Twenty feet away, a quarter inch deep, and a lunge.

A person standing twnety feet away from you with a box cutter that will cut you a quarter inch deep lunges at you.

That scenario means your life is in imminent danger and you are justified in taking that person's life in self defense.

How many DUers knew that?

and all that made it possible for me to earn a living if it struck me in the eyes

sorry, you get no pass here for not putting down your weapon when asked to by uniformed police

force for defending myself, and if that means that dispshit who is attacking me dies then that is what Mother Nature wanted for this person that does not respect the rule of love and life.


Give Mommy a Kiss....

But I'm an idiot, so there's that.

On edit: How many times was he shot after the intitial shot that incapacitated him? 10, 15?

Probably all were fired within a 200ms timeframe.

You have 16 cops reacting at the same time. IF there were only ten shots fired, six cops were too slow.

With a committe, they could have weighed their options, figured out which of them had the best shot, with the least risk of hitting an innocent bystander. They could have voted on how many shots were to be initially fired, and under what circumstance additional shots would be seen as justified.

And then, once they'd formed a consensus they could have emerged from committee and shot the...

Hey! Where'd he go? And what are all these people with slit throats doing lying around here?

:eyes:

(And also that I needed to look up 'sophist,' to the shame of my old english teachers. Sigh. :) )

But what I was trying to say was that, in conflict situations, there often isn't time or opportunity to act in a totally rational fashion. If there had been time, there may not have been a resulting conflict.

No news story, either.

a backhanded compliment. Just my two cents


Hobo

:beer:

in self defense, you are in the wrong.

Just my opinion, but in this case I consider being justified and being right the same thing.

be justified. BTW, was he actually lunging? Couldn't the police back off,keep suspect at arms length, cordon off the area and wait for a non-lethal solution?

The instant he lunged, every cop who had a clean shot and could squeeze off a round should have.

I would hope I could figure out a way to disarm the guy.

The guy failed to comply, then attacked.

The cops did what they had to do.

I have a hard time believing that among the 16+ cop brains there, no one could figure out a way to disarm him.

That is what these cops were in, a combat situation. They were facing a perpetrator who had already attacked one civilian and was armed with a lethal weapon. Attempts to "tackle" him could have meant the loss of the cops' life who attempted. Attempting it also goes against every bit of training cops received.

From what I saw, if the reports of him lunging at the cops are correct, the cops were 100% in the right.

And it doesn't show him being shot either.

Something just doesn't smell right here.

It will come out before a jury in court or before a judge ina civil case.

How do you define lethal? Virtually anything can be lethal if applied creatively enough - a toothpick, a can of hairspray, a cell phone, a wad of Kleenex - yet you're telling me that 16 heavily armed, highly-trained, law enforcement officers couldn't think of a thing to do other than to pump several pounds of lead into this poor lunatic? Gee, guess I'd better not wave my lighter around in a threatening manner; after all, if forced down someone's throat, it could be a "lethal weapon" which would justify a small army opening up on me with heavy artillery to defend themselves from my ferocious Zippo onslaught.

neighborhood and if things didn't go just right and that one cop was killed and the suspect decided to beat the hell out of another merchant or two that would be the more satisfactory end to the story?? As a citizen I like the 16 to one ratio. And, as a citizen I don't like to be assaulted by knive wielding thugs. What's the problem here, knive wielding thugs or police who are going to keep them from using their weapons on me? I beg for an answer?

That's all I'm sayin.

Hubby has a black belt and years of Karate. He says there had to be at least ONE cop in that group with Karate training. There were tons of cops in his Karate classes. And he says the guy could have been detained.

16 cops should be able to detain one guy with a knife (who was on a public street and who just previously assaulted a fellow citizen.) I like those odds. What if no one made the call and the 16 cops weren't about and the man with the knife chose to go use his knife elsewhere? I guess then we'd be bashing the police for not acting in a timely manner.

but got yelled at for being rational. :eyes:

That's reassuring, isn't it?

People are notoriously inaccurate with hand guns in pressure situations. Want to DOUBLE your chances of surviving being shot at when mugged? Take a single step backwards. That's how bad people shoot under stress.

Most cops are trained to shoot for center of mass. If you look at yourself in the mirror your center of mass is around your stomach or maybe your sternum. Lots of vitals there, true.

But they aren't shooting there to get vitals, they are shooting there because when their shot proves to be somewhat innaccurate (as it will in 9 out of 10 cases) there's a better chance it will hit SOMETHING than if you shot at the targets legs, or arm. That makes for a better chance of dropping the target, and less chance of a stray bullet continuing on and putting a bystander at risk.

The only people who try things like arm, leg, or gun hand shots are snipers, who have very special equipment and only in very special circumstances.

Both he and the bad guy, who had just shot the cops partner, were in the open. The cop missed his first three shots, (All hit the ceiling), got control of himself, his next three were all in the heart. The holdup guy also missed the officer. I all happen very quickly. Less than 4 seconds according to the store camera. Officer said it seemed to take forever for him.

Most people, under fight stress, shoot high. Under fight stress, if they haven't had enough training, they will automatically bring their arms up defensively which points the pistol upwards. It takes a lot of training to break that reflex.

I am a police officer and all our training is to shoot center mass...We are taught to shoot to stop the threat, no to kill. Shooting somebody in the leg or arm is not only extremely difficult, it also does not necessarily stop the threat. I have heard many stories of suspects continuing to shoot after being shot in the arms, legs, even the chest. Plus, actually aiming for a leg or arm puts anything or anyone behind the suspect at an even greater danger...

