Another Knife vs Gun: Look at how Close the Assailant was allowed to Get...

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peacefulgary said:
Consider this...
You're a cop.
Some nut is making a scene outside in your front yard.
You grab your handgun and open the door and step out on your front porch.
The guy has a knife and slowly starts walking toward you.
Do you tell him to drop the knife...and if he doesn't, you start shooting?
Or do you go back inside and lock the door and call for backup?
It's a "no brainer".
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But you didn't suggest getting back in the cruiser and calling for backup. You suggested getting back in the cruiser and running the guy over.

You don't want to get stabbed or cut, and you don't want to kill someone (even if that someone is mentally ill or on drugs or both), and you don't want to risk missing the target and shoot up the neighborhood, and a direct hand to hand confrontation can easily be avoided.

I'm not some anti-cop antifa punk.
I'm an Army vet and I support the police.
But sometimes the tactics the police use are just stupid.
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So rather than shoot the guy, your suggestion was to run him over with a 4,500 pound SUV? That's your notion of "less lethal" than shooting?

If you are really former military, you may have encountered the term "rules of engagement." I very much doubt that any police department teaches "run 'em over" as the preferred response to knife wielding perps.


peacefulgary said:
And she would not have been "stuck" in her seat...she could have exited by the passenger side door.
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You have obviously never looked inside a Ford Explorer equipped as a police cruiser. It's not a 1950 Chevy pickup with a nice, wide, open bench seat to slide across.
 
So rather than shoot the guy, your suggestion was to run him over with a 4,500 pound SUV? That's your notion of "less lethal" than shooting?
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NO. I never said I thought she should use less than lethal tactics.
I think that her best tactic of stopping the suspect AND not endangering innocent bystanders would have been using the cruiser.

I very much doubt that any police department teaches "run 'em over" as the preferred response to knife wielding perps.
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You just made my point for me...

The tactics being taught to the police are not always best.
We don't teach cops to "run 'em over" even if running them over is the best tactic.

We also don't teach cops to hide in the woods and set up an ambush and kill the suspects in a hail of machine gun fire either...but that's exactly what the cops did with Bonnie and Clyde.
It was smart and it worked!

The tactics being taught to police today are, by and large, not working as intended.
 
peacefulgary said:
I think that her best tactic of stopping the suspect AND not endangering innocent bystanders would have been using the cruiser
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Where are these bystanders you speak of...?
How did she endanger them...?

The tactics being taught to police today are, by and large, not working as intended.
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Specify a couple of these tactics you speak of...
Provide a few examples of how they “did not work as intended”...
Then detail for us your foolproof methods...
 
There have been quite a few times vehicles were used by Police as an alternative to firearms. Deadly force must be justified and most of those were against subjects armed with firearms, but i can see a vehicle used against a knife wielding assailant.

Now, TASERS, Beanbags, 40mike foam batons (with lethal cover) are most always a better option, but you gotta use whats at hand to protect any bystanders. If you are all alone (empty streets), i think it would be an uphill battle to claim any imminent threat to bystanders.
 
Some people have mentioned police using cars for PIT maneuvers or running over fleeing suspects. I’d like to point out that this is different than what is being proposed here. What is being proposed here is having a suspect at gunpoint, abandoning that position, getting back into a car, and then running over that suspect. To me this is notably different than already being in a car and using the resources at hand.


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TunnelRat said:
Some people have mentioned police using cars for PIT maneuvers or running over fleeing suspects. I’d like to point out that this is different than what is being proposed here. What is being proposed here is having a suspect at gunpoint, abandoning that position, getting back into a car, and then running over that suspect. To me this is notably different than already being in a car and using the resources at hand.
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I have seen video of two incidents in which police used a cruiser to ram a perp. In both cases, the perps were armed with firearms and were in a position to fire on the officer(s).

In the incident that is the subject of this discussion, the perp was armed with an edged weapon (some say knife, to me it looked like a pair of large scissors) and a screwdriver -- not a long-distance weapon.

I respectfully submit that there is a difference.
 
Lots of desperate saves being attempted here!

It's fairly obvious that it can be a good idea to take advantage of a vehicle's safety and power in some confrontations. When someone is approaching you from a good distance with things like scissors, getting in the car may well be the smart move. It's really, really hard to break into a moving car with scissors.

This guy was peppered with rounds, and the cop, who was saved by pure luck, still got battered and could easily have died. The problem: the weight of the projectiles. A 4000-pound projectile has true stopping power.

If you disagree, POST SOURCES!

Just kidding. "Post sources" is Internet code for, "I'm tapping out."
 
peacefulgary said:
Bad tactics in my opinion.
She was responding to a knife attack, so she knew the suspect was armed with at least one knife.
She found her suspect.
He stopped.
She stopped.
She got out of her cruiser.
He got out of his car with a weapon in his hand.
She tells him to drop the weapon.
And the rest is history.

Not to be a Monday morning QB, but a better tactic would have been this:
He stops.
She stops.
She gets out of her cruiser.
He gets out of his car with a weapon in his hand.
She quickly gets back in her cruiser and hits the gas and runs over the idiot.

Sometimes, a firearm is not the best tool for the job.
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As she knew that the perp had just stabbed someone, I think she should’ve exited her vehicle with her shotgun or patrol rifle if that’s what she had. I’d bet that she wouldn’t have had to shoot him as many times with a long gun as with her pistol. Make no mistake, this guy needed shooting. Regardless, she handled the malfunction perfectly and got the job done in the end.
 
Your opinion is irrelevant.
As a 4+ decade LEO I can also say your opinion is absud.
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My opinion is just as relevant as your opinion.
Just because you've been a LEO for 4+ decades does NOT mean you're right or even that you know what the heck you're talking about.
What you're saying is "I'm a cop, and have been a cop for a very long time, and nobody who isn't a cop can tell me anything about tactics".
This ^^^ mentality is the product of stupid training.
 
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Where are these bystanders you speak of...?
How did she endanger them...?
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Did you even watch the video???
She was on a street with houses on both sides!
You might not know this, but people tend to live and reside in houses.
One of her misses could have entered a home window and killed someone just watching TV.
 
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