A question.....Why couldn't NO police...

...have just shot the guy in the hand where he held the knife? Or in the shoulder or the leg? Did they do any of that first before they shot to kill?

which usually is the order for police officers, regarding situations that are not life threatening.

Three problems with trying to shoot someone in the hand:

(1) It's a big-time felony. You can't "shoot to wound" someone. Shooting someone anywhere is ALWAYS lethal force in the eyes of the law; you can't legally shoot them "a little bit." Any officer who did would be charged with aggravated assault, since if the situation is not life-threatening, you aren't authorized to shoot at all.

(2) There's the difficulty of actually shooting someone in the hand with a handgun. If you are on the target range and shooting at a stationary playing card, it's easy to shoot the center out of it, but if the card is MOVING, it's another thing entirely. The hands are a lot more mobile than the torso, not to mention a lot smaller target. It works in the movies because the scriptwriter writes it in as a hit or a miss, but doesn't work in real life.

(3) Danger to bystanders. Bullets are designed to expand and stop in the target, minimizing the risk to bystanders. However, they need ten inches or so to stop, meaning a bullet would go right through a person's hand and keep on going down the street. Not a good thing.


The ideal solution would have been to have a Taser on hand (the officers tried pepper spray and it didn't work). The problem is, of course, that a lot of departments that have issued Tasers for situations like this have ended up with the Tasers being used as "pain compliance devices" in NON-lethal situations, like the lady who got Tasered for walking away from a traffic ticket, which is why not every department issues them. In situations like this incident, however, they are ideal.

but if you have the luxury of taking an iffy "shoot to wound" shot, you probably shouldn't be shooting at all in the eyes of the law.

The general rule by which a shooting will be ruled justifiable or not is whether the shooter reasonably believed herself/himself to be in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm. Since shooting someone in the hand is arguably a risky stunt, a strong case can be made that the shooter didn't believe she/he was in imminent danger, or else she/he would have been forced to shoot to stop the threat immediately instead of taking low-probability-of-success hand shots.

If a shooting is justifiable, then it legally doesn't matter whether the person shot dies or not; the shooting was justified regardless of outcome. Hopefully, they live, but that has no bearing on the legality of the shooting itself. If a shooting is not justifiable, then it will be ruled manslaughter or murder if the person dies (severity of the charge depending on the circumstances), and aggravated assault or attempted murder if the person lives.

There are other conditions that generally must also be met besides imminent danger in order for a shooting to be ruled justifiable (mantle of innocence rule in most states, i.e. you can't pound the crap out of somebody and then shoot him in self-defense when he pulls a knife on you, etc.), and law enforcement officers are authorized to shoot in a few cases in which a non-LEO would not be (i.e., to stop a fleeing violent felon), but in this case the imminent-danger rule appears to be the primary relevant principle.

how the law is so different in this respect in the US compared to Europe.
As far as i know in most European countries shoot-to-kill is only justified if the target is an apparent lethal danger.

it's always that way for civilian self-defense, and almost always that way for police, except for the rare exception like the fleeing armed felon.

My point was just that in the U.S., if shoot-to-kill isn't justified, no shooting at all is allowed in almost all instances.

there are six times you can use deadly force

1. self-defense
2. Defense of an innocent bystandard
3. stop escape of fleeing felon (note: convicted, so this rarely comes into play)
4. Lawful order by competent authority
5. defense of USAF resources

ooh.. there is one more. I would have gotten in trouble for not knowing all six.

anyway.. as a civilian.. only the first two apply.

from what I heard last night on Scarborough. They showed amateur video of the incident. Your question was raised repeatedly, but it seems they are trained to kill in situations like that. What a shame. That guy was so out of it I think I could have grabbed the knife out of his hand myself. What horrible tape!

(sorry no link)

he managed to swipe an ak-47 from a guard and killed 8 people (4 guards and 4 other prisoners).
they apparently eventually SUBDUED him.

so:

-man waves knife, shot dead.
-unarmed man runs off airplane, shot dead.
-man kills 8 people with ak-47, subdued, alive.

hmmmmmm.

