TexasCHLforum.com

MeMelYup wrote:

Right2Carry wrote:Police cars are not equipped with binoculars or some other device to help officers observe from a distance?

Maybe that should be required along with their riot guns.

Last job we purchased our own bino's, but mainly used them to watch crack houses or street vendors from cover.

None of that stuff will be issued, typically.

Bump

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I appreciate your comments, sirs. I respectfully disagree, but I can why y'all feel the way you do about it.

I think with more info many of us would find ourselves like minded on the issue, and probably somewhere in between our opposing viewpoints.

I'm going to respond, but I don't want to come across as being a jerk. I'll preface my replies with this: I am asking these questions because I feel like your opinion is very strong, and we have very little info to work with. I cannot form such a strong opinion due to the lack of information. As I said though, I fully respect your opinion and, to an extent your questioning. It keeps civil servants accountable and on their toes.

Fangs wrote:I believe it came down to a split second "shoot/don't shoot" decision due to poor tactics/training/whatever.

Are you familiar with their training tactics? Do have first hand knowledge on how departments commonly respond to man with a gun call. Can you differentiate it from an active shooter call.

Fangs wrote:It didn't have to go there, and it never would have if the LEOs weren't there or handled the situation better.

How can you be so sure? Were you there to witness it, or are you relaying on third, fourth, or more hand information?

Fangs wrote:How long would you have to watch the guy before you saw him pulling the trigger with no resulting bang?

LEOs are generally not in the habit of watching people pull triggers with innocents around. The standard training and response to such a call would generally require action prior to subjects pulling any triggers.

Fangs wrote: It's not like there had been any shots fired, the guy wasn't actively chasing people down.

It is my opinion that this comment discounts the fact the officers had a reasonable belief that the subject had a handgun. If they reasonably believed he did, then there is no requirement to wait for him to start shooting before taking action.

Fangs wrote: I doubt it was a situation where there wasn't a corner within a couple hundred feet they could stand behind and initiate a dialog with the suspect.

Doubt as you will, but you were not there. Nor was I. Have you responded to man with a gun calls? Would you count on your ability to step from cover, during your discussion, and make a surgical shot at distance, under combat stress, if things escalated and you needed to? Perhaps the officers were holding what they had until more units arrived and they could clamp down the scene - and MAYBE the subject made that fatal furtive movement prior to everything getting setup. I say maybe because, like you, I was not there.

Fangs wrote:Some part of me just wants to believe that LEOs would generally give someone a chance before killing them based on assumptions. They have vests, they have rifles, why, oh, why would they feel a need to put themselves in a situation where it comes down to one side saying he pointed something at them, and the other side being permanently silenced.

Every self defense shooting operates on an assumption that deadly force is necessary to prevent a reasonable, imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death. Once that criterion is met, be it an LEO, armed citizen, or a member of the military, can act. The fact that responders are better armed, and protected, does not mean that they have to take incoming fire before acting.

Fangs wrote:It's also quite possible that I live in my own fantasy world where I expect LEOs to take life and death decisions seriously, for everyone involved.

I would hope that anyone in the position to make life/death decisions would take them seriously. Do you have evidence that responding officers treated this situation lightly? If not, why hint that you feel they didn't? Nobody walks away from something like this easily.

The issue here is not how the officers responded, where they stood, or what they were wearing. In my opinion it comes down to whether the officers had a reasonable belief the subject was armed. If man had in fact had a gun, the shooting would've been perfectly clean. In this situation, I personally believe the officers were fully convinced the man was armed due to the totality of the information they had at that time. They responded to an awful, stressful situation, with bad intel. They swore to protect the public so instead of hanging out hundreds of feet away, they came right to the heart of the matter, perceived an IMMEDIATE threat, and did what they had to, based on the info they had access to at time.

Is it terrible, yes. Were they ultimately wrong in what they knew, yes. Did they act reasonably based on what they had at the time....I say they did - but I qualify this opinion with the fact that I don't feel I have enough information to be sure in it.


Good discussion IMO.

baldeagle wrote:The reason I'm struggling with this one is because I believe the officers had options but chose the wrong ones.

Based on what? The article posted? I don't feel like that is near enough info to judge their actions. As you can see in my original reply, I said "no info" first.

You have mentioned a few times in this post to "put yourself in their shoes." Well, that's really easy for me...I almost shot someone in January last year that was fleeing from a home invasion robbery because they made a furtive movement. I have done shoot/no shoot training, in live fire capacity - I'm not an expert, or even good, when compared to many out there. I do have an appreciation for what it is like to balance to totality of factors when responding to call like that.

Some of the people commenting (on the newspaper's site) think that cops should line up on the chopping block just because they put a badge on...that's stupid. I'm not willing to sacrifice the well being of my family over someone's stupidity...if it comes down to me going home, or giving them another millisecond of pointing something shiny at me, I'm taking the shot. I hope you guys would too.

Pretty much no info but it reads like a clean shoot.

If a person reasonably believed the guy to be holding a gun, there is no need to enter the use of force continum down low and give verbal commands. You CAN if you have time, distance, cover, but sure don't have to.

The comments on the article are troubling, as always.