Empire state shootings
- Thread starter Metalface Mark
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To injure 8-9 people I'd take a guess that at least 3-4 bullets must have missed which is quite frankly, unacceptable being that close to him. You don't have to be a highly trained marksman to be accurate enough not to miss numerous times at that distance, you just have to be competent with a gun, something that police officers who carry a gun should be. It's not even like he was moving that much, he was basically a stationary target.
It's unfortunate, and I do think that armed officers should be better trained. That said, they aren't, and when you are running through the streets of NYC pursuing a guy who pulls a gun on you, your aim is gonna be pretty crap. I don't think that a bit of 'friendly fire' is unexpected.
It is not an issue of bad marksmanship but more one of basic gun safety. I though that one of the first things people are taught with firearms safety is that you should never place any object, or person, down range of a gun unless you want it to be shot.
Unfortunately unless video tape of the incident emerges then I don't think the whole truth of what happened will come to light, in respect of whether gunman threatened the police.
Unfortunately unless video tape of the incident emerges then I don't think the whole truth of what happened will come to light, in respect of whether gunman threatened the police.
I agree it's unfortunate but it's hardly a "bit" of friendly fire, they shot about 9 times the amount of people he did
! Granted they never killed anyone but it could easily have been different. I agree that the pressure is going to mess up your aim somewhat but the fact that they carry and are trained to use a gun suggests they should be more competent than they seemed to be in that situation. If they're not going to be competent using a gun in a real situation then they shouldn't carry them.Especially not when firing one-handed and moving/ducking around as they were because they were caught off-guard. Rather careless really, but not a situation I'd like to find myself in either.
Post #58.
Don't think the police had much of a choice, the guy pointed a weapon at them.
How much time should the officers be allowed to calculate this? This is NYC; there is almost certainly going to be someone down range. The police officer was facing a man who, having shot someone in unknown circumstances moments earlier, had just turned around and pointed a gun at him.
You've not seen the surveillance footage then?
The issue is that if the US allows citizens to carry guns, then the police have to carry them as well. This means it's probably too costly to train approximately 800,000 officers to the standards we expect of our firearms-trained officers, and as a result they aren't going to perform as well as we would expect in firearms situations.I agree it's unfortunate but it's hardly a "bit" of friendly fire, they shot about 9 times the amount of people he did
Exactly - it's not a great situation.
Soldato
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That's shameful they can injure so many people. Could quite easily have killed most of them as well, just pure luck.
What would you have proposed happened?
Soldato
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Well from looking at the video when he first pulled the gun out at about 0:08 he was in between the officers and the road. By the time they were actually taking him down he had moved round and was in between the officers and a large group of people.
If as you say,
they were a bit slow to react when he pulled a gun out don't you think? Obviously i'm only an armchair expert so i'll leave it at that. Just seems like it went a lot worse than it could/should have done, and they got extremely lucky not to kill anyone. Infact the cop nearer the back of the shot was lucky not to shoot his partner to be honest.
So you're saying to save costs you sacrifice safety? That's even worse.
While yes there was always going to be someone down range give that this was in a city the offices still could have taken precautions before opening fire. Such as not firing down the pavement, like the office on the left in the video does. His partner moves to the right of frame so his line of fire goes across the street. Granted there will still be people in the line of fire but there should not be one dense block of people fleeing in that same direction.
The video is lacking in that it does not show which officer fired.
Soldato
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Both apparently.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/24/justice/new-york-empire-state/index.html
Hardly surprising they hit so many people with that many shots.
I think they reacted in a reasonable time. These officers are just regular police chasing someone along a street, not specialist firearms officers that have been perched waiting for him to flinch.
Are you naive enough to think that we don't compromise safety because of cost in every single aspect of our lives?
If I were an officer chasing someone and the assailant turned around and aimed a gun on me, I'd be shooting without ensuring I was in the optimum position. These officers are people and you cannot expect them to perform a full safety assessment while their lives are in immediate danger.
When it's something like this, then it isn't acceptable.
Do you have the several billion spare to pay for it, then?
Why this cost/safety argument instead of any other?
Maintenance of nuclear power facilities
Protective hardware for armed forces
etc.
Because this is at the heart of this specific discussion maybe
? Their lack of training could have easily resulted in many more deaths than was necessary and they were incredibly lucky all those people that they injured weren't fatally injured.Yes this shooting is the question at hand, but I'm trying to highlight that you cannot universally say "safety over cost" without significantly inreasing costs, restricting freedoms etc. My argument was that it's too expensive to train all 800,000 US police officers to the standards we do in the UK; for comparison, we have 6780 firearms officers according to Wiki, so the US has nearly 120 times as many to train as we do.Because this is at the heart of this specific discussion maybe
Look at your original question:
Yes, I would sacrifice safety to save costs, as there are an unlimited ways to spend money to increase safety; we should find a happy medium and not pursue a dreamland where there is no risk. Ever expecting a police force of 800,000 US officers to be as highly skilled and trained in the use of firearms as our 6780 specialist marksman is unrealistic.Moot said: