Posted on 12/11/2018 6:43:17 AM PST by marktwain
Armed citizens and police officers are natural allies, and teammates in the fight against crime. There is no segment of the community more supportive of law enforcement than their fellow citizens who are lawfully armed.
So why are they accidentally killed by police with such distressing frequency?
2018 has been a tough year
This has been a tough year for police and armed citizens alike. In 2018, we’ve seen a number of tragic mistakes made by police officers who shot and killed lawfully armed citizens in error, including a homeowner in Aurora, Colorado, a security guard in Chicago, Illinois, and a Thanksgiving eve shopping mall patron in Hoover, Alabama, among others.
In each of these situations, the officers believed they were using force to stop someone who had endangered innocent life, but they were sadly mistaken. The officers were thrust into a dynamic and dangerous situation where they had to act quickly based on imperfect and incomplete information, and each of them made a fatal error that cost a life.
We still don’t understand the details of how these particular events unfolded, so it’s inappropriate to comment directly on the circumstances or assign blame. There were probably mistakes made by all parties – both armed citizens and police – which led to the unhappy endings of these stories, and this is not the place to hash that out.
Tactical considerations
Instead, I’d like to suggest some things for police to consider in order to avoid a tragic repeat of these events:
More Here at Policeone.com
(Excerpt) Read more at policeone.com ...
Public SERVANTS need to be especially familiar with the proper procedure when encountering armed CITIZENS. You work for US, cops! NEVER forget that.
Which segment, in New Jersey, is almost zero. The number one gun "crime" in our state is possession of a handgun without government blessing, which is nearly impossible to obtain.
Anytime I drive I remove my gun and secure it in the console. If I'm stopped for a traffic violation, the cop is going to know I have a CCW before he approaches my truck. When he asks me if I'm armed, I want to be able to truthfully say that I have a gun but that it is not on my person.
“1.) Drop the gun.
2.) Put your hands up.”
I posted this hypothetical situation a few days ago and got no response. What about you? This is not a challenge, just a mental exercise.
Hypothetical situation in relation to the recent killing by police of a security guard. You’ve just taken down an armed person who tried to rob you. You didn’t have to shoot them, but in the end you are on top of a face down person who still has their gun under them. They are not moving or giving you reason to shoot them at that moment, then the police show up. If you put your gun down the bad guy is very likely to shoot you or one of the police officers. How much ‘splainin are the police going to listen to from you? They probably won’t even hear it over either their shouted commands at you to drop the gun or their own gunfire directed at you. I could think of several other scenarios where being armed would be problematic. By the way I carry, and I think about these types of situations.
1) It’s fairly obvious that few people on this thread actually read the article.
2) The article should be required reading for all armed public servants; failure to understand and heed the ideas discussed in the article should be grounds for immediate dismissal from public service.
Hmmmm
If I am ‘carrying’ I should take my dog with me?
If a person tried to rob me at gunpoint and I were able to draw my weapon I would have shot him at least twice, unless he shot me first.
Never draw your weapon unless you intend to use it.
I must disagree. When all officer involved shootings involving “innocent” individuals are compiled a relatively large percentage are ruled justified due to inappropriate response by the civilian gun owner.
If even half of that % is accurate (as certainly some police butt cover is inevitable) It’s a sizeable number.
One would naturally expect that CCW holders being shot more often is simply a result of more CCW holders in the citizenry as certain number of these are simply result of “perfect storm” circumstances where neither party was negligent.
You will find that most experienced officers actually are more at ease (traffic stops) with CCW holders than the general public because they know that CCW holders generally know proper procedure and commit far less crime than the average Joe.
Unfortunately some CCW holders are not familiar with proper procedure or for some inexplicable reason choose to not follow it. And that is a recipe for disaster more often than not.
One thing that is indisputable....If all gun owners would know proper procedure when encountering a LEO and follow it to a T, a significant amount of needless innocent citizens being shot by cops would not occur.
