TexasCHLforum.com

Great story. Highly recommend everyone read the ENTIRE article. In addition to a wonderful story of a fellow citizen helping an officer in distress and very likely saving his life (or at least preventing further debilitating injury).

To take this a step further, I'm curious about the police officer's use of force hierarchy and whether that is a personal choice, mandated by law, or mandated by policy?

If I'm understanding basic sequence of events from article:

1. Officers grabs suspects arm
2. Suspect hits officer in face with fist
3. Officer response with Taser to suspect (no discernible effect)
4. Suspect hits officer AGAIN with fist to face
5. Officer grabs collapsable baton, hits suspect 12-15 times with it (this from the video)
6. Suspect body slams officer to ground, takes control of baton, starts hitting officer with baton
7. Officer only then decides "I'm gonna have to shoot this guy" but by that point, it's too late he can't reach his firearm (armed pinned to ground)

Questions (especially for LEOs/former LEOs on site):

* after 2 above would officer be justified to pull gun? I'm guessing not yet, Taser probably correct move for an officer
* after 4 above would officer be justifed to pull gun? At this point, with no effect from Taser, I'm thinking officer is not only justified but perhaps best course of action is to go to gun? Or am I jumping to gun too quickly in my thought process? I'm wondering why allow the final threat distance to be closed to contact distance? Just a reaction time thing? It's going to get to CQB anyway, so grab baton which is better CQB tool?

I'm thinking this article and video with its detailed sequence of events could be a great use of force training example.