Posted on 11/27/2006 7:55:30 AM PST by RGSpincich
-snip-
Dramatic new details of the deadly mayhem include the undercover cop at one point climbing onto the hood of Bell's car - his gun drawn and his police shield around his neck - screaming, "Police! Turn off your car! Let me see your hands!" said sources who talked to some of the cops involved in the shooting.
When Bell then tried to run down the plainclothes officer - twice - the cop began shooting, with some of his 11 bullets piercing the rear window of the man's Nissan Altima, the sources said. -snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
(A)The cops watch way too much TV. (B)Undercover cops in NYC really look like the sleazoids in the milieu they are trying to penetrate. (C) Since a solid citizen could make that mistake, and often has, cheap and sordid criminals are legally entitled to the same latitude. Since the cops have been staking out this dive for months, they should have had uniformed backup instantly available.
BTW, NYC Cop marksmanship is the pits, their waste of ammo prodigious. A full clip of 9MM could easily make sure a car doesn't leave the scene, with 4 flats and a blown radiator.
This copper is actually damn lucky his victim really is such an unloveable character and the multiple rounds down range didn't take out any "innocent" bystanders.
For example, it's not always a slam-dunk to shoot a tire out. Serious ricochet problems - or so I was told in my training. A perforated radiator isn't necessarily going to stop the car right away, either. Consequently a clip of nines is no guarantee the car will be stopped easily or quickly, or at all.
"This copper" was actually several officers not just one. The story says that's why there were so many bullets. Those fired by the first cop were mistaken by other officers for hostile fire. (Reading the story would probably be helpful in analyzing how stupid and inept and brutal the cops were.)
I don't know any particulars about the NYPD training. I will tell you that the guys on the street don't make that decision. It's made by higher-ups and is ultimately a budget matter.
I'm doing well if I can get to the range once a week and blow 200 rounds. It's not always so easy to do that unless the department makes the time and pays for the rounds.
I think the common understanding of gun fights is wildly misinformed. It's not like battle, or like shooting from behind cover. The first cop probably didn't have an opportunity to take cover and had to work on the basis that the more lead he got through the windshield and FAST, the higher the chances that he'd go home rather than to the morgue that morning. You don't survive gunfights by firing a round or two and then looking around your gun to see if you got anyone. You don't survive them by lining up a nice sight picture.
And if I were to make one generalization about the FR "I could do this WAY better than the cops did" gang is that they don't understand what a serious adrenaline dump is like - nobody mentions or wonders if anybody peed in his pants - nobody talks about tunnel vision, time dilation, all the things that happen when suddenly it really looks very much like somebody you don't know is trying to kill you.
I've stepped in front of a car. Really. You're just trying to make sure the guy knows you're there and to give him an opportunity to obey your lawful command. And when he doesn't stop, it's hard not to take personally the fact that you are doing what the taxpayers pay you to do and no somebody is trying to lay a serious hurting on you.
You guys complain about the cops not being in uniform. Try to remember that a cop in uniform, with a badge pinned so as to help the bad guys identify the side with the heart, rarely can tell by clothes or much else whether the guy walking up with the serious expression on his face is coming up to ask for directions to the donut shoppe or to try to kill you.
It's interesting work, and even if only a very small minority of frowning people really want to kill you -- and intend to try, it often only takes one such person to do bring it off, but you have to be all polite and smiling and everything right up until you see his knife. Because if you don't a bunch of Freepers will complain that you're not as lovable as officer Joe Bolton on TV but are acting like some tacticool shaven headed super-hero. (Yeah I got a "high and tight". My partner was a former DI and he wore his that way, and we were a team.) Mind you, if the guy DOES have a knife and wins, the expert-on-law-enforcement Freepers will express contempt for your training and pay no attention to your widow and orphans.
But they're from that part of the Freeper universe that is just SO much better in every respect than the police who "not infrequently" lie about what happened (and probably are too stupid or poor to be able to get online and log onto FR), that they just can't be bothered with widows, orphans, or other detritus left behind by the bad guys, and the poor schlubs on the low end of the city payroll.
Sarcasm alert! If you guys were half the patriots you claim to be, you'd come down to the PD or sheriff's Office for an hour or so a month and offer to bring the gang up to your level of ethical perceptiveness and tacticool expertise. You're so very expert that surely just having you walk through the station would improve the performance of the entire PD.
/ end sarcasm.
Yeah, I'm angry. With next to no evidence you all make the most incredibly baseless and insulting generalizations about my friends. You trash the intelligent, thoughtful, and pious guy who is being sued for firing back when shot at by a felon. You are on the side of the sociopathic families who sue a cop who was called for a domestic and found a wild man going dangerously and homicidally nuts, a man whom he shot in self-defense. You ignorantly ignore and despise the deputies who go out of their way to call a known pusher "sir" or a drunk and high hooker, "ma'am" and to put them at as much ease as possible as they get ready to go get sentenced -- and to comfort them afterwards if the sentence is hard.
I really wonder how many of you would have the courage to face what my friends face, or the gentleness and decency to show the kindness they show. Judging by the eager, thoughtless, and ignorant rush to judgement shown here, I'd have to say, probably not.
"The cops mowed down some guy who was unarmed and you're editorializing the title. While Shrapton et. al., will have a field day with this, but all evidence points to it being the cop's fault."
Say, JJM2111 baby,
Did the alleged bad guys do anything to attract attention or anything which might have inflicted danger or fright onto the cops? Or is that minor fact beyond your apparently limited comprehension?
"Wow! I didn't hear that. That is overkill for sure! You shoot to incapicitate, not mutilate."
