NYC cops kill teen holding hairbrush, firing 20 shots...

ZeSpectre is right, and as a result we get drones who shoot someone with a brush 20 times. This man was pretty damn dumb to do what he did, especially in New York City. He is lucky that they didnt rape his butt with a broomstick before shooting him. That said, I think most police are pretty good. Occassionally crap like this will happen.
 
Time for a SERIOUS Reality Check.

If you only put people on the force who took it as "more than a job" and who were willing, and even eager, to make a "selfless sacrifice" you'd....
A) have a pretty damn small force,
B) comprised mostly of zelots,
C) that decreased in size pretty fast due to attrition,
D) and was pretty poorly trained due to the turnover/mortality rate.

Like I said, some of you folks have some really weird ideas about public service jobs and the people who do them.
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Note that I didn't say they had to be eager to make a selfless sacrifice. Just willing. I don't see why the police can't manage to find recruits that fit the bill...the Army manages it, and that's a tougher gig than police work. Last I checked the police aren't asked to go die after not having seen their family for two of the last three years.

But I guess when you need 40,000 cops for one city you have to dig a little deeper into the labor pool.

Whatever, I guess the combat veteran doesn't know anything about public service jobs. I just expect more consideration for public safety and sacrifice out of a police officer than a retail cashier...guess I need a reality check.

All of this is tangential anyway, since I'm not really willing to say whether I think this shooting was even justified or not yet.

That said, I think most police are pretty good. Occassionally crap like this will happen.
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Pretty much how I feel. As to why we hear so much about it from NYC...well, with 40,000 cops (more than, I'd imagine, many states) part of it will just be raw numbers. And in a city of 10 million, crazy things are bound to happen more often [EDIT: even per capita] than in Mayberry.
 
I guess you could say that the whole incident is a result of civilian disarmament, as they were then forced to call the cops who then have only 2nd hand information of the situation and arrive at the scene having been already soured by their previous dealings with human sewage. If things can be taken care of at the scene at the time rather than having things prolonged then the outcome could have been better.
 
City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said today that the shooting death of an unarmed 18-year-old Brooklyn man by five police officers last night fell within departmental guidelines because the man pointed an object at the officers and pretended it was a gun.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/nyregion/14shootingcnd.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Mental issues were at play here. No drugs. This what happens when you send cops to deal with mental health issues.
 
Looks like the cops acted within Dept guidelines. NYPD policy is more strict than NYS law. It turns out that this kid did spend some time in the Psych Tank. He also had an arrest a few yrs ago for 'robbery with a weapon' which he did time for.

Thats just my opinion. Maybe the DA will see differently. In the end, a Grand Jury will have to make the decision.
 
The shame in all this is that if a regular citizen had done exactly what the police had done, he would be charged with murder most likely.
 
I thought the goal was to shoot to stop the threat, not shoot until the body/corpse stops moving. Hell, I'll give 'em 1 or 2 shots a piece (5-10 shots total), but 20 shots??? You think the DA wouldn't be asking YOU questions if you continued to pump shot after shot into a body??? I guarantee they'd be looking at the trajectories of the bullets to see if you took any shots while the guy was laying on the ground....
 
I thought the goal was to shoot to stop the threat, not shoot until the body/corpse stops moving. Hell, I'll give 'em 1 or 2 shots a piece (5-10 shots total), but 20 shots??? You think the DA wouldn't be asking YOU questions if you continued to pump shot after shot into a body??? I guarantee they'd be looking at the trajectories of the bullets to see if you took any shots while the guy was laying on the ground....
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According to the linked NY Times article, it appears that one officer may have fired 10 of those shots.
 
Need more info. I do wonder how many hits out of 20 shots.
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According to the press conference on CNN earlier there were 8 hits. Witness and officer reports quoted during the conference were consistent and indicated the individual shot had a knife earlier in the altercation and repeatedly claimed to have a gun and had his hand hidden under his sweatshirt with an object in his hand. When he charged the officers and drew the object, later found to be a hairbrush is when the shots were fired.

Overall from what I saw on CNN seems like a good shoot and I can't say I'd have done anything differently if someone charged me with an object hidden and then drew it pointing it at me. Could have been the knife he had earlier for all they knew or it could have been the gun he claimed to have. In a situation like that it's either react or risk being the one picked up by the coroner yourself.

The one thing I do wonder about is the 12 rounds that went where? According to the press conference there were 20 rounds fired and 8 hits. I know stress can render the best target marksmen incapable of accurate fire, but that's only a 40% overall hit rate.
 
