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OK, last warning. Stop with jabs, both of you.

OK folks, quit taking jabs at others and making personal attacks or the thread will be locked.

I am 100% right all of the time. No way would I ever vote for the left.

And, we are way off topic, need to get back on.

Excaliber wrote:Well, I see why no one has been able to point me to the source of the assertion that 11% of police shootings involve an innocent victim while only 3% of citizen shootings do the same. I had to look high and low to find it.

Here's where it apparently comes from:

It is cited in Gun Facts 6.0 . The "fact" appears on page 28 where it says:

"Fact: 11% of police shootings kill an innocent person - about 2% of civilian shootings kill an innocent person."

The footnote references a paper titled Shall Issue: The New Wave of Concealed Handgun Permit Laws by Clayton Cramer and David Kopel. That paper was published in 1994. On page 41 it says:

Another study examined newspaper reports of gun incidents in Missouri, involving police or civilians. In this study, civilians were successful in wounding, driving off, capturing criminals 83% of the time, compared with a 68% success rate for the police. Civilians intervening in crime were slightly less likely to be wounded than were police. Only 2% of shootings by civilians, but 11% of shootings by police, involved an innocent person mistakenly thought to be a criminal.

The short version is that this statistic, which would be truly startling if it were a national figure and true today, actually came from a single study in a single state at least 18 years ago. It was never true nationally, and a lot of things have changed in the 18 intervening years.

This is a good illustration of why it is important to provide source references when we cite statistics in our posts. It lets others evaluate where the data comes from and determine if it is of any use or not. Posting statistics without sources so has a high potential for misleading others, which I'm sure no one on this Forum would deliberately do.

What is even more enlightening is that Missouri didn't even have a concealed handgun license until 2005.

I really question the data for that study to begin with as I had lived in that state for the previous 34 years to 1994, was a LEO for four of those, and only once heard of someone in my home town or the other one I lived in for 12 years, stopping a robbery in progress by using a gun. And if you add in the fact that most civilians would be dealing with home break-in's, then the chances that they stopped a burglar with a gun would pretty well guarantee they were shooting the right person.

Dragonfighter wrote: Kinda dating yourself there, it's MDC now not MDT but I rmemebr when there was neither

Well, in MY day, we were such a small department had to wait for the Chief to finish his soup for 2 lunches and then hope the Mayor would give us budget enough for a really long string to tie the cans together.

Seriously, we had a giant Motorola radio in cars (control head under dash and main unit mounted in the trunk) and a handheld radio the size and weight of a large brick. The only data terminal you had at all was for NCIC and MULES (Missouri's version of TLETS) at the dispatcher's desk in the station.

The issue I have seen in the DFW area when I have called 911 is the 911 operators are usually not the dispatchers and may not be as quick on things as a dispatcher is.

I had to call 911 the other night on a suspected DWI that I had gotten behind on my way home from Ft. Worth. When the operator answered I gave her our location and direction of travel, a description of the vehicle, and then gave her the license number phonetically (using the police department adapted phonetic version) and she said 'Uh, slow down, you are going to fast.' I was purposefully speaking slowly and clearly to make sure she had time to collect the info. After the third reading of the license, she finally said 'OK, got it. Let me transfer you to the agency that has jurisdiction over where you are. I stated, no, I am in your jurisdiction and gave her the location again. She still insisted on transferring me to the other agency. When I got them, they said "That's the under the department that just transfered you'. I told them I tried to tell them that, but they 911 operator wouldn't listen. They transfered me back and I got a different operator. That operator was a little better, but still wasn't sure about who had control of the road I was on (it does kinda split cities.)

In the end, they had no one within response range that was open. I think the person realized they were being followed and that may have got them focused a little as they started driving somewhat better (still not perfect), but were at least staying in there lane. They turned off into a neighborhood, so I didn't follow them and hoped they were close to their destination.

Bottom line, the 911 operators may not be as good at sizing up the caller info and what they pass to the dispatcher or even out to an officer via their MDT may be incorrect or misleading in some cases.

OK folks, the thread is starting to heat up. Keep the dicussions civil, no LEO bashing and we will be good. Otherwise, the thread will be locked.

philip964 wrote:

jimlongley wrote:

Keith B wrote:Very sad situation. My sympathy goes out to your friend. Not able to see exactly where the dog was in relation to the officer, but that shot definitely was taken awfully quickly. My gut says he overreacted big time to the dog coming to investigate and then tried to cover it with his blaming your friend for not getting his dog, when in reality your friend had not even had time to process what was going on and react himself. This is one time when the dash cam audio will be an asset for your friend to prove liability on the city.

In the one video, at second 45, the officer says "Hey Wh??? SHOW ME YOUR HANDS, SHOW ME YOUR HANDS, GET YOUR DOG" and then BANG! at second 49, and then shortly thereafter he can be heard whining "Why didn't you get your dog?" as if he had actually given the owner time to react to the first "SHOW ME YOUR HANDS" much less to anything else.

So if he didn't show his hands and went for his dog, would he have been shot for failing to follow instructions.

We can all speculate what might or might not have happened. No one knows what was going through the LEO's head when he shot the dog. Until the investigation is complete, then we will not know what he had to say. We need to give it time to settle.

grettlerj wrote:This really bothers me. I have two 2 dogs and they are part of my family. That dog could not have really hurt him. It probably weighted ~35 lbs. He could have done something other than shoot the dog.

A 35 lb dog CAN severely injure you. Dog bites even from 15-20 lb dogs can be a serious. In this case, I do believe the officer reacted poorly as he seemed way too fast on the trigger. I think it was a over reaction to being startled by the dog and since he already had the gun in his hand he used the first tool he had available, which sadly lead to this dog losing his life for doing what dogs do, they bark.

There are also many people who have cynophobia (a fear of dogs) and react in a very poor manner if a dog barks or even just have to be close to a dog. My wife had a very bad experience this with a DPS Sgt. at a license office a few years ago when we were raising a service dog, and I really believe the woman was extremely afraid of a very docile animal that was not acting even the least bit aggressive. To not hijack this thread, here is a post about that viewtopic.php?f=83&t=25568&p=325650" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Very sad situation. My sympathy goes out to your friend. Not able to see exactly where the dog was in relation to the officer, but that shot definitely was taken awfully quickly. My gut says he overreacted big time to the dog coming to investigate and then tried to cover it with his blaming your friend for not getting his dog, when in reality your friend had not even had time to process what was going on and react himself. This is one time when the dash cam audio will be an asset for your friend to prove liability on the city.