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 ...
You know? It is also very sad. A kind of persistent ache of the SO where I worked was the sense that some people were doomed. I have trouble with that theologically, but,....
There's the day we picked up some juvies from the detention center and these three under 18 year old guys are talking about how many babies they have. Or this really quite pleasant guy we hauled from Brooklyn to Central VA who just had no sense that there was something morally wrong with boosting $1,500 worth of stuff from a store. "I don't rob no people," he says, "only stores."
It never occurred to me to go out and boogie all night the day before I got married. And it sure wouldn't occur to me to hang out with whoremasters the day before I got hitched. I wanted to have as many of my wits about me as possible (all half of them) at the service, and I had serious boogie-type activity planned for AFTER the service.
So this prince among men, no, this poor blind fool, honors the institution of matrimony by planning on showing up hung over, zonked, and maybe just recently infected with a brand new STD to share with his wife if he is capable of getting up to anything (if you take my meaning) after the ceremony.
This is maybe when we see that we'd rather try to handle our anger than our sorrow, and argue with each other than acknowledge the pathos of the children and their blighted lives. Wherever the blame rightly lies, angels wept that morning.
My Imperial Crustiness
There are some new developments in this case that will be forthcoming soon. Stay tuned.
The day after the incident happened, I heard Mayor Bloomberg on the radio news say that a cop is not allowed to shoot at a car that is trying to hit him, unless someone in the car is shooting.
I couldn't believe what I was hearing, so I asked my son, who is an NYPD Police Captain.
He said, that's right. The idea is that the cop can get out of the way. That is just ridiculous.
The police lieutenant is being investigated.
He stayed in his car and ducked for cover while all this was going on.
"The police lieutenant is being investigated.
He stayed in his car and ducked for cover while all this was going on."
That kind of situation is all to common in the ranks of police management, many of whom view incidents as this as another reason why they need to stay in the police station and work on ways to cover their ass.
The police system grinds the good supervisors down into being mere paper shufflers and the good cops soon learn that to survive they need to drive around with blinders on.
Sad situation for the good citizens depending on the police to protect them.
Yes it is. If a car was coming at me and I was a cop I would have shot at it. Maybe too many rounds were fired but I am thinking we aren't getting the whole story yet. Just the media's and families . I haven't been watching the news too darn depressing .
But should they go to jail?
I agree with everything you said.
I told my son to put in his 20, and get out.
The public does not support the cops in NYC.
Even the mayor is not waiting for all the facts.
At least Guiliani supported them. During the Diallo shooting, he said to wait for the facts to come out.
They had a change of venue, and the cops in that case were tried upstate and acquitted.
But Bloomberg has already said, he wants them tried in Queens. He's already got them going to trial.
You never been on the streets have you
Except for the cat carcasses, you are describing the typical owner of a certain vintage Mercedes Benz. Plus FrPR, you oughta realize that if some dad-blasted cat crawls up inside to sleep on a warm engine block, the fur will fly upon engaging the starter.
A car IS a weapon. I wanted to add phrases like 'you moron' but courtesy forbids.
Oh I'm gonna puke. Please, once in your life, go do something real, something dangerous. It will give you a more realistic viewpoint on life.
Real life isn't the movies. All too often when someone is trying to kill you, with a car or whatever, your body fills with adrenaline, your heart is pounding, your arms feel like noodles and your small muscle coordination turns to mush. You aren't going to "shoot the gun out of his hand". On the contrary you are trying desperately to pump bullets into the middle of his torso. As many and as fast as possible. Same goes if you are watching a buddy being attacked. If you have 10 cops there and one of them is under attack you can bloody well bet that 50 rounds are going to be fired. They won't stop until the attack ends and neither would you. If you even had the presence of mind to do anything but stare. or cry.
Yeesh.
Amen brother!
Oh WHATEVER!!!
What ridiculous crap.
