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

[Guardian of Nekops]

I'm sorry, but our police in England are trained to physically restrain an armed man. Plus he had a big fucking dog. The thug actually turned away from the officer with the dog, who responded by shooting him dead. If these officers were trained to actually respond to situations rather than just pulling a gun, that man would still be alive, and he'd be in a jail cell. If I can see an opportunity presenting itself, I'm quite sure a trained, baton-armed, dog-leashed police officer can.

Guns are also illegal in your country. And mostly not present, which is not true in those states where guns are rigidly controlled. Massive amounts of training to deal with subjects who are armed, but NOT armed with guns are MUCH better spent in England than they are in America.

Also, do you know that the suspect is dead, rather than in a jail cell? Bullets really don't just kill you instantly. They CAN, but there are quite a lot of places you can get shot in your chest and live to tell the tale.

I would remind you, further, that deadly force is deadly force. The guy who rams you (purposefully) with his car is JUST as responsible for your death as the guy who shoots you. In a similar fashion, the person who swings a metal hammer at you, which certainly appears capable of bashing your skull in, is threatening your life NO LESS than the guy who unloads a bullet in your direction... sure, he may miss. He may not hit you in the skull or any other vital area. He may just not hit you hard enough. However, as soon as he started swinging that hammer, he decided that your death was an acceptable outcome.

Just as this officer did when he pulled the trigger.

 

[Khada]

That's nothing short of horrid. Yes the individual with the crow bar was dangerous but there was ABSOLUTELY no need to shoot him 8~ times! One in the leg would have subdued him, or rubber bullets, pepper spray and so on. He had no ranged weapon to speak of so all you have to do is disable/immobilisers him and keep your distance.

Disgusting, those police should be fired immediately. There is no way to justify that killing and it depresses me how many people have voted "Yes".

 

[General Twinkletoes]

Did you know that the way cattle are killed in much of the world is by a cut to their leg because that's one of the fastest bleedout spots on the body? A shot to the leg, if it by some fluke hit, stands a good chance of being a fatal shot.

Was the suspect down? No? Keep firing.

I never said shots to the leg are never lethal.
Of course they can be.
Bullets aren't going to slice your leg off, though.
The chance of hitting an organ is higher when aiming at the torso than the chance of a lethal wound inflicted by bullet to the leg.
Needless to say, it's much less likely to kill you if someone shoots you in the leg, as opposed to the general area where your lungs and heart are.

Do you even know why they shoot people?
I case you have no idea, as it appears is the case, it's to incapacitate them.
Being physically on the ground has no meaning if the opponent is still conscious and has a gun.
In this case, he was holding a close range weapon, some kind of a bludgeoning tool.
He was clearly staggering from the blows and wasn't in any condition to retaliate.
The police don't have guns so they can satisfy your bloodlust.
They have guns so they can protect and incapacitate.

At the end of the first round of shots, the threat was clearly subdued. Clearly.
By the way, the first volley was five shots. At point blank range, aiming at the center of mass, you can be pretty damn sure most of those shots went in. The initial volley is understandable.
Safety of the officer of course comes first in a potentially violent situation.
However, making sure the suspect is dead is not in their list of priorities when they draw their gun.

You can defend the actions of the officer all you like. Just don't use bullshit arguments.

You don't shoot to wound, that doesn't work. In a situation like that, the only viable option would be to shoot the criminal. No shooting to incapacitate. And even after the five shots, that guy was still alive, and when you're in a state like he probably was, he could've still done something.
And that's not even taking in the adrenalin of the situation, you can't control yourself very well like that. He almost saw his partner, and they were possibly great friends, get hit in the head with a huge weapon that could have easily killed him. He panicked.

 

[Mazza35]

Sad case, but justified.
If you come at a police officer with a weapon, expect to be shot.
It's not like they had half an hour to calm him, and maybe get a taser out, no. They got called about a guy terrosing people with a crowbar, he came out, saw the officers, and came at one. He was shot, and I want to hear none of this 'He could of fired a warning shot, or a leg shot, or a disabling shot' No. When you make the split second call to shoot someone, you want to make sure that fucker goes down. You don't know if they are high on drugs (I have first person accounts of Insurgents in Afghany taking 20 rifle rounds to go down when they are high)

In short, sad but justified.

