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I am awestruck not so much by the ignorance but by the casual assertions of what is not so.

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.

Dawg,
I think it is clear that this is a pro-cop site. Personally, I am former JP, and have long worked closely with both town police and county Sheriff's Departments.

Now, following your advice, and lucky enough to live way out in the country, but where even the NY Post is available at our truck stop, along with Hi-speed links, I have now read up on this case as much as is possible at this stage of the investigation.

The cops in on this bust gone bad, which is all it really might be, are going to get fried, at least around the edges. What you are doing for them is the old:
"Guilty, your honor, but with an explanation."

Sorry, but they're going to need a bit more lawyering than that to dodge this bullet. Their union doesn't lack for resources, so they may make it. The city, however, ain't gonna be so lucky, after the "Wrongful Death," and Civil Suits to recover for pain, suffering, and loss of income are settled.

I do apologize to your Imperial Crustiness for shooting off my mouth without checking things out more thoroughly. OTOH, it was a little like our friends in the NYPD, to whom I wish good luck in the firestorm swirling around them.