So you are telling me that you are soooo filled with adreneline that you don't check to see if the person you are shooting is still moving while you ARE RELOADING???
BS.
On what research do you base your assessment?
Are We Breeding a Police Culture of “Additional Victims?”
Part 1 of a 2-part series
By Chuck Remsberg
Senior PoliceOne.com Contributor
Sponsored by Blauer
Law enforcement agencies “should build a police culture that accepts, validates and rewards a fighting spirit.” Instead too many are creating “additional victims,” hesitant officers who shy from using deadly force when it’s legal and urgently needed. The result: “Some officers today are more afraid of being sued than being murdered!”
That sobering message was delivered passionately in Milwaukee earlier this month by one of a rare breed, a tell-it-like-it-is administrator, Chief Jeff Chudwin of Olympia Fields (Ill.) PD. Chudwin spoke on “Surviving Officer-Involved Shootings and the Aftermath” to kick off an intense tactical operations seminar produced by the Assn. of SWAT Personnel-Wisconsin, hosted by the Milwaukee County SO and attended by nearly 200 SWAT-team operatives.
A former street cop, former prosecutor, long-time president of the Illinois Tactical Officers Assn. and a PoliceOne contributor, Chudwin across a rapid-fire, provocative two hours presented graphic illustrations of what can only be called the wimping of American policing, and issued a stirring call for change. In some cases on-scene video drove home the impact.
• A plainclothes officer is being slashed in the face and neck during a ground fight with a knife-wielding suspect. Under life-threatening attack, he hands his gun to another officer because “he’s afraid he’ll discharge the weapon accidentally” during the struggle. “He gets praised by the media for ‘showing restraint,’ but what he did makes my skin crawl,” Chudwin declares. “Why didn’t he shove the muzzle in the suspect’s eye and pull the trigger?”
• Another officer responds to a man-with-a-gun call at a food mart, sees the suspect with a gun in hand but stays in her patrol car. The suspect grabs a citizen whom he forces to the ground at gunpoint. The officer fails to intervene. The suspect murders the captive by shooting him in the head. Still no action by the officer beyond “officially observing.” Responding backup finally kills the offender. A disturbing footnote to this event, Chudwin says, “is that some of her peers feel the first officer did nothing wrong.”
• An offender who has murdered his girlfriend is outdoors in a residential neighborhood firing a gun randomly. He’s surrounded by SWAT but the officers take no action other than trying to maintain a loose perimeter, even when he points his revolver directly at them. The standoff drags on through many threats to police and public until he eventually is shot when he closes in on an officer and points the gun at him. When Chudwin asks the officers why they didn’t fire earlier, they explain: “Our commander told us not to shoot him.” “An outrage!” Chudwin declares. “If you’re putting an offender at the top of the list for safety, then you have your priorities screwed up. Why are we catering to the person who created the problem?”
• SWAT officers are offered rapid deployment training by a tactical organization but back away from the concept because they consider it “too dangerous.” “We don’t run into the muzzle of a machine gun,” Chudwin chides, “but we do run into danger every day, and we should be prepared to do it.”
• An active shooter is inside a fast-food restaurant killing people. A SWAT team is ready to make entry or to fire through glass to take him out. A commander en route but 10 miles out orders the officers to stand down until he gets there….A commanding officer instructs his street personnel, “You can’t shoot at anyone until you are shot at first”…. A chief states that anyone who can’t control an aggressive offender with a knife from 5 to 7 feet away without using deadly force should not be a police officer—all examples of “lunacy,” Chudwin says.
“That kind of thinking can put you in a black hole you can’t get out of. This is the culture we have to get away from. There is no obligation for you to be injured, wounded or murdered” rather than shooting to stop a lethal threat.
Chudwin made clear that he is not advocating the development of rogue officers who pursue vigilante missions on the street. But he does feel that officers and agencies should embrace a greater willingness and readiness to use lawful deadly force in appropriate circumstances.
