Posted on 08/26/2012 6:32:13 AM PDT by Zakeet
It's official. The New York Police Department have admitted that all nine people wounded yesterday in the Empire State Building shootout were from bullets they fired at Jeffrey Johnson.
CNN's David Ariosto reports the NYPD said the two officers that confronted Johnson fired a total of 16 shots. "One officer shot nine while another one shot seven," they said. Police commissioner Ray Kelly explained the injured bystanders were hit by ricocheting bullets. The shots hit "flowerpots and other objects around, so ... their bullets fragmented and, in essence, that's what caused the wounds."
[Snip]
The next question the NYPD will have to answer is why the two officers needed to fire 16 bullets to take down one man who, as we can see in the video, was only a few feet away from them.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlanticwire.com ...
Bloomberg: I Told You Guns Were Evil
Maybe Bloomie should take away the NYPD’s bullet launchers, and just give the cops two Tasers each instead.
because they were using 9mm instead of the man stopper 45 auto.....1 hit would have put him down, and they could have stopped shooting
Keystone cops
Bloomie was bragging at the news briefing that NYC has the lowest crime rate of any big city....If the police shoot everyone, including law abiding citizens, that sends a strong message to the bad guys and holds crime down.
:)
If people were responsible for their own safety, we wouldn’t need so many of these idiots in authority over us.
Sure sounds like his pistol jammed to me, and he was trying to clear it when he was shot by police. Lucky for the cops and bystanders he wasn't carrying a Glock or similiar.
“why the two officers needed to fire 16 bullets....”
BLOOMBERG’S ANSWER: The police had automatic assault pistols that fire themselves when pointed at a target. The police have no control over the pistols in their hands, the pistols fire themselves at any object within 50 yards of the end of the barrel. It is not the fault of the police, it is the fault of the pistols and the people that happened to be standing nearby and within the distance the pistols fire.
sarc off
I would have thought that the NYPD had been taught never to fire your weapon if you didn’t know what was downrange but I guess I’m wrong. Silly me.
That might have worked equally well here, with no bouncing ammo.
They’d taken down even more civilians. This is NYC, not a normal place.
Demonstrating again the liberal wisdom that gun bans keep the public safe and the police can protect us.
Would a non cop be treated the same way in a similar situation? If not, why not?
IF cops are the only ones who are supposed to have guns, THEN they need to be held to a higher standard.
Sorry, those cops need to be on leave and possibly charged with reckless endangerment for blazing away in a crowd. And before one of the cops on this site rise to their defense about how hard it is, we have US Marines and Soldiers who have been court martialed and imprisoned for similar things.
Looks like the NYPD needs to apply Sheriff Andy Taylor’s ‘Barney’ rule; that from now on all NYPD officers get issued only one bullet and they must carry it in their pocket. ;-)
Flower pots were downrange. No bystander was struck by a direct shot from the officers. The problem was ammo that bounced off of them. Ceramic items can do that.
I think the cops were simply shooting at him without aiming...the one cop on the left side nearest to the sidewalk seemed to be shooting at a very weird angle and was just spraying bullets...
I'm not necessarily blaming the cops as this scenario is a one in life time event... NYPD probably need to step up their training programs to include these situations...
Wonder if the officers’ guns had laser dot range finders. This is one situation where that most definitely would have helped (even if nobody was directly beyond the target, bullets that have passed through the target are less likely to ricochet far than bullets that have utterly missed).
Assuming a 1911, this is a neat trick.
Crappy training
+
Panic firing
+
12 pound triggers
=
9 wounded innocent bystanders
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.