I expect he was subdued when the magazine went empty. It's happened in this country as well.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

I believe that the officers wanted to avoid any innocent deaths and that is why they did not attempt to subdue him hand-to-hand. They did attempt to subdue him with pepper-spray. He just wiped it off of his face and continued his threatening behavior.

Remember, the police were called to the scene. The guy had the knife before the police got there. He refused to drop the knife. They tried to talk to him, to no avail.

Had they attempted to shoot him in the leg and missed, they could have hit a bystander.

It is a lose-lose situation.

and it's becoming more and more acceptable these days, but not by me!!! Shoot first, ask questions later?!! We ARE becoming a police state.

The idea is to end the danger with one shot, or as few as possible, anyway, with as little danger to bystanders, and the police personell as possible. Please don't think that the trick shooting you see in the cowboy movies is realistic.
The cops don't want to hurt innocent people, and they want to go home alive at the end of the day, too.

a Taser would have been more appropriate in this situation or even better use a bean bag gun. We had a similar situation here in VT, and police hit a man weilding a huge butcher knife, with two bags to his stomach..it was over in minutes.

Only the S.W.A.T. is equipped with tasers inb N.O., so a taser was simply not a possibility.

New Orleans does not equip their beat cops with tasers due to concerns many groups have about cops being equipped with tasres.

that the guy wanted to die. Suicide by cop.
He had plenty of opportunity to surrender his knife. The incident lasted long enough that MANY police on the scene,which I think created a certain inertia. SOMETHING had to happen and when twelve guys have guns drawn something ugly is probably going to happen.

Best scenario IMO would have been to get a senior official/negotiator to talk to the guy since he was essentially holding himself hostage. They should have cleared all but a few of the street cops and exercised more patience.

and reacted as they were trained to react.

been a real threat, (1) the policeman was very slow in re-acting and (2) the assailant would have been too close for ten shots to have been fired without risk of hitting the officer.

I haven't seen all of the tape. Until I do, I'll with hold further opinions. I just can't get a picture of how one crazy old man could get in position to stab a policeman but was still far enough away for the shots to be fired except from the policeman who was threatened and likely didn't fire all ten shots.

That's as much of a knife it takes to kill a human.

Twenty feet.

That's as far away as somebody can be with a knife and still be a threat to your life.

If a man with a knife or other edged weapon that could get a wound a quarter inch deep on you is within twenty feet of you and he lunges at you, your life is in imminent danger.

It's that plain and simple.

same thing happened in Seattle about 10 years ago: well-known street crazy goes off the deep end, starts waving his samurai sword around, screaming. 5 hour standoff, water cannons, traffic blocked, then they shot him.

2 years ago the SPD also shot a schizophrenic with a knife who was SKIPPING down the street because he wouldn't stop.

there's got to be a better way. did this crazy even LUNGE at anyone?

Nobody is showing the video of it, though.

Was of him surrounded by at least 15 cops with guns drawn as he was consistently backing away from them, and was way too far to be in any contact with them, anyway. His waving his knife was more jerking his wrist and just plain bizarre than threatening to anyone.

and he was moving erratically, not really backing off.

He should have dropped the knife and kept his hands up.

backing up.

As for dropping the knife and putting his hands up...well, yeah, that would have been the way to go. My impression, however, is that he was 'not quite right' at the time of the shooting. I am assuming he was not, either due to drugs or reasons of unstable mental health, able to work and play well with others at that moment.

And this was real life and not Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. I do not think a big net would be feasible. But while we are on the 'Wild Kingdom' theme, I wonder if you can use tranq guns on people safely???

I do not normally side with the police when stuff like this happens, but the guy had a knife, was stark raving nuts, was one BIG sucker and wouldn't stop. They followed him for a short while and he just kept moving. A taser would have helped, but they didn't have one. It would have been much better if the guy had been getting psych help or meds. And then taken them.

I do think it is important to analyze situations like this to see how they can be avoided or resolved without lethal force. But sometimes they are just doing the best they can.

Sure, how many times growing up have we watched movies when the "good guy" (white hat) unarms a "bad guy" (black hat) by shooting him in the hand, wrist, or arm with some "mighty-fine shootin'" causing him to drop his gun?

It's all Hollywood...it's all bullshit...

You aim for body mass to make sure you hit the perp. You can't risk cowboy trick shots to the weapon without endangering others.