“Predators are out there, not afraid of us, willing to attack us,” said Chudwin, who has had two friends who were murdered on the job. “But officers often back away from aggressively finishing the fight.”
Part of the problem, he suggested, is unrealistic training that teaches officers to rely on tactics and equipment that in many real-life confrontations don’t work.
Field experience has well established that pepper spray, for example, “won’t work against people who are committed and willing to fight to the death.” Yet he showed dramatic video of a determined naked man moving threateningly down a city street with a knife after having cut off his own penis. Responding officers attempted—futilely—to control him with endless verbal commands and bursts of OC. Their solution ultimately was to risk their own safety by dog-piling him.
Why waste time and heighten your personal risk “by trying something that cannot work, like pain compliance against a crackhead who can’t feel pain?” Chudwin asked. “Why create false expectations of success?”
He deplored the tendency, again often reinforced in training, to over-verbalize. “Show me a Supreme Court case or statute that says you must give verbal warning before using deadly force,” Chudwin challenged. “There isn’t one.
“It’s not necessary to talk to somebody when they’re trying to murder you. You can do it, but there’s no legal obligation to and tactically it’s not desirable. There are some offenders you simply can’t negotiate with. Yet officers want to take things to the last instant because they have imprinted in their mind ‘I don’t want to shoot.’”
Reacting properly in threat situations depends on having the right mind-set, Chudwin stressed. “When you go out on the street, the first thing you say when you get in your patrol car should not be, ‘Oh, God, I might get sued today.’ You really have nothing personally to fear from liability when you follow law, policy and procedure. But fear of liability has led to the murders of police officers.
“If you’re more concerned about getting sued than getting murdered, you can’t do the job like it needs to be done. You’re a threat to yourself and to others.”
Regarding deadly force, “you have to know what you can do and when you can do it, and be prepared to do it immediately, without hesitation. If you fail any part of this equation, you will fail on the street.”
The willingness to emphatically stop a life threat needs to be part of your mind-set off duty as well as on, Chudwin reminded. “Only 25 per cent of officers in some areas carry off duty, and then they carry no extra ammunition,” he said in disbelief.
“Have some firearm on you always. You will be some place someday with your family and some antisocial s.o.b. will come up to you and want to cut your throat and take your children away—and you’re not going to let him.
“Remember, there is no coming back from the dead. If you understand that, you will come home at night. You may be a little battered but you won’t be full of holes because you gave some predator verbal commands rather than shoot him.”
NEXT: “7 Reminders that Could Save Your Bacon After a Shooting”—Chief Jeff Chudwin’s practical considerations that can help you survive after the smoke clears.
http://www.policeone.com/writers/columnists/CharlesRemsberg/articles/1186521/
Good article. But I disagree with that one line. You have plenty to fear from liability even if you follow the SOP right down the line. Contemporary judges and juries do not consider themselves bound by law, and in any event I'm worried about the likelihood that you'll be made whole for your legal fees even if you're found not liable by whatever court you end up before.
Judging be recent decisions in this area, I'd suggest that the cop's choice may turn out to be between death or injury on the one hand or civil and possible criminal liability on the other.
In this case the mayor is already letting his opinion slip out from behind his weasel words.
This article also has implications for the behavior of all of us. In terms of this case, it is simply NOT a good idea to go to titty shows at "clubs" where prostitution and related crimes are known to take place. These are just environments with a higher than usual risk of injury and death. If you go there, it would be good to leave before three in the morning. If you stay until after three in the morning, in a bad place in a bad part of town, you bear at least some small part of the responsibility for any lead flying through the air.
Im not so sure. Isnt it 'shoot to kill' if youre in a deadly situation?
>>>I heard over 50 rounds fired - doesn't anyone check during re-loads to see what is the status of the target?>>>
Wow! I didn't hear that. That is overkill for sure! You shoot to incapicitate, not mutilate."
I heard there were 8-10 officers involved. Not a reload situation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.