Man shot to death for smoking in front of theater by Police

[irwin]

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/news/061401_nw_metreon_shooting.html

Don't they train officers to shoot at the legs if they don't want to kill the offender?

[Chinpoko_Mon]

Well, it seems like they're trained to aim for butts.. =P

What the hell was the other cop shooting at to have been able to shoot his partner in the A$$?!?!?!?!
(Almost something out of Police Academy or somethin'..)

[TheLoneGunman]

Originally posted by Passwird
Don't they train officers to shoot at the legs if they don't want to kill the offender?

Who said they didn't want to kill the offender?

Seems like they saved themselves a lot of paperwork and hassle by killing him. Perhaps they should just start calling them "death squads" like they do in Central and South America.

[Jeffbx]

Originally posted by Passwird
Don't they train officers to shoot at the legs if they don't want to kill the offender?

Nope - they shoot to kill. That's part of their training. Unfortunately, they seem to leave out the part about WHEN they should shoot to kill...

[topane]

Now, can't you see that smoking is hazardous to your health? :P

[ArkiStan]

I'm sure smoking was a major contributing factor, but another thing must have been the outrageously high admission fee to the Metreon theatres. I mean, I would think I'd be entitled to swing a knife and start smoking up if I had to pay 9 dollars to see a movie!!!

[Black Francis]

Why shouldn't they have shoot him? If you have a gun, and someone comes after you with a knife, what are you going to do? Personally, I would have done the same thing. I know several police officers, and I belive they have gotten a bad reputation because of the actions of the relatively few bad cops roaming the streets. The fact is, they put their asses on the line for us, and people don't give them the proper recognition for their service.

Anyway, I will climb off of my soapbox now.

[eSDee]

Originally posted by Black Francis
Why shouldn't they have shoot him? If you have a gun, and someone comes after you with a knife, what are you going to do? Personally, I would have done the same thing. I know several police officers, and I belive they have gotten a bad reputation because of the actions of the relatively few bad cops roaming the streets. The fact is, they put their asses on the line for us, and people don't give them the proper recognition for their service.

Anyway, I will climb off of my soapbox now.

Climb off before a cop shoots you off.

[OC]

More proof that smoking kills.

-OC

[mojo]

black francis, i was with you all the way up to the comical stuff about "relatively few" bad cops. was that from an actual survey? relatively few would be something that you hardly hear about. i don't have anything against cops personally, but it does seem that they enter the force as rookies...and they are good cops....then become jaded....and later may not be so good. and because of the honor code of cops (where they cover for each other), the badge becomes tainted a lot more than you might think.

[Black Francis]

When I said relatively few, I meant that a majority are good cops.....you here about the bad ones often because when a cop does something bad, it is big news. I am not saying that they are all good, just that people like to critacize(sp?) cops when they really don't know what it is like to have a job like that. The fact is that cops are human also, and they are going to do the wrong thing sometimes.....punish the bad ones and give the others the credit they deserve. Nobody would like to see what this country would be like without cops.

[Burzhui]

Good for them

[ShawnLee]

Look, the guy had a knife, he didn't get shot for smoking, he got shot for threatening somebody.

Besides, it sounds like people here have never shot a pistol in their lives. Believe it or not, its hard enough to hit someone when shooting. There have been incidents where cops and criminals have been in shootouts close to each other but, due to bad aim, no one has been hit. Its not worth risking that much extra time to aim for a leg. If I were the cop, and it were my safety or the safety of the victim, then the suspect would suffer the consequences of his actions.

[Mezpin]

Yep. He charged the cops with a knife. They Maced him, he still kept coming, so they blasted him.

If you CHARGE A COP WITH A KNIFE, you gotta expect to get smoked. You need to be smarter than that.

Mezpin

[TheLoneGunman]

...and if you're a pig, you'll get poked in the butt with a bullet too??

I think all suspected criminals should be executed on the spot. If you are an innocent bystander and get hit by the stray bullets, then you must not have been so innocent.

[welfareloser]

i am torn on this one...

on the one hand, when you are under "OMG i'm gonna die" stress and only have a split second to decide what to do, not everyone is going to manage to come up with the idea of shooting in a leg - you see knife, you shoot, no more thought than that.

on the other hand, it does sometimes seem that there is not quite enough emphasis placed on non-lethal restraint in cop training. shooting for the hand with the knife or for the legs was probably a better idea, since the weapon was a knife and not a gun.

but, maybe this cop had all the training in the world and still didn't have enough time to think to employ it, or maybe he WAS aiming for the foot and just missed... after all, if you can shoot your partner's butt...

[ShawnLee]

Again, it seems people don't realize how hard it is to aim with a pistol.

It isn't a video game where you have a little dot pointing at whatever you want to hit. Your chances of aiming at the person's hand is even less realistic than aiming for the person's legs. Besides, with a smaller target, there is a bigger chance of a stray bullet. You don't want a stray bulet to fly off and hit someone innocent as TheLoneGunman so eloquently put it.

You want to hit the suspect, and keep the chances of hitting anybody else down. So where do you aim? The center mass of the target~ not the legs, and certainly not something as small as the hands.