I know where I live they just kill each other with bullets, guns are a rich mans luxury. Are home made "zip guns" an issue in the UK too? All it takes is a bullet a pipe and a hammer, drugs help too.

I fail to see how bullet control (poor or otherwise) would have any impact on the prevalence of zip guns, as a bullet is far from necessary for one, as evidenced by prison documentaries. You get the same effect from a bunch of ground up match heads and scrap metal. In any case, I believe that would still constitute a firearm, and be reported as such on any statistics covering gun violence. I'd be more worried about the possibility of bows and crossbows, as the law allows for legal possession of those.

 

[ace_of_something]

What gets me is the firing of *3* bullets. Use one to disable the target, not 3 to risk killing. Especially a child. It's a little uncalled for.

1 shot to disable is non existent. if the person is still alive they can and will pull the trigger. Congratulations, rather than saving an innocent and condemning a guilty, you condemned an innocent to save a guilty.
There is no such thing as a disabling shot. Never. Any gunshot wound on the body can result in death from massive blood loss, but never before they have the chance to return fire.

Most humans don't have the willpower to fire back after they've had a bullet rip through there cheast.
Most of the disable comes from shock, and you'd expect that from a 13 year old kid. 3 bullets was overkill.

I'd go out on a limb and say I'm the only person in this thread who has been in this situation.

I try not to be aggressive in my arguments but that "that's too many shots" thing is a steaming hot pile of bullshit.

First of all how many officers do you think fired a gun?
Of course he'll be hit with more bullets we don't have a psychic mindlink letting us know who has fired a gun in .1 seconds it takes to decided to defend yourself.
Also you don't get a pop-up in your sunglasses that says "KILL CONFIRMED" after you've shot the guy.
You keep shooting till he goes down. You don't shoot to wound. You shoot to kill.

Secondly I have seen the aftermath of many many gun fights. If your theory of 'people drop the gun' held water I wouldn't see so many where two guys get shot or the angle of gunfire changing as one guy hits the ground and... just no.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Real life is not movies or video games.

First of all: They did say the kid was given a chance to lower his weapon, and he was warned.
Second: Negotiation is always top priority. Do you think they actaully want to kill someone unless they damned well have to? You have to live with that for the rest of your life, and saying "He would have done the same thing to me" In situations like that rarely ever helps, especially sense the gun was FAKE. Unless that officer that shot him is a souless bastard, he will probably live with regret for the rest of his life.
Third: I don't watch TV to a heavy extent. I watch how I met your mother, and some cartoon shows.

Okay. Let me explain it to you, since you ignored that first sentence.
I am a police officer.
I have had to shoot and kill a person. It is awful, no one is arguing that it isn't. Obviously my situation was more clear cut since the suspect had an actual gun which he had been firing.

I really am annoyed at how people keep bringing up that it's a fake gun. Pellet guns especially look pretty damn real from more than 5 feet away to me, and I used to work Vice.

When someone points a gun at you (or someone else), a gun that looks very real, Negotiations are typically over. When he was being warned he might've had the gun at his side or the like. The warning you get is something like "Put down the gun now! or you will be shot" 1-3 times at a rapid pace.

 

[Pebblig]

These thing's do happen, some of them are stupider/sillier than others:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3965207.stm