Don't try This at Home

remember that the daily mail is a troll site. They print a lot of nonsense, a lot of things that are rather antagonistic. It's a tabloid. Lord knows what happened, taking this just as a video from a bodycam.

I don't like it, the whole thing seems like a bad idea. I don't know what department policy is, but a lot of departments would have backed the chase off without the officer shooting back. Helicopters and spike strips work really well. I don't know if there were any other injuries or damages, I don't know how they could have gotten through that without anyone else getting hurt.

He fumbled his reload? Oh, for the love of god, he had been driving in a running gunfight for at least four minutes. He pulled his magazine out and forgot which way it was facing. he still got his reload in quicker than I could have, probably.

I want that guy on my side when I need a cowboy. The event bothers me, a bit, but did he break policy? he stopped the car, but endangered people. Not just by shooting or driving, but from the very outset when he went into high speed pursuit. Maybe, I don't know, maybe he didn't have any backup on the way yet? the thing had just happened and he couldn't let the slimeball get away? You can't leave it up to the backup to follow and trap him if you don't have any backup on hand yet.
 
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briandg,

I don't think you watched video all the way through to see the "fumble" reload. Otherwise you might see it was more than a fumble. In the stress of the moment, it looks like he didn't have a lowest common denominator to fall back on. That's a mistake that occurred in the months and years leading up to the event, not the day of.

I was very careful to ensure my criticism was not directed at his decisions, but his execution thereof. Save the feigned exasperation.

Nathan said:
Go get a used windshield, take it to the range, set it at an angle, and shoot targets through it. If you hit something, let us know.

Shooting through a front window shows a lack of training and threatens bystanders.
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I hit the target, Nathan. From a moving vehicle, no less.

Your post shows a lack of knowledge and training.
 
I did see the reload. He was in his car, and his magazine pouch would have been at his waist. had to set the pistol into the left hand and draw the magazine with his right, then handle everything with the wrong hands. He was seated and doing it with a car door cramping his movements. He had to do all of that without having had extensive training in doing reloads while trapped in a car, I assume. I actually tried to do that earlier, sitting in my chair with empty gun and magazine. Would have really sucked to have to do it after a long chase with bullets hitting my car.






Here's a video of the press conference, listing the department policies.

https://fox13now.com/2018/07/16/dra...suit-officer-shooting-through-car-windshield/
 
Tail Gator said:
I wondered, like the OP, whether that was an option brought up in training. I haven't seen it before, but in this extreme situation I can see its justification. The only other way to use the firearm would have been one-handed (weak hand, if the LEO is in the right-handed majority) un-aimed fire. Since the person being pursued was clearly dangerous, the only other option would have been to continue pursuit without a clear end point, which would have had its own risks. This might be one of those times when we need to accept a positive outcome for what it is, and realize that good and safe alternatives were not readily available.
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The officer appeared to draw from his right and his shooting grip once he exited the vehicle was with his right hand. I believe you are safe to assume left handed shooting with his hand out the window would have been with his non-dominant hand.
 
On a totally unrelated note, I wonder how much it would cost to add a foot activated switch for the radio? I was more concerned with the officer's one handed driving at a right of speed than his two-handed shooting through the windshield.
 
As a note on his reload, one comment I read elsewhere pointed out how him switching the pistol to his left hand like he did seems a perfect example of doing a revolver reload. When I watched it with that in mind, it seemed to fit, and might be in part why he fumbled with the magazine. It made me wonder if the officer originally learned on revolvers or was taught by someone that had and he either defaulted to or did what is really a revolver reload with a semiauto.

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TunnelRat said:
As a note on his reload, one comment I read elsewhere pointed out how him switching the pistol to his left hand like he did seems a perfect example of doing a revolver reload. When I watched it with that in mind, it seemed to fit, and might be in part why he fumbled with the magazine. It made me wonder if the officer originally learned on revolvers or was taught by someone that had and he either defaulted to or did what is really a revolver reload with a semiauto.
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I would chalk up the reload fumble to adrenaline. A high speed chase is bad enough, then you add bad guys shooting at you.

I think something we should remember is that being a police officer does not automatically make one a gun enthusiast. It is a tool that they have to carry and qualification is usually just once a year. I'm not sure if there are any departments that mandate a specific amount of practice. For officers who aren't gun enthusiasts, practice is probably a range session or two right before they have to re-qualify. This obviously does not apply to SWAT/SRT.
 
I read elsewhere pointed out how him switching the pistol to his left hand like he did seems a perfect example of doing a revolver reload.
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Guys, he switched the pistol to his left hand as his car came to a stop. His right hand was putting the car in park. Then he fumbled thru the reload left handed like he had never practiced that before.

As for the “monday morning quarterbacking”. That is a poor description of what is going on. Amatures talk about what went right...pros discuss what went WRONG and attempt to learn for those mistakes.

When i was working we debriefed all the time. If you screwed something up...own it and learn
 
Just based on this four minutes of bodycam, I can't really see anything that the guy did badly wrong. He seemed to keep his head, handled the pursuit reasonably well, and when the roads cleared, he took extreme measures to get them shut down before they reached another populated area. Traffic was quite thin when he started shooting.

Something that I'm going to seriously stand by was that he focused on stopping the passenger who restarted the car, and was going to take off again. I am sure that it's a hard call about whether he should have stopped the car or went off after the runner, but he did see that the door was locked and he ran. Guy couldn't have easily gotten into the school.

I have a healthy respect for what it takes to run a police car. It's not just driving. I would prefer to see the walkie capable of use by a steering wheel button control.

If he had another magazine, he should have reloaded after taking out the car, but he had a lot going on right then. He was through shooting and moved on to other issues that covered the whole area and he failed to realize that he was suddenly very short on ammunition. Five rounds left, was it?
 
