POLICE SHOOTINGS
I've long had a concern about how police departments train their officers on confrontations and gun usage. The recent shootings and the attendant racial riots and protests make a comment appropriate.
If you watch Cops or similar reality programs, you will see the problem over and over. When multiple officers are involved, there is no leader. Watch a car stop: they order the driver out. As he exits, one is yelling "get your hands up", another "back up", another "get on your knees", all at the same time. It's confusing to the suspect. There should be one designated officer for all commands, not ten people all shouting at once, often with contradictory orders.
A simple protocol as to who speaks for all officers at these scenes would do two things. It would stop the contradictions for the suspect and lower the adrenalin level of the remaining officers as they would not feel a need to be quite as active. And lowering the tension level may reduce the gun usage problem.
The gun usage problem is simply this: too many officers shooting too many bullets. Take the recent shooting in Sacramento (not Stockton, as I mistakenly first wrote) of a disturbed man armed with a knife. The police followed him for many blocks while he waved the knife around. At some point, it was felt necessary to shoot him. In the video, it is not clear why, he is neither rushing the officers nor very close to them, but the justification is for the investigators to decide.
But really, eighteen shots, fourteen of which struck him? A single round designed to expand and cause enough shock to knock the person down would likely have sufficed, maybe two. But fourteen nearly assures he will die at the scene.
You see it in all the videos. Every cop on scene feels a need to fire, not just once but multiple times, as soon as the first shot is made. Again, why not a designated shooter in these cases? There was plenty of time while he was followed to say "Jim, you take him down if necessary" and all the others hold their fire.
In one New York case where the suspect had a cellphone, not a gun as thought, the police shot over 40 rounds. Totally unnecessary overkill, and in my view unacceptable.
We teach our military to fire single shots. Surely in situations where the police have time to prepare their response, they need not reflexively empty their weapon.
Ask yourself: if your vehicle resembles one used by a bank robber who just left the scene, would you not want only one voice giving you directions as you exit? If you step in a hole and stagger when walking backward, and a rookie cop reflexively shoots in fear, do you want him so trained that he empties his 15-round gun and to have the other cops on scene join in riddling you with bullets?
One more point. Police in cities have forever carried .38 caliber weapons (what Micky Spillane called "sissy thirty-eights"), to minimize the danger to bystanders. Today they carry 9mm for the same reason. Yet the advances in ammunition allow larger calibers, which are more likely to not need multiple hits to bring the suspect down, to be nearly as safe as they expand and expend their energy. Departments might rethink their weapon policies.
Regardless, we need police to be better trained. Period.
I've long had a concern about how police departments train their officers on confrontations and gun usage. The recent shootings and the attendant racial riots and protests make a comment appropriate.
If you watch Cops or similar reality programs, you will see the problem over and over. When multiple officers are involved, there is no leader. Watch a car stop: they order the driver out. As he exits, one is yelling "get your hands up", another "back up", another "get on your knees", all at the same time. It's confusing to the suspect. There should be one designated officer for all commands, not ten people all shouting at once, often with contradictory orders.
A simple protocol as to who speaks for all officers at these scenes would do two things. It would stop the contradictions for the suspect and lower the adrenalin level of the remaining officers as they would not feel a need to be quite as active. And lowering the tension level may reduce the gun usage problem.
The gun usage problem is simply this: too many officers shooting too many bullets. Take the recent shooting in Sacramento (not Stockton, as I mistakenly first wrote) of a disturbed man armed with a knife. The police followed him for many blocks while he waved the knife around. At some point, it was felt necessary to shoot him. In the video, it is not clear why, he is neither rushing the officers nor very close to them, but the justification is for the investigators to decide.
But really, eighteen shots, fourteen of which struck him? A single round designed to expand and cause enough shock to knock the person down would likely have sufficed, maybe two. But fourteen nearly assures he will die at the scene.
You see it in all the videos. Every cop on scene feels a need to fire, not just once but multiple times, as soon as the first shot is made. Again, why not a designated shooter in these cases? There was plenty of time while he was followed to say "Jim, you take him down if necessary" and all the others hold their fire.
In one New York case where the suspect had a cellphone, not a gun as thought, the police shot over 40 rounds. Totally unnecessary overkill, and in my view unacceptable.
We teach our military to fire single shots. Surely in situations where the police have time to prepare their response, they need not reflexively empty their weapon.
Ask yourself: if your vehicle resembles one used by a bank robber who just left the scene, would you not want only one voice giving you directions as you exit? If you step in a hole and stagger when walking backward, and a rookie cop reflexively shoots in fear, do you want him so trained that he empties his 15-round gun and to have the other cops on scene join in riddling you with bullets?
One more point. Police in cities have forever carried .38 caliber weapons (what Micky Spillane called "sissy thirty-eights"), to minimize the danger to bystanders. Today they carry 9mm for the same reason. Yet the advances in ammunition allow larger calibers, which are more likely to not need multiple hits to bring the suspect down, to be nearly as safe as they expand and expend their energy. Departments might rethink their weapon policies.
Regardless, we need police to be better trained. Period.