Poll: Was this police shooting justified in your opinion? (Graphic)

[JonnWood]

When someone is trying to use deadly force on a fellow officer, police are allowed to use deadly force on them. Even if other options were feasible, and they weren't, deadly force would still have been justified. That's the bottom line.

 

[Thyunda]

If you think the best training can't defend you from a heavy melee weapon...then I don't think you know the meaning of training.

Bruce Lee once said he would prefer to use a gun in a fight if it were available. Yes, martial arts training could have helped the cop. But it would've put him at more risk than using a gun, which he was actively trying to do. I continue to assert that literally any other option would not have been able to intervene in time, and deadly force is an appropriate response to deadly force.

But dude, Bruce Lee wasn't a police officer in the UK with 'proper training'!

In other news, I don't think it's possible to get through to him, He's going to say training ad nauseum without giving any reason to think that different training would have helped the situation.

Well it would. Because pulling a gun on a guy with a crowbar is not how to handle the situation. If England can keep the streets safe without relying on firearms, then I don't see why America's so special.

Thanks for proving my point by not giving a reason to think that it would have helped the situation. Pointing at the UK doesn't show that their training would have been better or successful in said situation.

Also who said it was special? America and England aren't the same. That isn't being special. It's called having more criminals with firearms.

I'm not arguing that armed cops are bad - I'm saying that they were unnecessary for this particular situation. America has a lot of guns in circulation. Therefore officers need to be prepared at all times to deal with guns. This was not a gun. This exact situation could have occurred in the UK and it wouldn't have been unique - the only difference would be that nobody shot him.

I think you mean 'repeating ad nauseum without proof'.

In this particular situation guns were fine. You're naive if you think that all situations without guns can be easily dealt with without them.

Yes, the UK would have dealt with it perfectly! Just like that evidence says. Oh wait a minute, we still don't have evidence the UK would have dealt with it better. We have some guy that repeats things ad nauseum.

Yo're still proving my point btw.

So...why exactly don't they call in the armed police for crowbar incidents?

Circular logic. The way the UK police do it is better because... They don't do it another way? Lolwut?

Clearly it's better to do it this way. Why exactly didn't they disarm the cops before sending them in?

How is it better to do it that way? That's totally unnecessary, given that you'd expect the cops to be disciplined enough to not shoot somebody when there are other options.

 

[cthulhumythos]

The first shot was justified. The rest were not. 1 shot to the arm or leg would have been enough to incapacitate him and the rest were just unnecessary.

dude. now, i can't speak from personal experience; but i have to imagine the act of killing someone is not a pleasant one, and probably a tad emotional.

now, even with a somewhat clear mind, i doubt a person worries about how efficiently he can murder someone. in fact, that sounds pretty sociopathic.

also, guns don't operate via the logic of popular fiction, and neither do cops. there is no 'shoot to incapacitate' guns are designed to kill people. nothing else. (weeeelll i guess you could argue with those rubber bullet thingys and what not, but that's a whole other argument)

but yeah. the guy was going to try to kill that cop. the cop nearest to him defended the cop who was getting attacked.

i say it's justified.

 

[Thyunda]

I'm sorry, but a Spec-ops soldier would have to have a pretty bad off-day for a drug-addled vandal with a crowbar to kill him.

I see that you've chosen to ignore the more salient point that Police are not SpecOps, and that even trained men can be caught off guard (like, say, the officer distracted with his tools).

When weapons are involved, shit can go wrong double quick. And when someone can shrug off a taser, that doesn't inspire much confidence in fisticuffs.

Finally, if someone comes at a cop with a crowbar and said cop has a gun; what happens to the perp is his fault for not only being violent, but stupid too.

Good. Shoot them for stupidity. That's the way to an enlightened culture.

I'm of course being sarcastic. How anybody can claim moral high ground while standing over a corpse is beyond me.

He was shot for attacking a police officer, he just happened to be stupid about his choice of weapon. How can I claim the moral high ground? I wasn't the one smashing windows and threatening police with a deadly weapon that's how.

The man could have ended this peaceably and WITHOUT INJURY any time he wanted (up until the point he was shot, of course).

I remember when I was one mistake away from going home in a body bag courtesy of the Martinez PD.

My friends and I were having ourselves a good old time shooting each other with Airsoft rifles. We were playing on public land, but could be seen from homes (not that we were doing anything wrong). These pellet weapons were modeled to look damn near authentic (and a few of my friends had painted the tips black).