You talk about plit-second decisions. This was not a split second decision! The video clearly shows that two cops had at least 10 seconds to decide how to handle this situation. It's extremly likely they had much more time then this. They were probably called to come here, and had some intell on the situation.
You also talk as if there was no time to pull out non-lethal weapons. Well maybe they did not have half an hour. But they had enough times to pull out their guns right? If there was one officers, then maybe just maybe it could be justified to have only a gun at the ready. But there were two of them, they should have cooperated, one with a gun, one with a non lethal weapon.
Beside he was carrying a crowbar, a fing crowbar. They had guns and a nearly open parking space. Use some goddam common sense and distance yourself.
The shooting occured at 0:45. Which means they had at least 45 seconds to come with an alternative then emptying a clip into this guys torso. If that is not enough time, then they should not be cops.
I'm not saying that what they did was wrong, and I'm not saying I could do better, but I'm not a cop. For a police officer this is not an acceptable way to handle this situation. They failed at their duty to 'serve and protect' and should be fired.

It is a split second decision when they just charge at your partner, and they DID hit him with a taser, in the face. That didn't stop him, and it wasnt a crowbar, it was a large steel post thingo.
So, you're saying if you shoot someone with a taser, and they don't go down, then they charge at your partner, you're going to try a 'non-lethal- tatic. No, as I said. You're going to shoot that fucker, and when you shoot someone, you make sure they stay down.

 

[Khada]

That's nothing short of horrid. Yes the individual with the crow bar was dangerous but there was ABSOLUTELY no need to shoot him 8~ times! One in the leg would have subdued him, or rubber bullets, pepper spray and so on. He had no ranged weapon to speak of so all you have to do is disable/immobilisers him and keep your distance.

Disgusting, those police should be fired immediately. There is no way to justify that killing and it depresses me how many people have voted "Yes".

Once in the leg would have subdued him? What the hell is that based on? 5 in the chest and he was still standing apparently since I could see the top of his head over the car. But one in the leg would have done it! Ignore all the posts that pointed out that they don't shoot for the leg and why! Also, let's ignore that there was no time for pepper spray or getting rubber bullets!

Watch the video again, he wasn't standing, he was dead on the ground, that much is clear.

Now lets be super clear about this. You're saying that 5 or more cops + an attack dog couldn't have subdued a man with a crowbar without killing him?

Bouncers accomplish exactly that against similarly armed individuals without using lethal force.

And another note, if you shoot a man in the leg and he only has a melee weapon, how hard would it be for you to keep your distance from him to ensure your own safety?

Of course, rubber bullets or a taser would have solved the whole things pretty well.

 

[kickyourass]

Completely justified, from what I've been able to gather, the guy was acting like a crazy person, was armed with a large bunt instrument, barely seemed to notice when he got TASERED (In the face or neck by the looks of it), and then moved to attack a police officer with said blunt instrument. How else were they supposed to react to that?

 

[Frost27]

completely justified. you're taught a principle in the academy of force-plus-one. that means that any force used against you, you meet it with one level of force greater so that the threat will stop. so basically if someone is passively resisting you, you go hands-on and can force that person to do as you need them to. if someone tries to go hands-on with you, you go to less-lethal (taser, oc spray). if someone pulls a taser or spray on you, you're justified in using lethal force. that may sound overly harsh, but it comes from long years of experience and training. you NEVER meet something that could incapacitate you (as a police officer) with anything LESS than deadly force. it just makes sense...

Exactly. You have no idea what the suspect will do to you once you are incapacitated and to give them the chance is gambling with your life and the lives of others.

There still seem to be a lot of folks under the impression that shooting to wound is some sort of acceptible alternative, this just is not the case. Use of an officer's sidearm occurs when the situation is escalated to deadly force. When this happens, the only option is to remove the threat. A wounded target is often far more dangerous than a healthy one thanks to adrenaline and desperation. Also, a leg is a far harder target on a mobile suspect than a center of mass shot and if you miss, innocent people can die and so can you.

There is a youtube video out there from the dashboard camera of a patrol officer who stops a drunk in a pickup truck. During the stop the very drunk driver (an older man) begins ranting about being a Vietnam vet. The officer goes back to his cruiser and radios for backup while the drunk suspect gets out of his truck and begins hopping around. The officer orders him back into the vehicle and the driver reaches behind the seat of the truck and pulls out an M1 Carbine. The officer fires a single shot into the suspect's stomach area and several other shots that miss and the old man falls back on military training. He pins down the officer behnd his cruiser with a frigtening display of textbook supressing fire, reloading while advancing, rounds the back of the car, and proceeds to murder the officer with the entire remander of his magazine before walking back to his truck and leaving all the while being gutshot with what is likely a hollow point.