I thought the goal was to shoot to stop the threat, not shoot until the body/corpse stops moving. Hell, I'll give 'em 1 or 2 shots a piece (5-10 shots total), but 20 shots??? You think the DA wouldn't be asking YOU questions if you continued to pump shot after shot into a body??? I guarantee they'd be looking at the trajectories of the bullets to see if you took any shots while the guy was laying on the ground....
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You have any evidence or proof that the officers continued to pump rounds into the body after it was down, or did you simply not think through the likely timing of the event?

They apparently did shoot to stop the threat. Contrary to your perceptions, the officers do not operate with a single mind. 4 shots apiece is not unreasonable and was likely carried out in less that 1-1.5 seconds.

All of the officers were shooting at a thread and are trained to continue firing until the threat is stopped. Just because other officers are firing at the same time does not change the engagement in regard to shooting to stop the threat.

Completely unloading a gun into an attacker is not an uncommon thing to happen. It happens with cops sometimes and with civilians sometimes. People can be struck many times before their threat progress stops and they completely succumb. Until that time, they are considered a threat.
 
and cops plan on going home at the end of their shift. Therefore they will follow the procedure that gives them the highest likelyhood of doing so.
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Wouldn't the procuedure that gives them the highest likelihood of surviving all threats be to immediately kill everyone with whom they come in contact? Or did you mis-speak on the "rule" that LEOs can or should follow?
 
Anyone else here old enough to remember....

When the police had to be fired on before they were allowed to return fire?

Or later, when the big risk officers faced was the time it took to determine the actual threat before they were able to fire?

We've come a long way, but has it been for the better?
 
Wouldn't the procuedure that gives them the highest likelihood of surviving all threats be to immediately kill everyone with whom they come in contact? Or did you mis-speak on the "rule" that LEOs can or should follow?
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Or did you just decide to extend to absurdity?
Killing everyone in sight wouldn't allow one to go home at the end of the shift and certainly wouldn't allow one to continue life outside work.
Think before you type.
 
When the police had to be fired on before they were allowed to return fire?

Or later, when the big risk officers faced was the time it took to determine the actual threat
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Don't ever remember number 1 - actually just the opposite according to old school cops I had as teachers, squeezing off a few rounds as would be burglars ran off from the scene...

Somone tells me he has a gun concealed under his shirt and then charges me and draws an object - I would tend to believe him...I would determine that is "actual threat" enough for me. I have 2 kids who might miss me if I thought otherwise. These days it seems just putting on the uniform can be a big risk (I don't anymore).

This one sounds like a good shoot.
 
Anyone else here old enough to remember....

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When the police had to be fired on before they were allowed to return fire?

Or later, when the big risk officers faced was the time it took to determine the actual threat before they were able to fire?

We've come a long way, but has it been for the better?
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Yes. I also remember when officers were being killed by people with guns that they could not fire on because the person had not already fired and I recall officers being killed by guns officers could not ascertain were guns because the perp had yet to fire.

If a person says he has a gun and holds something that could be a gun and manipulates it in a manner like it was a gun, and makes aggressive acts with said item, do you think it is prudent for officers to wait to be shot to determine if it is actually a gun or not?

The strategy of not firing until fired on didn't work very well with the police. It didn't work well in Vietnam. It did not work well in Somalia. It didn't work well in Iraq. Do you see a pattern?
 
The strategy of not firing until fired on didn't work very well with the police. It didn't work well in Vietnam. It did not work well in Somalia. It didn't work well in Iraq. Do you see a pattern?
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Yes. I see you're equating what are supposed to be peace officers in a peaceful country with soldiers fighting in a warzone. And that scares me.

If the goal of police has become self-preservation, tell me again why I should call them if there's a problem?
 
Mental issues were at play here. No drugs. This what happens when you send cops to deal with mental health issues.
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I don't believe they were sent to deal with "mental health issues". According to the 911 call, they were responding to a "family dispute with a gun".

We weren't there. I know what my reaction would be if I was responding to a gun situation and the BG told me he had a gun and then advanced on me. Unless you have x-ray vision, a hairbrush under a shirt looks just like a gun.

We don't need to insist the police allow the BG to get the first shot. Are those that suggest that willing to do the same if someone tries to carjack you, home invasion, etc.?
 
This one sounds like a good shoot.
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Actually, I'd say the decision to use deadly force in this case seems like it was justified. I'm not willing to call it unjustified, so at worst it sits in the nice gray area where I give the benefit of the doubt.

My main concern here is how that use of deadly force was executed. I'll have to poke around a little more later, but like I said the initial report suggested that 10 out of 20 rounds were fired by one officer. I'll exaggerate a bit, but that's the kind of response I expect from a frightened grandmother, not a trained professional. With 12 of 20 rounds going God-knows-where, I'd say there are legitimate safety concerns that make the "spray and pray"* method of putting the bad guy down undesirable.

* - Also an exaggeration.
 
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