~~
OK, I'll accept your point. Faced with a situation which occurs within seconds, and when someone in a car is trying to kill you with that car, how many shots are you allowed? Two? Seven? How many?
You seem all-knowing, how many shots are allowed? How are they allocated? OK, you on the far left, you get one, next guy over, you get one...... By then you're all roadkill.
"I want to believe that the cops were in the right, but as the story stands now, I think they messed up, not that the guys who got shot didn't as well. Stopping to reload seems a bit extreme."
Let me see if I get this straight, Mockingbyrd. You'd be much happier if the cops all wore uniforms, i.e., they would never be able to perform this type of undercover operation.
You'd also be happier if they were not allowed to reload their weapons, i.e., they get shot to death while the perps reload their weapons.
You have some great ideas there, Sparrow.
"...accepted practice that one makes sure of ones backstop when putting live rounds downrange"
You obviously don't live in a Metro area. I suppose police officers could ask all criminals to come to an inside range so know bystanders could get killed, but that really wouldn't be the real world.
...and to hell with the bystanders at the club hugh. That officer had a duty to attempt to stop what he saw as a possible gunfight at a high density civillian area. Given the evidence of what he saw transpire, if he did nothing, he would be held responsible for not acting on the information he had.
"Here's the thing, you hit when you said UNMARKED VAN, police officer in UNDERCOVER CLOTHES. That could have been a carjacking! If a home invader gets shot by a homeowner, he is heralded. If he or she happens to shoot a cop in plain clothes busting in a door, he's a thug that deserves to be shot.
I don't get it Freepers!"
Obviously, there many, many things you don't GET on this URL. BTW, welcome to Free Republic. After one month or so, you seem to have learnt how to post some very provocative comments.
The net is, if you use deadly force, the police are fully justified in using deadly force to stop you, period.
Me, I'd say as long as it is moving - and not just coasting to a stop - keep shooting. You don't know for sure that you've hit anything. (could be deflected by glass, door, suspect ducking out of the way etc.) So until I am sure I have put an end to the perp's control of the vehicle and attempted vehicular homicide, I'm putting rounds downrange. Depending on aspect angle, I'd go for tires, engine, driver...
"Cops should be making arrests like this on the street wearing uniforms, and driving squad cars. Period. In of story."
~~
The cop in uniform comes up and detains some creep; the ACLU intervenes. The thug continues committing thuggery.
The cop in uniform gets a creep to court; the ACLU intervenes. The thug continues committing thuggery.
The cop, in uniform, in a squad car, enters a high crime neighborhood. All the perps drive away. No one apprehended.
The cop encounters no crime, yet the crime tolls continue to be high.
But, as you say, Smogger: "In of story." After all, the cop was in uniform and in a marked squad car. Perhaps, Smogger, you should become the head of the NYPD!!
"It's because our society, particularly in the larger cities, has gone to sh*t. People, especially poorer ones, act like beasts instead of civilized citizens. Parents, poor or rich, used to be the ones to teach their kids to act properly. But now that doesn't happen, and now it's the job of the police to deal with 18+ years of kids growing up like animals. As you say, it is no surprise that the police have now gotten much tougher in their actions with potential perps because of this.
But I do disagree that innocent citizens have no redress. There are always hungry lawyers (including our Communist friends at the ACLU) to file federal lawsuits about civil rights, etc. etc."
~~
Thks BamaGirl. This was one of the better posts I've ever seen on FR. To the point, no wasted words and right on!!
Thanks. I enjoyed it.
"And to the other poster who thinks I am making this up: I saw it on a Cops-like tv show. Guy tries to drive around the cops and they shoot up a residential neighborhood in response."
TV and reality are two different planets. On TV, people are magically transported to Venus. That only happens in the democrat party in the U.S.
What you said!!! AMEN BROTHER!!!!!
"Prog, you forgot that the groom had knocked up his bethrothed twice in the last six years. No telling how many others he banged."
Now, you're making a rash assumption. Does the female actually know who the father was?
"You're a fu-king retard! But thanks for playing! :)"
Does your vocabulary extend beyond these few words? Or is this how you order a cup of coffee?
Hey! I don't think this was a "traffic stop". Undercover cops; bad, drug ridden neighborhood, nightclub and booze; drunks going home and muddled?
But when the driver aimed that car--it was a bigger bullet than a .45,.38 or whatever NY cops carry. Agreed, too many bullets, but take a speeding car aimed at you and an automatic weapon and you have the makings of mayhem.
Too bad all around.
Of course it is a free country, but what a lousy idea for the bridegroom to be drinking it up in a strip joint TILL 4 AM the night before his nuptials.
vaudine
If only Al Sharpton is still willing to fight for the civil rights of men, especially when drunken undercover agents are able to legally attack unarmed men for no apparent reason except one was suspected of having a gun, then that is a sad testimony to our state of affairs for a so called free republic.
It shouldn't just be Al Sharpton there. It should be all who hold dear the sanctity of life, individual freedom, and just cause. No matter how it will be painted in the future, three unarmed men were attacked by some guys in plain street clothes. One was killed while two others were shot several times. None of the victims had guns nor drugs. Their offense was leaving a bar in the early hours of the morn and being assaulted by unknown assailants. It matters little that the undercover cop had a badge and a gun. These are not hard to come by.
"You'd also be happier if they were not allowed to reload their weapons"
Perps had no weapons, so in this case, stopping to reload does seem a bit extreme. As a woman in a big city, I can understand not trusting some guy who approaches my car announcing that he's a police officer. See around here, we just had two guys arrested for doing just that. Announcing they were police officers, flashing some sort of badge and then raping women.
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