I don't have the link to he video but a little searching shold find it. I woldnt post it here anyway as the officer's screams at the end are haunting and
sickening.

A prime example of why the level of deadly force is just that and if you don't finish what you start, the other guy will.

 

[General Twinkletoes]

You don't shoot to wound, that doesn't work. In a situation like that, the only viable option would be to shoot the criminal. No shooting to incapacitate. And even after the five shots, that guy was still alive, and when you're in a state like he probably was, he could've still done something.
And that's not even taking in the adrenalin of the situation, you can't control yourself very well like that. He almost saw his partner, and they were possibly great friends, get hit in the head with a huge weapon that could have easily killed him. He panicked.

You're saying you should kill the suspect every time you draw your gun?
Why is that necessary? Incapacitation should be enough.
Bullets don't blow you off your feet.
You go down when you lose your balance. The time it takes to do that is enough time to empty just about any gun.
You don't need 12+ bullets to incapacitate someone.
The only thing you're saying by suggesting that they "shoot until the suspect is down" is "shoot them till they're fucking dead."

Unless you intentionally throw yourself on to the ground when you get hit by the first volley, you'll most likely be dead or lethally wounded before you even come close to hitting the ground.
That simply isn't necessary.
Shoot them till they're dead sounds like a bad policy to me.

I don't have any personal experience.
I've never been filled with lead before, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that it's hard to do any meaningful damage with a blunt object when you've been shot 5 times point blank.
Particularly considering the fact that the officer was likely using hollow points.
That guy must have been shredded to pieces inside after the first 5 shots.

And I don't know about you, but I like my law enforcement to have self control.
They're supposed to stay calm in situations that might otherwise invoke panic in other, less capable people.
Their ability to do their job depends on their ability to stay level-headed and think clearly even when their lives are at risk.
I would like to think that society holds them to at least this basic level of accountability where we expect them to not panic in the situations they are hired to deal with.

You can't expect someone to not panic there, it's impossible unless they spend their whole life trying to be calm. Also, shooting for the leg is hard enough as it is, when your friend is about to die, he probably wouldn't have hit the leg. And that criminal shook of a tazer to the face, if a bullet hit him in the leg he could still probably swing and kill the police officer.

 

[General Twinkletoes]

You don't shoot to wound, that doesn't work. In a situation like that, the only viable option would be to shoot the criminal. No shooting to incapacitate. And even after the five shots, that guy was still alive, and when you're in a state like he probably was, he could've still done something.
And that's not even taking in the adrenalin of the situation, you can't control yourself very well like that. He almost saw his partner, and they were possibly great friends, get hit in the head with a huge weapon that could have easily killed him. He panicked.

You're saying you should kill the suspect every time you draw your gun?
Why is that necessary? Incapacitation should be enough.
Bullets don't blow you off your feet.
You go down when you lose your balance. The time it takes to do that is enough time to empty just about any gun.
You don't need 12+ bullets to incapacitate someone.
The only thing you're saying by suggesting that they "shoot until the suspect is down" is "shoot them till they're fucking dead."

Unless you intentionally throw yourself on to the ground when you get hit by the first volley, you'll most likely be dead or lethally wounded before you even come close to hitting the ground.
That simply isn't necessary.
Shoot them till they're dead sounds like a bad policy to me.

I don't have any personal experience.
I've never been filled with lead before, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that it's hard to do any meaningful damage with a blunt object when you've been shot 5 times point blank.
Particularly considering the fact that the officer was likely using hollow points.
That guy must have been shredded to pieces inside after the first 5 shots.

And I don't know about you, but I like my law enforcement to have self control.
They're supposed to stay calm in situations that might otherwise invoke panic in other, less capable people.
Their ability to do their job depends on their ability to stay level-headed and think clearly even when their lives are at risk.
I would like to think that society holds them to at least this basic level of accountability where we expect them to not panic in the situations they are hired to deal with.

You can't expect someone to not panic there, it's impossible unless they spend their whole life trying to be calm. Also, shooting for the leg is hard enough as it is, when your friend is about to die, he probably wouldn't have hit the leg. And that criminal shook of a tazer to the face, if a bullet hit him in the leg he could still probably swing and kill the police officer.