Suddenly, we saw a squad of police officers armed with shotguns approach. How did we ever survive such an encounter? We DROPPED OUR WEAPONS AND PUT OUR HANDS UP. We allowed the police to feel safe and secure, calmly answered their questions, allowed them to inspect our weapons; and then they let us continue playing.

Shocking that even 13-15 year old kids were able to grasp that when the shotguns are out, you don't fuck around.

Yeah...and your weapons looked like genuine guns. This was not a gun. There IS a grey area, you know. It doesn't flick between "Surrenders peacefully" and "Dies painfully". This is why we have courts and prisons. Just in case the police force takes a break from shooting people.

 

[Throwitawaynow]

Rewatching the video...I see that he turns to the officer with the crowbar (It doesn't even look like a crowbar) ready to swing. At this point, there is still enough distance between him and the officer for the dog to be useful, given that both the guy's arms are in the dog's direction.

I agree with one thing, it doesn't look like a crowbar. It looks more like a long handle ball peen hammer from the video. I just don't think that the weapon should have to be an inch from the other officers face for him to justify opening fire.

If the officer hadn't already drawn his gun, he could have taken the hammer by the shaft when the vandal started his little sideways jaunt towards the first officer. Or, again, he could have let go of the dog. Why would you restrain a dog to shoot the suspect? That's the bit I can't understand. Putting physical effort into holding a dog back...I mean, the dog's clearly there to bring down a violent criminal. It's not a sniffer dog. It's an attack dog. So why bring it to the scene and then hold it back?

I had to actually look it up, apparently police dogs aren't used to subdue suspects only to hold them. So it was not a situation that the dog could have been used for, at least not yet.

 

[Thyunda]

Rewatching the video...I see that he turns to the officer with the crowbar (It doesn't even look like a crowbar) ready to swing. At this point, there is still enough distance between him and the officer for the dog to be useful, given that both the guy's arms are in the dog's direction.

I agree with one thing, it doesn't look like a crowbar. It looks more like a long handle ball peen hammer from the video. I just don't think that the weapon should have to be an inch from the other officers face for him to justify opening fire.

If the officer hadn't already drawn his gun, he could have taken the hammer by the shaft when the vandal started his little sideways jaunt towards the first officer. Or, again, he could have let go of the dog. Why would you restrain a dog to shoot the suspect? That's the bit I can't understand. Putting physical effort into holding a dog back...I mean, the dog's clearly there to bring down a violent criminal. It's not a sniffer dog. It's an attack dog. So why bring it to the scene and then hold it back?

I had to actually look it up, apparently police dogs aren't used to subdue suspects only to hold them. So it was not a situation that the dog could have been used for, at least not yet.

The dog would only have had to grip the vandal's arm long enough for him to be distracted from the officers, who could then easily close the distance, render the weapon useless, and subdue him properly. The conduit bender is long-range for a melee weapon. If the target is within a couple of feet, the weapon is useless.

 

[Edible Avatar]

I think the shooting was justified- the guy was clearly about to bash the officer's head in. The question on my mind is: why shoot him more than once? One shot would have incapacitated him completely and removed the danger, but there is at least some chance of surgery saving his life (not huge, but enough to make it worth trying). The following 8-odd shots made that impossible.

My friend, a phycologist, told me of instances where drugs (most prominantly, opiates) can dull all feeling of pain because they affect those receptors in the brain, allowing the person to perform unbelieveable feats while a normal person would have been knocked out cold given the same circumstances. Japanese soldiers (they were issued opiates to increase their performance), for instance, were known to take 7+ fatal rounds before falling. Was this guy on drugs? Maybe, but the cops have no idea about his background or what he's capable of. In the video, he shook off the taser, so it certainly could be possible that he had psycosis or was on drugs.

 

[Thyunda]

If you think the best training can't defend you from a heavy melee weapon...then I don't think you know the meaning of training.

Bruce Lee once said he would prefer to use a gun in a fight if it were available. Yes, martial arts training could have helped the cop. But it would've put him at more risk than using a gun, which he was actively trying to do. I continue to assert that literally any other option would not have been able to intervene in time, and deadly force is an appropriate response to deadly force.

But dude, Bruce Lee wasn't a police officer in the UK with 'proper training'!

