Trouble can come quickly.

I hate the oft cited 3-3-3 stat.

Even if taken at face value, it means that somebody only fired 1 shot but somebody else fired 5. Just to get to the avg of 3. Same for distance

Its just a bogus thought process. You cannot predict what your encounter will look like. If you had a cystal ball you would avoid the entire situation

You might be at mzl contact distance... You might be at 25 yards shooting to protect a loved one across a parking lot (a GOOD friend of mine almost had to do just that at a bank recently)... You might have to shoot someone holding your child.

To train for 3-3-3 just sets you up for failure in a harder situation. Train like your life and the lives of your loved ones hangs in the balance... It just might
 
A couple of things I see--in no particular order:

1. Keep your car doors locked except when they need to be open. The fact that the officer's passenger door was unlocked allowed an accomplice to access his vehicle. That turned out to be relatively harmless in this case, but could have allowed the accomplice to access a firearm or other weapon in the vehicle, or to threaten/rob/injure a passenger more easily.

2. Try not to limit your scope of observation unnecessarily. The officer was facing the pump with his back to the street. It never hurts to get a little advance notice when trouble might be approaching.

3. It's a good thing only one of the 3 appeared to have been armed. I'm not sure things could have turned out so well had one or more of the other 2 also had a gun.
 
I wouldn't have put the hand in the pocket,
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Putting the hand in the pocket was a distraction to the bandit, leading the bandit to believe the victim was complying instead of preparing to fight back.

Any distraction to the bandit is an advantage for the victim.

You can act faster then you can re-act. Distracting the bandit by putting the hand in the pocket and pulling out "bills" allowed the victim to act before the bandit could re-act.

Therefore: Victim Wins.
 
He won. That's all that matters, for him. But it's not all that matters for us, because sometimes luck happens too. Many people win encounters with criminals simply because of good luck. Not because they planned well or did good things, but simply because they were lucky. When you're looking for strategies and techniques to imitate, it is best to look for the ones that do not rely entirely on good luck. It's also best to look for strategies that are available to you personally, as opposed to ones that might be available to someone else who has different physical abilities or a different situation than you are likely to find yourself in. So the fact that he won is all that matters to him, but it's still okay for us to look at what he did and carefully consider whether what he did was the "best of all possible options," and also whether what he did is something we ourselves could realistically do.

That said, he did very very well. He definitely found a way to solve the problem and he had the physical skills he needed in order to carry out his plan. Good for him!

Was it perfect, in some absolute sense? No, of course not. As John points out, keeping car doors locked might have helped tilt the odds even more in his favor. Keeping your focus wide, paying attention to the world -- that might have helped, too. It is always better when you see an attack coming than it is if you get blindsided and ambushed.

Was it the only way to solve this particular problem? Nope, not that either. But in the heat of the moment, he chose a response that worked for him and he carried it off successfully. That is the name of the game after all! But there are other things that might have worked, too. For example, I was surprised that he threw down an excellent weapon that was already in his hand, in order to stall for time and fish through his pocket so he could then access his firearm. A face full of gasoline, coming out of the pump, makes an excellent distraction all on its own, and would likely have blinded and thus disabled at least one of the attackers – the one with the gun, ideally – long enough for him to get his own gun out. He could very easily have used the pump handle that was in his hand to buy the same amount of time, or even more time. So there's more than one way to skin that cat.

pax
 
To train for 3-3-3 just sets you up for failure in a harder situation.
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3/3/3 is simply a statistical average which will have merit to a certain degree but does not necessarily mean that every gunfight will fall within that average. Training 3/3/3 is just a drill and hopefully one of many. Even if a person only trains 3/3/3, it does not mean that they are incapable to acting outside that routine, we are adaptable beings after all.
 
Putting the hand in the pocket was a distraction to the bandit, leading the bandit to believe the victim was complying instead of preparing to fight back.
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I know why he did it
I also know it gave him one less hand to fend off any attack.
 
3/3/3 is simply a statistical average which will have merit to a certain degree but does not necessarily mean that every gunfight will fall within that average. Training 3/3/3 is just a drill and hopefully one of many. Even if a person only trains 3/3/3, it does not mean that they are incapable to acting outside that routine, we are adaptable beings after all.
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It is flawed. Did you see what I posted? It is a stat from gunfights the good guys LOST.
 
