Police Talk

[lemec]

Hello, I wanted to see how many police involved shootings there are in other countries and other states.

I know sometimes it is necessary for a police officer to fire his weapon, but have there been more incidents than needed?


I live near Nellis where this one happened, I think there was three shootings in seven days and the criminals are not always armed.



ABC KTNV 13 wrote:

Officer Involved Shooting
LAS VEGAS, NV--

For the 19th time this year, police officers in Las Vegas have opened fire on a suspect.

The shooting happened Sunday night at Sahara and Nellis as a man wanted for questioning in a domestic case stepped out of a gas station convenience store.

Police say the suspect reached for a weapon, forcing them to open fire.

All of the officers involved are now on paid administrative leave as the department investigates.

In all, metro is investigating 20 officer involved shootings- 19 of those incidents involved metro officers.



Posted: Sunday, July 09, 2006

http://www.ktnv.com/tabid/1079/xmid/2796/Default.aspx



It was at a "Circle K" convenience store and there were 5 police officers waiting for him as he was leaving the store.


your thoughts?


thanks,


-Lemec

[Miqque]

Scan the Los Angeles Times or the Daily News. The LAPD pop off people with such frequency one often has to seek the small sidebar articles. Before I moved to Colorado, there were two notable cases. One involved a solo officer yelling at a homeless woman with a shopping cart to stop. She did, and turned. He shot her nine times, causing death, saying she had a knife. What she had was a transistor radio, and he was some eighty feet away. Her family was still in litigation last I heard.

Second was in the San Fernando Valley, in the town of San Fernando. This is a low-income area, mostly working stiffs. Lots of folks drink, too - very high per-capita liquor stores. Now, two police cars with two cops apiece were after one fellow who was acting "strangely". He jumped up a fence, met the electic line, fell don to the sidewalk, got up as the cops werecovering him, and when he stood up a female cop emptied her clip into him for "threatening behavior". The three male cops did not shoot. Did I mention the man was stark bare-ass naked? And just received a major electric shock? Guess them tasers or mace sprays would have been overkill, so they just used their guns, huh?

On the other side, there are increasing incidents of "suicide by cop". One despondent lady in this very city here raised enough of a ruckus to draw the cops. They tried for hours to talk her out (and down), but she kept waving her gun at them. Finally, she began t them - fairly accurately - and they returned fire. A crowd had arrived, and I did not hear a dissenting opinion from over a dozen interviewed that the police had no choice. As I know most of the Longmont cops, I know they generally have no desire to go out and shoot citizens.

But that's not always the case. My hunch is, based solely on news reports and observation, that the bigger the city and the nastier the gun crimes the quicker on the trigger the police become.

[lemec]

that is bad.

there was one police officer that accidently fired a shot at someone already on the ground and in handcuffs, the bullet missed the guy's head by a fraction of an inch.

the officer later claimed weapon malfunction, but I don't see how that is possible, it's not going to go off unless the trigger is pulled.

[Morgan Kane]

In France, policemen kill exceptionnally but use of abusive strength, hits, injuries are frequent and impunity seems the norm. A commisison of Deontology, presided by a retired very high magistrate, has been created and his annual rapport his shoking.

http://www.cnds.fr/index_en.htm ( in english ! )

http://www.syndicat-magistrature.org/article/252.html

Not suprising is that victims are mostly poors, coloref people, strangers and so on ......

[David Mosley]

Quite a few cases in the UK of police opening fire on people in recent years. No doubt some were justified, but we've also had:

Police shoot man carrying table leg
Police shoot Brazilian engineer on Underground
Police shooting in Forest Gate

But the cause célèbre was the Stephen Waldorf shooting in 1983.

[krakenten]

One of the aims of terrorists is to provoke the authorities to exremes,thus alienating the populace. This part seems to be working.

The next part is supposed to be revolution and liberation. So far, that's working a lot less well.

People will tolerate just so much repression, then they snap. The terroists expect to be swept into power at this time.

As a veteran cop and soldier, I've seen the bosses induce paranoia in the troops-during Vietnam, our training made us think to Viet Minh were supermen and we had no chance to beat them. Of course, that made the troops very unhappy, and inclined to excessive violence. Frightened men with guns are very dangerous indeed.

The Viets endured, and won, partly because Americans were horrified by their own actions, and the helplessness finally realized at home.

Our 'War on Drugs' is too much like Vietnam, the effect on police officers is similar, right down to the PTSD so many of them suffer.

Since I already had it when I became a copper, PTSD was not a problem-until I retired, and it hit like an express train.

-There is too much violence in our police system-in the early days of my career, we used serious force(but not our guns)frequently. The criminals were a lot tougher then, in my latter days, more of them were sick and weak from prolonged drug abuse and a pervasive mood of resignation and despair.

The outrrageous actions of police bosses(see the case of Adrien Schoolcraft,NPR did a feature on it,and trust me, it's an everyday situation) also make officers inclined to extreme force.

If we scale back the hysteria and end the drug war, the violence may abate.