In other news, I don't think it's possible to get through to him, He's going to say training ad nauseum without giving any reason to think that different training would have helped the situation.

Well it would. Because pulling a gun on a guy with a crowbar is not how to handle the situation. If England can keep the streets safe without relying on firearms, then I don't see why America's so special.

Thanks for proving my point by not giving a reason to think that it would have helped the situation. Pointing at the UK doesn't show that their training would have been better or successful in said situation.

Also who said it was special? America and England aren't the same. That isn't being special. It's called having more criminals with firearms.

I'm not arguing that armed cops are bad - I'm saying that they were unnecessary for this particular situation. America has a lot of guns in circulation. Therefore officers need to be prepared at all times to deal with guns. This was not a gun. This exact situation could have occurred in the UK and it wouldn't have been unique - the only difference would be that nobody shot him.

I think you mean 'repeating ad nauseum without proof'.

In this particular situation guns were fine. You're naive if you think that all situations without guns can be easily dealt with without them.

Yes, the UK would have dealt with it perfectly! Just like that evidence says. Oh wait a minute, we still don't have evidence the UK would have dealt with it better. We have some guy that repeats things ad nauseum.

Yo're still proving my point btw.

So...why exactly don't they call in the armed police for crowbar incidents?

Circular logic. The way the UK police do it is better because... They don't do it another way? Lolwut?

Clearly it's better to do it this way. Why exactly didn't they disarm the cops before sending them in?

How is it better to do it that way? That's totally unnecessary, given that you'd expect the cops to be disciplined enough to not shoot somebody when there are other options.

How is better to do it your way? It's totally unnecessary to remove an option given that the cops would be deprived of the option if they needed it.

Btw, they were disciplined enough. There were no other options that you provided except what amounts to "They can take him on!", which is unsubstantiated.

I can play this stupid game too.

They weren't disciplined enough, they restrained their dog so they could shoot the vandal. I'm not sure how this equates to discipline.

 

[kazeryu]

There are a lot of reactions what say it is completely justified but I don't know what you are talking about he emptied his WHOLE clip and suspect fell down afther the first 3 til 5 shots and he agent stopped a second and than started shooting again so I don't think this is justified and I beleive the He should at least get a dishonorable discharge.

P.S. sorry if there are any grammar or spelling mistakes.

When I wrote this I didn't try to imagine how the situation was for the cop and now I realise he made the right desision to protect his partner. So this was completely justified.

 

[senordesol]

Yeah...and your weapons looked like genuine guns. This was not a gun. There IS a grey area, you know. It doesn't flick between "Surrenders peacefully" and "Dies painfully". This is why we have courts and prisons. Just in case the police force takes a break from shooting people.

And there is a difference between fleeing, and attacking. Attempt to flee and you'll likely be tackled, tased, or have the dog sicked on you. Choose to attack, however -particularly with a deadly weapon- and surviving the resulting wounds is about the best you can hope for, as well it should be.

It SHOULD BE well-known that things will go a LOT better for you if you surrender, It SHOULD BE well known, that attacking an officer of the law will likely result in your death. If the perps can get that through their heads, there just might be more of the former and less of the latter, and if not; society suffers no great loss.

 

[JonnWood]

Rewatching the video...I see that he turns to the officer with the crowbar (It doesn't even look like a crowbar) ready to swing. At this point, there is still enough distance between him and the officer for the dog to be useful, given that both the guy's arms are in the dog's direction.

I agree with one thing, it doesn't look like a crowbar. It looks more like a long handle ball peen hammer from the video. I just don't think that the weapon should have to be an inch from the other officers face for him to justify opening fire.

If the officer hadn't already drawn his gun, he could have taken the hammer by the shaft when the vandal started his little sideways jaunt towards the first officer. Or, again, he could have let go of the dog. Why would you restrain a dog to shoot the suspect? That's the bit I can't understand. Putting physical effort into holding a dog back...I mean, the dog's clearly there to bring down a violent criminal. It's not a sniffer dog. It's an attack dog. So why bring it to the scene and then hold it back?

I had to actually look it up, apparently police dogs aren't used to subdue suspects only to hold them. So it was not a situation that the dog could have been used for, at least not yet.

