If you put six LEOs around a car in a high-risk situation (i.e. felony suspect, sleeping woman with gun in her lap, etc.) and something happens where one officer fires his weapon things become very fuzzy.
In some cases, only the one officer fires because no one else sees the danger or is in a position to shoot. In other cases, one officer "breaks protocol" by firing his weapon. The other officers, thinking "he must have a reason" also discharge their weapons. I seem to recall a video that illustrated it where one of two LEOs on a car stop spotted a gun in the console. The driver-side officer fired first. The passenger side officer had just arrived behind the door when the first shot was fired. He too fired, twice. Then, you see an officer near the trunk draw and fire twice through the rear window. Almost immediately two more officers (a backup unit?) appear on camera, firing three to five shots each through the rear window. Result? Suspect shot in the hand by the first officer, all others missed.
Back in the 70's, our training regime said that you didn't fire your weapon unless you
knew a threat existed. Shooting because your partner fired was not acceptable if you did not see the weapon or the threat posed to someone.
Certainly if you're arresting someone with 3 other officers and the suspect makes a "furtive movement towards his waistband" and/or "pulls an obect from his pocket or waistband" that appears to be a weapon, I would expect 8-12 rounds fired, maybe more.
As to training...
This kind of crap should never happen given the fact that police are supposed to highly trained to be calm under pressure and shoot well.
You should contact some of the LEOs here or at your local agencies and inquire about how many hours of
formal training they get and how difficult the course of fire is. You'll be surprised at how little firearms training goes on in some agencies. The emphasis is on the legal aspects, investigation and report writing more than shooting or hand-to-hand techniques.
Department budgets don't include the large investment in sending officers to a Gunsite or Thunder Ranch type training program. And no matter how many range sessions you have with paper targets, when someone is trying to kill you or your partner, fear is a big factor.
Those of us who CCW have been taught to shoot to stop the threat. This needs to be police policy as well.
Which is exactly why you have a well-perforated suspect when several officers are involved. They
all shoot until the threat ceases.
In some of the shooting cases, I'm more concerned with what appears to be a lack of common sense in some LEO circles. For instance, a local PD started a practice of serving felony warrants, endorsed for night service, between 4:30am and 6am. The "logic" was that suspects would be sleeping and the element of surprise was on their side.
Unfortunately, if you hit the wrong house a homeowner will react in
lawful self defense because upon waking all s/he will be hearing is loud shouting and/or doors being kicked in. But investigations don't ever seem to take into account that people don't instantly recognize multiple, uncoordinated shouts of "police", don't instantly understand the words "warrant service" or recognize the word "police" partially covered up on the black-masked man holdling an MP-5. Which is exactly what happened and they have since ceased these kinds of raids.
Likewise, the lack of common sense displayed with the woman sleeping with a gun in her lap in the back of her car. I'd have backed off and lit the car up with spotlights and turned on the red/blue overheads. If she slept through a couple of siren blasts and PA instructions, rapping a baton on the back corner of the car to wake her would have been next. And I would expect a somewhat startled and confused reaction for the first 30 seconds or so.
