re: Body cam footage of cop shooting cleaver armed woman released *GRAPHIC*

I can't blame the policeman for shooting her given she was carrying a weapon and refused to drop it while moving forward but here's a gray area I always struggle with.

Why multiple shots that continue after she loses momentum. This is not a physically powerful man carrying a gun (you can probably justify a large number of shots fired whenever a person is carrying a gun IMO)... this is a fat middle aged woman who probably can't run down a toddler.

Is there a need for a policy that asks for discretion RE: the number of shots you use to put someone down if they aren't carrying a gun? What say the other posters?

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Is there a need for a policy that asks for discretion RE: the number of shots you use to put someone down if they aren't carrying a gun? What say the other posters?

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Basically, the policy is that you shoot until the threat is neutralized. Now, in theory, you would think that is simple. But in the heat of the moment, it's anything but. Adrenaline is pumping. It's impossible to shoot, stop, determine if you hit them and where, process, shoot again if needed, etc.

If you notice, he squeezed off multiple shots, and if measured, I would bet it was no more than a second or two. His brain and training is telling him to shoot center mass until the threat is neutralized. That takes at a minimum a few seconds for your brain to process from when you start shooting. That's why you normally see multiple shots, when someone is being rushed and not responding to verbal commands.

What most people don't understand is that they are trained to only draw their gun when they are prepared to shoot and kill. They can't aim for smaller targets and limbs to neutralize. They've already decided there is a life threatening situation and their gun is being used to stop it, at all costs.

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I don't know anyone that would wrestle a crazy bitch wielding a meat cleaver

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Would be more difficult for only one to disarm a psycho like that without exposing himself to being maimed.

In England a physically fit man wielding a machete was taken down by a cadre of officers without firing a shot.

Not saying the two are related, b/c this officer didn't have the luxury to wait for backup, but the point remains that it is possible to not always use deadly force with a threat, though this one was justified according to the book.

England PD subdues machete wielding maniac

Yeah that was a justified shooting.

From the link in the OP, the cop looks like Shane Vendrell from The Shield (Walton Goggins).

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Basically, the policy is that you shoot until the threat is neutralized.

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Right, but the hard part is deciding when that is. The threat that woman posed was effectively over after she took one or two shots, but many more rounds followed.

I'm not suggesting we lynch the policeman or charge him with wrongdoing. But I think better police training would have given him an anticipation of continuing to evaluate when the threat was reasonably reduced to the point that he should stop shooting.

As I mentioned above, I think a person armed with a gun may have put themselves in the position of being shot until motionless... but doubt that policeman would have started shooting if he came upon a woman stumbling to her knees with a knife - he just couldn't stop himself from continuing to shoot her once she was lost momentum and was no longer a reasonable threat.

They train to shoot till the threat is down. The thinking is, if your in a deadly enough situation that you need a gun, that threat needs to be stopped. I was told once one of the things internal affairs redflags as suspicious is if someone only fires one bullet. If you only fire one bullet, your lprobably not in lethal threat.

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I'm asking the reader to consider if that training is wrongheaded.

At a minimum it creates PR problems and perceptions of trigger happy cops when a person shot by police has dozens of bullet wounds and many more rounds fired that missed the intended mark (hopefully doing no damage to other police or bystanders).

It seems to me the obvious question to ask is always what amount of force is reasonable. I believe shooting a person with a knife (who is advancing and not responding to the presence of police) is reasonable. But I doubt common sense tells you shooting a large number of bullets makes sense when the intended target is not physically powerful and not carrying a gun.

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I'm certainly not a police apologist. But all this is just silly. If someone is armed with a deadly weapon and is advancing towards you, you kill them.

Not to mention, in the heat of the moment with adrenaline pumping and scared shitless, the last thing you are going to do is stop and say oh 2 is enough. I wouldn't want to be brutal to the crazy bitch that was trying to kill me.

Get real.

I understand what you're saying. The amount of time it takes a suspect to stagger and fall, multiple rounds could be fired from an officer. When one or two would do, you end up with 6+ being fired. Not to mention if muktiple officers are present and confronting the threat.

You can't resonably say that if given time, one officer should designate themselves as shooter and others as secondary if the first either a) misses b) runs out of ammo. I really don't know of a solution that would fix this as a PR issue.

The amount of rounds fired can be brought back to training. On the current POST course we shoot, 42 out of 60 rounds are fired in 6 round stages. Several close quarter stages are 2 rounds center mass one to head. Do this enough and it can be argued that you are creating muscle memory that in a high stress situation an officer will revert back to the training and automatically fire off several rounds when one would have done the job. A perfect example of going back to your training in high stress situations is the Texas Trooper that was shot at point blank range. Traggic stop turns into a shoutout. The trooper was in the process of reloading when the suspect walked up and shot him in the head. He had two rounds in his revolver and could have shot the suspect but he never trained that way. His training was always to fully load the cylinder.

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I think the amount of bullets used says a lot about how the officer really felt by the situation

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I think it says a lot about the amount of panic the officer felt. Panic is a normal human emotion but it isn't helpful.

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North Carolina

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That bastion of non-deep south intellect. Well done. Cow e Mar EE anyone?