And considering that it was physically impossible for the dog to reach the suspect in the time it would take to swing, and that the suspect was wearing a puffy jacket which would reduce efficacy, Fido's right out. And so are any teleporting police officers. Thy seems to think that if you use ranged deadly force on someone using melee deadly force, it's wrong, and wants the officers to have risk their own safety trying to subdue the guy. They've also demonstrated a remarkable lack of knowledge, making several statements that can be proven false with a few seconds Googling, such as UK police never killing anyone. Then when I provided a list of fatal shootings, they ignored it.

tl;dr: don't bother trying to reason.

 

[Loud Hawk]

Fully justified.

The guy just shook off a tazer (or peperspray) to the face and then turn to attack the cop with a CONDUIT BENDER while he was either reloading or getting another weapon, either way his attention was elsewhere. If the conduit bender had hit that guy there was a good chance that he would have been killed.

Also you only go for center mass shots, anything else would be stupid. As for the amount of shots, the guy just shook off a tazer to the face and the first few shots didn't bring him down. One shot would have just angered the guy further. You shoot till the threat is neutralized.

 

[JonnWood]

There are a lot of reactions what say it is completely justified but I don't know what you are talking about he emptied his WHOLE clip and suspect fell down afther the first 3 til 5 shots and he agent stopped a second and than started shooting again so I don't think this is justified and I beleive the He should at least get a dishonorable discharge.

P.S. sorry if there are any grammar or spelling mistakes.

Look again. The suspect is still up, behind the car. Cops shoot to neutralize. If they are shooting, they have employed deadly force in the eyes of the law, even if their target does not die.

 

[Thyunda]

Yeah...and your weapons looked like genuine guns. This was not a gun. There IS a grey area, you know. It doesn't flick between "Surrenders peacefully" and "Dies painfully". This is why we have courts and prisons. Just in case the police force takes a break from shooting people.

And there is a difference between fleeing, and attacking. Attempt to flee and you'll likely be tackled, tased, or have the dog sicked on you. Choose to attack, however -particularly with a deadly weapon- and surviving the resulting wounds is about the best you can hope for, as well it should be.

It SHOULD BE well-known that things will go a LOT better for you if you surrender, It SHOULD BE well known, that attacking an officer of the law will likely result in your death. If the perps can get that through their heads, there just might be more of the former and less of the latter, and if not; society suffers no great loss.

Course, because drug problems equate to the world being better off without you. Provided there was drug use involved, of course.

 

[ablac]

I dont wanna watch a man get shot so im just piecing this together from what others have said and pictures. The actual shooting wasnt justified as in there may have been a better alternative however the officer seemed to have acted in the heat of the moment out of fear so he can be forgiven for the consequences. The man didnt deserve death but this doesnt sound like an execution as the OP inferred. Again i have not watched the video so my opinion may be invalid due to false or misinterpreted information.


Also the guy clearly wasnt thinking straight or atleast had problems so dont blame him for his actions and dont condemn him for the lack of sense in confronting armed officers.

 

[senordesol]

Yeah...and your weapons looked like genuine guns. This was not a gun. There IS a grey area, you know. It doesn't flick between "Surrenders peacefully" and "Dies painfully". This is why we have courts and prisons. Just in case the police force takes a break from shooting people.

And there is a difference between fleeing, and attacking. Attempt to flee and you'll likely be tackled, tased, or have the dog sicked on you. Choose to attack, however -particularly with a deadly weapon- and surviving the resulting wounds is about the best you can hope for, as well it should be.

It SHOULD BE well-known that things will go a LOT better for you if you surrender, It SHOULD BE well known, that attacking an officer of the law will likely result in your death. If the perps can get that through their heads, there just might be more of the former and less of the latter, and if not; society suffers no great loss.

Course, because drug problems equate to the world being better off without you. Provided there was drug use involved, of course.

Drugs have nothing to do with it. A conduit bender wielded by an addict can kill you just as dead as one wielded by a sober person. Simply just another tick on a long list of reasons for not doing drugs in the first place but irrelevant to the situation at hand.

 

[JonnWood]

If you think the best training can't defend you from a heavy melee weapon...then I don't think you know the meaning of training.

Bruce Lee once said he would prefer to use a gun in a fight if it were available. Yes, martial arts training could have helped the cop. But it would've put him at more risk than using a gun, which he was actively trying to do. I continue to assert that literally any other option would not have been able to intervene in time, and deadly force is an appropriate response to deadly force.

But dude, Bruce Lee wasn't a police officer in the UK with 'proper training'!

