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Police Shooting Caught on Officer’s Lapel Camera
My most recent piece over at PJ Media concerns a police shooting that occurred last October in Albuquerque. The officer responded to a call of an armed robbery, and when he confronted the suspect, the suspect pulled a gun. The officer fired eight rounds, striking the suspect once, not fatally. As is usually the case, controversy followed.
Should the officer have fired? Would you have?
Watch the video and ask yourself how you would have handled the situation:
Published in General
Thanks, Leon. I’ll read it, too, although with the awareness that the Supreme Court has misinterpreted the Constitution, sometimes deliberately so, more often than it has interpreted it.
Cassius – there is a nice review of shooting on Modern Service Weapons, in the article “May/Must”. He gives 4-5 court references, as well as discusses the conditions of when you MAY shoot.
Leon, thank you, I will look into that case. In the news this weekend there was another case, a vagrant being rousted from his campsite was shot to death by two of 4 police officers who came to the scene. The video of the entire incident as it was filmed by a helmet cam on the one of the shooters is a really clearcut case of cops shooting unnecessarily, but it is being called justified by the Albuquerque police chief. Two things about this incident strike me immediately. Why were the officers carrying AR-15s when accosting a single man who did not have a gun? There was a police dog with them who was not released until the vagrant had been shot and killed. Non-lethal bean bags were shot at the man after he lay dying of his wounds. There is more I want to say, so I will load this and use a new frame to finish my point http://news.rtba.co/police-helmet-camera-captures-fatal-shooting-james-boyd-armed-knife-hes-turning-away-graphic/#.Uy9bUpFlDFo
The carrying of AR-15s when dealing with a person like the person in this video seems beyond excessive. The original issuance of ARs was done because cops were being outgunned by criminals. Now the cops are using them in all circumstances. This removes a certain step in the process. When you only carry a side arm, you have to draw it. The decision to draw the weapon puts one more step between the impulse and the action of actually shooting. Had these cops only been carrying side arms, they would likely have not had them drawn as they approached this homeless man. They likely would be more inclined to talk, to reason with him. The fact that at least two of them were carrying ARs, the two who shot the victim, really acted to give impetus to the shooting. Cops are becoming a home-grown military used for aggressive action rather than a force whose function is to protect and defend. The more I think about this idea the more sense it makes to me. ARs do not need to be the weapon of choice in most police actions. In truth they are excessive for most arrests. In a situation involving an active shooter it may be justified to have several qualified officers armed with ARs. However, for all officers to march out like a platoon of Marines is absurd. It changes the entire dynamic of what police are there to do, preserve life. I suspect that to a large extent what is happening is due to a sense of insecurity on the part of the cops, a lack of serious training with their handguns, and a need to overcompensate for that incompetency by overarming. This is unquestionably an issue that needs examination and serious reconsideration.
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