It is flawed. Did you see what I posted? It is a stat from gunfights the good guys LOST
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A great many things that you see in training were developed as a result of failures...its called learning from your mistakes. There are many theories that encompass the 3-3-3 statistics and several schools consider it to have merit. Each man must decide for himself what he thinks danger looks like. 3-3-3 may have absolutely no meaning to some but in the spirit of this thread "trouble can come quickly", I think the concept is worth exploration.
 
The 16-year-old, Deonta Dewight Mackey, was shot in the head and died at the scene, according to police. He lived in the 900 block of East 104th Street, about four blocks from where he died.

The sergeant was not injured.

Authorities said Mackey had 16 arrests on a rap sheet that went back to April 2008 when he was 10 years old.

His most recent arrest was last month after Chicago police say he robbed a woman of her cell phone on December 16, not far from the Citgo station, authorities said. That was his only robbery arrest.
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Update on the Chicago gas station shooting.
16 arrests going back to age 10. I am glad the sergeant is ok and that no one else got hurt by this loose cannon.
 
I wonder had the good guy NOT been LEO how this would have played out. First of all, being in Chicago, would they have hauled him off to jail for having an "illegal" weapon? And even if it had been in Anywhere, USA, how quickly would he be cleared to walk away?
 
pax said:
He won. That's all that matters, for him. But it's not all that matters for us, because sometimes luck happens too. Many people win encounters with criminals simply because of good luck. Not because they planned well or did good things, but simply because they were lucky. When you're looking for strategies and techniques to imitate, it is best to look for the ones that do not rely entirely on good luck.
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Rather be lucky than good.
 
"Do not count on luck in a gunfight. If you are fighting for your life with a handgun today, today is not your lucky day." -- Tom Givens

pax
 
"16 arrests going back to age 10".

This kid had 16 arrests on his record, starting at age 10, and was pulling armed robberies at age 16. (Where do you suppose he got the gun?)

It might sound cold, but this kid was born to die.

He would eventually have killed someone else, had he not been killed first.

All things considered, it's best the little predator is off the streets permanently.

Glad the Sergeant was not hurt, and hope he comes through the process untroubled.
 
pax said:
"Do not count on luck in a gunfight. If you are fighting for your life with a handgun today, today is not your lucky day." -- Tom Givens

pax
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Your quote has nothing to do with what I said.
 
Please read my whole post before jumping on my back. I read through all the posts, but I didn't find any mentioning this- the guy that got shot in the head point-blank did NOT die immediately!

I realize that what we see in movies is NOT what happens in reality. I know that people don't die from a single gun shot, even one right to the head. But, even though I know that, it was still pretty crazy to actually see it! The video of it actually made it sink in more.

I think that's an important thing to really understand and grasp, and we can incorporate that understanding into whatever training we all do
 
Luck -

Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors only the prepared mind."

Confucian precept: “Intense effort and discipline open every door”
 
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I can't see where he did anything wrong. He was in a very bad situation and came out on top.

His experiences working as a cop in a high-crime area definitely gave him an advantage. He's used to dealing with thugs and low-lifes of all sorts and didn't seem particularly rattled when they approached him.
 
The gas pump is one of the highest anxiety triggers for me, lots of obstructions to good observation. I usually lock the pump and pace around. Noticed that the thug in the video made a fatal mistake (besides being a criminal in the first place). Once the officer appears to comply with his demands he lowers his weapon, gave the officer all the time he needed to draw and deliver a fatal shot. Complacency Kills, no matter what side of the law you're on.
 
he lowers his weapon, gave the officer all the time he needed to draw and deliver a fatal shot
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I noticed that too. Kraigwy has posted something similar where a person can act faster than a person can react. I don't remember exactly how he stated it but one of the things he wrote about was how a person holding you at gun point can be defeated by an armed person. The guy has to know what he is doing to draw and fire on an armed man and beat him.

I am glad the officer is ok. He read the situation pretty well and put the bad guy down.
 
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