In other news, I don't think it's possible to get through to him, He's going to say training ad nauseum without giving any reason to think that different training would have helped the situation.

Well it would. Because pulling a gun on a guy with a crowbar is not how to handle the situation. If England can keep the streets safe without relying on firearms, then I don't see why America's so special.

Thanks for proving my point by not giving a reason to think that it would have helped the situation. Pointing at the UK doesn't show that their training would have been better or successful in said situation.

Also who said it was special? America and England aren't the same. That isn't being special. It's called having more criminals with firearms.

I'm not arguing that armed cops are bad - I'm saying that they were unnecessary for this particular situation. America has a lot of guns in circulation. Therefore officers need to be prepared at all times to deal with guns. This was not a gun. This exact situation could have occurred in the UK and it wouldn't have been unique - the only difference would be that nobody shot him.

I think you mean 'repeating ad nauseum without proof'.

In this particular situation guns were fine. You're naive if you think that all situations without guns can be easily dealt with without them.

Yes, the UK would have dealt with it perfectly! Just like that evidence says. Oh wait a minute, we still don't have evidence the UK would have dealt with it better. We have some guy that repeats things ad nauseum.

Yo're still proving my point btw.

So...why exactly don't they call in the armed police for crowbar incidents?

Circular logic. The way the UK police do it is better because... They don't do it another way? Lolwut?

Clearly it's better to do it this way. Why exactly didn't they disarm the cops before sending them in?

How is it better to do it that way? That's totally unnecessary, given that you'd expect the cops to be disciplined enough to not shoot somebody when there are other options.

How is better to do it your way? It's totally unnecessary to remove an option given that the cops would be deprived of the option if they needed it.

Btw, they were disciplined enough. There were no other options that you provided except what amounts to "They can take him on!", which is unsubstantiated.

I can play this stupid game too.

It's not only unsubstantiated, it's outright false. Dog wasn't fast enough, melee puts the cops in only slightly less danger, and pepper spray was not working, nor could either cop draw and use a taser before the suspect could've completed his swing.

 

[Forgetitnow344]

I dont wanna watch a man get shot so im just piecing this together from what others have said and pictures. The actual shooting wasnt justified as in there may have been a better alternative however the officer seemed to have acted in the heat of the moment out of fear so he can be forgiven for the consequences. The man didnt deserve death but this doesnt sound like an execution as the OP inferred. Again i have not watched the video so my opinion may be invalid due to false or misinterpreted information.

Yeah, the perp got ready to go nuts on the unarmed officer with deadly force. It was in the armed officer's training to employ the same force to protect innocent life. And goddamn did he employ it effectively. What would have stopped the situation and saved the perp's life is if (he surrendered or) the taser the unarmed cop used was successful. Unfortunately, it was raining and tasers are notoriously unreliable. He treated a shot to the face like an unwanted bug, then retaliated with deadly force. Regardless of how it LOOKED like the cop was panicked, that was exactly how it had to go down.

 

[Thyunda]

Yeah...and your weapons looked like genuine guns. This was not a gun. There IS a grey area, you know. It doesn't flick between "Surrenders peacefully" and "Dies painfully". This is why we have courts and prisons. Just in case the police force takes a break from shooting people.

And there is a difference between fleeing, and attacking. Attempt to flee and you'll likely be tackled, tased, or have the dog sicked on you. Choose to attack, however -particularly with a deadly weapon- and surviving the resulting wounds is about the best you can hope for, as well it should be.

It SHOULD BE well-known that things will go a LOT better for you if you surrender, It SHOULD BE well known, that attacking an officer of the law will likely result in your death. If the perps can get that through their heads, there just might be more of the former and less of the latter, and if not; society suffers no great loss.

Course, because drug problems equate to the world being better off without you. Provided there was drug use involved, of course.

Drugs have nothing to do with it. A conduit bender wielded by an addict can kill you just as dead as one wielded by a sober person. Simply just another tick on a long list of reasons for not doing drugs in the first place but irrelevant to the situation at hand.

Well, it's irrelevant to the situation as it played out, but it IS relevant in the aftermath. A lot of the sentiment here is "Good, another stupid person out of the world", when that's a ridiculous attitude to have.
I just don't get why the police have to resort to guns in what should be a fairly common crime.

I tried to Google for conduit-bender related crime to find some example of dealing with it, but all I found was a guy getting his cock stuck in a pipe. So...back to square one on that.