You need to understand the nature of the business. Usually there is limited information given to the crew that is assigned the call. Most of the time the process works like this. The citizen calls the 911 call center and talks with an operator. The operator usually enters the information on a screen and sends it to the dispatcher. The dispatcher then sends the information to the responding crew.
Depending on the type of call, there can be break downs in any part of the process. If it’s a disturbance call, the information flows to the crew and they MAY or MAY NOT know there is an armed citizen at the scene. They get that information when they arrive. So now you have the original disturbance call AND a man with a gun. The cop has a very short period of time to process the information and make the correct decision, EVERYTIME.
It’s been awhile since I was active LEO, but I know that depending on the call, in my old department, sometimes the information was YELLED to the dispatcher in order to speed response time. If a gun call or a hold-up were called into dispatch, the operator verbally passed the information along then filled out the screen.
As for the training...I would disagree with your assessment. If anything, the training now has become riddled with PC. Departments don’t want aggressive officers as they tend to create lawsuits the departments don’t want to deal with.
I will agree the “profile” of most cops has changed. When I started on the job back in the early 70’s, there was less consideration of “diversity” than there is now. Most of us, back then, wanted to be cops. Now it seems to be just another job and for some people, the street cop is nothing more than an entry level position to attain higher rank and/or curry political favor to move from a municipal department to an elected police administration job. You don’t find too many guys that spent their entire career on the street anymore.
I speak from personal experience that the shoot/no shoot scenario takes place in a nano-second. The results can be life changing for all parties. I was lucky and can say I was right all of the time. Others cannot.
Just search out the stories where cops have first shot the family dog and later found out they were at the wrong house
Did you notice that the Seattle Police are operating in support of Antifa? Yashcheritsiy is probably more correct than you are.
“Public SERVANTS need to be especially familiar with the proper procedure when encountering armed CITIZENS. You work for US, cops! NEVER forget that.”
Yes, but one also must never forget that you only have complete control of YOUR own behavior, not theirs.
“Just search out the stories where cops have first shot the family dog and later found out they were at the wrong house”
Or you could search out the stories where they went to the right house and did NOT kill the family dog-——but those don’t make the FR news.
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True that. It’s always the negative stories about cops who make it bad for the other 99.99% of the good cops.
So your using that as an example to justify his/your belief that cops are intentionally killing CCW holders on orders from their superiors??? You’re as psycho as he is.
You cannot expect to survive in that scenario. Most likely, you will be shot by either the perpetrator or one of the responding officers.
If you are very lucky, the responders may be calm, approach from sound tactical cover, and give verbal commands that allow you to de-escalate. The perpetrator may also stay calm and follow police commands.
Counting on luck is a bad tactical plan. Best to be several body lengths distance away from a perpetrator, and have a weapon holstered when officers show up. Hands in plain view as well. Expect a lot of confusion and a possible arrest. Don't talk.
We, the People need to get some serious control over our public servants' TRAINING. That's what this article, which you should read if you have not, highlights.
I don’t disagree with anything in the article but as I’ve tried to make clear it’s only half the answer.
Your life may very well depend on YOUR actions concerning an encounter with LEO. And being that how you behave as a gun owner is completely at your discretion, informed, proper and prudent conduct is necessary for optimal resolution.
Exactly. Same thing with that Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
Regardless of what anyone thinks of the politics of those involved, the fact remains that the Charlottesville PD essentially acted to not only bring the UTRers and the antifas together, but then blocked in the UTRers when they tried to leave the area peacefully, allowing antifas to initiate physical violence. Keep in mind that that included the open display with threats of firearms by antifas, which the police did not do anything about (which would not have been the case had UTRers been doing the same). In a sense, James Fields’ panicked response and the death of Heather Heyer were proximately caused by CPD acting as an adjunct wing of antifa, at the behest of their political masters in the Charlottesville city government, who are nearly all radical left-wingers.
No.
I am saying that cops are not good guys either and are not to be trusted.
Cops work for their check and their pension and they will do dreadful things to us rather than put those at risk.
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