As for the “monday morning quarterbacking”. That is a poor description of what is going on. Amatures talk about what went right...pros discuss what went WRONG and attempt to learn for those mistakes.
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That's not what I see most of the time. It usually seems to be people going over minutia and criticizing, rather than finding real problems and offering solutions or learning opportunities.
 
stephen426 said:
I would chalk up the reload fumble to adrenaline. A high speed chase is bad enough, then you add bad guys shooting at you.

I think something we should remember is that being a police officer does not automatically make one a gun enthusiast. It is a tool that they have to carry and qualification is usually just once a year. I'm not sure if there are any departments that mandate a specific amount of practice. For officers who aren't gun enthusiasts, practice is probably a range session or two right before they have to re-qualify. This obviously does not apply to SWAT/SRT.
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I think Sharkbite hit the nail on the head with the comment about putting the car in park.

As far as training, in my experience the "average" officer varies a lot in skill. I've seen patrol guys that really impress, and others not so much. I would agree that to get to people with the skill level many people seem to expect from police you almost always have to get to SWAT or SRT guys. Those are the guys really putting in the trigger time.

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briandg said:
That's not what I see most of the time. It usually seems to be people going over minutia and criticizing, rather than finding real problems and offering solutions or learning opportunities.
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Just because it's what you see most of the time doesn't mean it's what is happening here or has to be happening here.

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The point I tried to make, and is so often ignored by comments in discussions like this, is that there is almost never a risk-free alternative in an armed confrontation. The very best that we can do is estimate what might be the course with the lowest risk of a bad outcome and the highest probability of a good outcome.

Another principle is that the acceptance of risk of collateral casualties goes up with the risk of not acting. It is the same idea as accepting more side effects in cancer drugs than in a cold remedy - if the disease is bad enough, or the bad actor is acting badly enough, you start to more accepting of side effects or the risk of unintended casualties.
 
I don't know exactly how far the run was, but the video appeared to show that it was less than four minutes. He picked up on the guy and he started to run, what was it, thirty seconds before the first volley? The guy went into oncoming traffic a little bit after that, ran a light, went into oncoming once again and turned across it, whereon the cop followed.

the BG was at that time in a very low traffic spot, it appeared, there was a brick monolith to the side, I didn't see any indication that he was in a high risk area, as if he was in a really busy shopping area with traffic piled everywhere and passers-by on foot.

Should he have notified dispatch that he was about to fire on the driver?

It was a reasonably safe area to do so. I don't know exactly what the upcoming traffic situation was. Here's a link to the area of the shooting.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/E...51df6d55ffcdd!8m2!3d36.1736509!4d-115.1058123

If I'm understanding this correctly, and I'm not certain of my map skills, he was right on his way into a downtown casino district and the interstate. Might have given him a sense of urgency?
 
Nathan, there is a significant amount of LEO firearms training now-a-days about shooting from with the vehicle and through the windshield. See Kyle Lamb & Richard Nance on the Guns & Ammo site, for instance. I don't know about the officer/department in this video, but officers and operators ARE being trained to shoot from inside vehicles and through the windshield.
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Well, I’m not a go fast operator, but I did see Kyle Lamb’s video. First shot missed the target. Subsequent shots through the same hole were hits....that is my point. Firing through glass creates misses. Once the hole is there, yes, use that hole. Don’t call me out because I say 5 shots through 5 holes are wasted!
 
Nathan said:
Well, I’m not a go fast operator, but I did see Kyle Lamb’s video. First shot missed the target. Subsequent shots through the same hole were hits....that is my point. Firing through glass creates misses. Once the hole is there, yes, use that hole. Don’t call me out because I say 5 shots through 5 holes are wasted!
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The point others have made is that shooting through the windshield does work. Once the glass has been compromised, subsequent rounds are not deflected as much. You mention collateral damage from the deflection, but shooting at downward sloping glass will deflect the bullet down from the point of aim. Could it then ricochet off the hood and hit someone? Maybe, but it will have lost a lot of energy already and would still continue to travel more or less in the direction fired.
 
The point others have made is that shooting through the windshield does work
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The point that is being missed is shooting at a moving vehicle is unlikely to do anything to stop the vehicle. You have to hit the DRIVER.

THAT hit was highly improbable shooting thru your windshield AT THE REAR of another vehicle with both cars moving at speed AND the risk of collateral damage was HIGH

As to mtpl rounds doing better at penetrating auto glass... that only holds true if your bullets go thru the compromised area. His shots looked to be in about a 5-8 inch group. Not thru an existing hole. Each round he fired had to make its own way thru the glass. Not a recipe for success.

When you weigh the risks, there were other options that held more chance of success and lower chances of harm to the public.
 
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stephen426 said:
...shooting at downward sloping glass will deflect the bullet down from the point of aim...
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In my experience, shooting out through a windshield will send the bullet upwards. Shooting in through a windshield from outside the vehicle will deflect down. It's counter-intuitive, but the bullet tends to leave perpendicular to the glass.
 
Unconventional said:
In my experience, shooting out through a windshield will send the bullet upwards. Shooting in through a windshield from outside the vehicle will deflect down. It's counter-intuitive, but the bullet tends to leave perpendicular to the glass.
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This was my experience in my class as well. Confused the heck out of me at the time.

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Unconventional said:
In my experience, shooting out through a windshield will send the bullet upwards. Shooting in through a windshield from outside the vehicle will deflect down. It's counter-intuitive, but the bullet tends to leave perpendicular to the glass.
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Wow... That's crazy and totally counter-intuitive! I was almost certain an object striking a angled surface would deflect along the angle, not against it. How far off did it change the point of aim?
 
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