 

[kickyourass]

I know the guy shrugged off a tazer and approached a distracted officer with a deadly weapon raised, but come on; aren't officers trained to be superman? <Oh good, sarcasm generators are functioning>

I don't know how anyone anywhere could come up with a simpler concept: Do NOT give the man with the 9mm ANY reason to think you're a threat. I mean...what else need be said? If you are surrounded by people POINTING GUNS at you, now is not the time to 'bluff' or 'swing' or do ANYTHING other than drop your weapon and put your hands in the air. I don't know why this is so difficult to grasp.

Furthermore, cops take their fraternity very seriously. In a world full of bad guys and hooligans who have NO compunction about making widows of their wives and orphans of their children, in a world where their every action is scrutinized, analyzed, and debated by people who WEREN'T FUCKING THERE; all they've got to rely on is each other. When you see a fellow officer about to get a cranium full of a 'The Department regrets...' letter, you take the fastest action possible to ensure that doesn't happen. And the fastest action isn't charging the suspect, it isn't even sicking the dog on him; it's pumping that scumbag with several thousand times his daily recommended dose of lead.

Now I can see the debate on whether the five additional shots were necessary after the suspect was clearly on his way down (fired, incidentally, in a panic by the man he had just threatened with a deadly weapon). As I understand it, police training dictates that you don't stop shooting until he is 'down' down, but it seemed apparent (from the rain-drenched distance the video was shot from) that the subject was pretty much a non-threat. But that's debatable. At the end of the day, however, the shooting itself was completely justified. You DO NOT attack or threaten a police officer.

You just don't.

And if you do, I'm sorry, but as of that moment; they've got more of a right to live than you do.

You are currently my favorite person on these forums.

 

[secretsantaone]

Slow down there. I never said he should shoot the suspect's leg.
I just said that he shouldn't have panicked and unloaded the entire magazine into the poor bastard.
I wouldn't expect a doctor to lose his shit while operating on me because he sees my blood pouring out.
In fact, that would be unacceptable.
Same with the cop. He should be capable of staying calm and not unnecessarily killing the suspect.

Dealing with dangerous situations is kind of the officer's job.
If they aren't cut out for that shit, they should do something less stressful and decisive.

What would you have preferred him to do exactly? Wrestled the weapon out of his hands?

The man was clearly violent and had no intention of submitting peacefully. He swung a dangerous weapon at a police officer and was probably on drugs based on how easily he shrugged off that tazer.

The police officer who shot had less than a second to respond. If he hadn't have shot, he risked the life of his fellow officer. In that situation he's trained to put the target down and neutralise the threat. He shot the first few times and when the target was still standing he shot again to put him down.

At no point did he panic. He simply did what he was trained to do.

 

[ACman]

While I think in this case the shooting was probably justified the cop do make some mistakes in not having no lethals out and by not insisting that the individual drop the axe before approaching him.

Ideally they should have dropped him with a tazer but he did swing at the approaching officer with an axe.

Cops do need uniform training standards set throughout America but the worst abuses come from tazers and capsicum spray which for some reason cops feel the need to use on peaceful protesters and even cuffed and restrained suspects.

 

[SillyBear]

Oh look, let's all watch a bunch of video game fans who are mostly young and have done very little with their lives criticize and offer critique on trained professionals who were in a more stressful situation than they themselves will ever be in.

How fun.

I don't know if you guys know or not - but someone clearly about to swing a deadly weapon at a police officer is going to get put down 100 times out of 100. The police officer is not going to risk the life of his partner just to appease your ridiculous ideas about proper conduct. And please, for the love of God, shut the fuck up about this "leg shot" or "warning shot" nonsense. No one who has ever been officially taught to use a firearm will ever do that. If a police officer or a soldier fire their weapon - they keep firing until the target is down. End of story. They don't fuck around with leg shots (which are just as lethal as chest shots) or fire warning shots. Nor will they only fire one shot into the target as a way of saying 'get back' - people filled with adrenaline (or drugs in this case) can be just fine immediately after being shot with a 9mm. Sorry. The world doesn't work they way you think it does.

 

[Zhukov]

I usually come down on the "not justified" side in these arguments.

However, I'd say this one was justified. They even tried to taser him first and he just didn't give a shit. He advanced on one of the cops in close quarters while raising a lethal weapon.

That's about as cut and dried as it gets.