I encourage everyone to go to your local police station and ask to go on a ride-along with an officer. Granted, odds are you'll never get to see anything life-threatening on one shift, but you might get to see how we have to think in order to protect our safety in order to protect the public safety.

you're in a gunfight where the bad guy is standing in front of a crowd.

Absurd. They had this guy surrounded. You can't deal with what happened here so you run to hypothetical scenarios to try to justify what didn't happen here.

'Shooting somebody in the leg or arm is extremely difficult.' Ridiculous, when you've got five guns already out and leveled at someone pretty much just standing there. Five guys couldn't hit a leg from fifteen feet away? Stop lying to yourself to try to defend what happened in New Orleans.

'It also does not necessarily stop the threat.' Strike three. You get shot in the leg with a 9mm or two and you're going down.

And lastly, as if those glib, theoretical worst-case rationalizations aren't enough, the most ridiculous rationalization coming from so many defenders of this incident: The fact that 'all our training is to shoot center mass' isn't a justification for shooting to kill any more than any 'this is the way things are so this is the way they should be' argument is a justification for anything.

It's a justification to change your training to shoot to disable. Then 'all your training will be to shoot to disable'.

The more I hear phony justifications for actions like this the more I realize that leos should not be trusted with the authority to do stuff like this. It would be one thing if you came out and said 'that was wrong and they should have been able to not kill the guy'. Then you'd have some credibility and people might think, well, they mostly wouldn't do something like that; this was an error of excess. But it's all about defending the indefensible no matter what. Taking your credibility as a profession away in a flash.

nauseum last night.

If the guy never lunged, the cops are in deep shit.

his vision. He ran down stairs to get more and the shots rang out. He did not see or shoot any more than was shown.

Isn't he the one that proved that a trained martial artist could kill a gun-wielding man from 20 ft away before that gun-wielding man could even squeeze the trigger?

... claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs."


30 Things you probably don't know about Chuck Norris

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ej_geno/233299.html

I don't remember the name of the cop that did the study, but I do know what the study showed.

I compared a man in good physical shape, 21 feet from a cop with a HOLSTERED gun. The point is that in the time it takes a typical cop to get a gun out of a typical police holster, bring it to target and fire, a man 21 feet away can be on top of him. That means that a dangerous man at 21 feet is dangerous enough to be worth drawing the side arm NOW.

If the gun is already out and pointed, and if it is held correctly, the cops can always get off a shot.

and leveled at somebody, you can get five shots off in the time it takes them to move ten feet let alone twenty. Except by that time there would be nothing left of them to move ten feet.

That was the situation here, except it was worse than that. There were like five of them with their guns out and leveled.

There is simply no excuse for what happened in New Orleans.

There were no tasers on site. Not a one. New Orleans beat cops are not armed with tasers.

It's still pretty easy to do.

A blade that only penetrates to a quarter inch is not sufficient to punture vital organs, in fact you would be hard pressed to puncture the abdominal wall with that. About the only way you could kill somebody with that length of blade is to either cut the radial or ulnar artery verticaly, or to slice the carotid artery or jugular vein. Any of these cuts is quite difficult to do in a fight, as they require quite precise cutting.

Thus, I don't see one's life as being in imminent danger, especially when the person wielding the blade is confronted by a group of people. Yes, it would have taken some work on the part of the cops, but they had both time and numbers on their side. There was no need to take this man's life, but it seems that cops go right into kill mode at the slightest provocation. Another sad demonstration of how our police force has fallen.

nuff said

Perhaps you shouldn't make assuptions about people you don't know jack shit about. How many thugs have you brought down without permanently hurting or killing them?

I've won dozens. I happen to be an expert with a blade, an expert with a lunge, and I know for a fact that given 1/4 inch penetration, I can kill you instantly.

Sorry, but I'm going to have to call bullshit on that one. A quarter inch will barely get the blade into the abdominal cavity, much less reach anything vital. Like I said earlier, the best you can hope for with a quarter inch is to hit veins and arteries, and those are notoriously difficult to hit, hell, even trained nurses have a hard time hitting them with an IV needle.

And for your information I don't play with rapiers, I much prefer either claymores or hand and a half bastards. Bring it when you want:evilgrin:

...when considering minimum lethal depth of penetration; the more trained you are, the more surgical and effective you can make every inch of the blade. For example, with 1/4" of razor edge you could thrust into the external jugular, then tear outward while cutting down the neck's length. Assuming comprehensive medical care is not immediately available, blood loss would likely cause rapid depth. In that scenario, shallow depth of penetration combined with a ragged wound and limited medical support is fatal.

Who should be trained in both armed and unarmed combat. If you are trained in such combat, you make yourself a difficult target to your attacker. A jugular shot, when you opponent is moving and fighting back, is a very difficult one friend, almost impossible. Especially when there are fifteen other cops backing your opponent up.

Geez people, get a grip!

However, police are trained to "restrain" unarmed targets and to "disable" armed targets. Specifically, they are trained to respond to armed targets with armed force, regardless of the superiority of their arms to the target's.

Would I have used lethal force? Probably not. A dozen officers can effectively handle a single, knife-wielding target with their billy clubs.

They are designed so that they will only go 1/4 inch into cardboard. But flesh is flexible and the boxcutter has a razor for a cutting edge so it can go pretty deep - into flesh. Get a box cutter and try it on a raw roast. You will be quite surprised.

I can slash you from temple to jaw in one motion.
I can slash across your forehead, causing your skin and blood to droop down into your eyes.
I can slash your pectoral muscles, rendering your right arm (gun arm) useless.
I can slash the artery on the inside of your leg and you'll die in 10 seconds.

Any one of those means the death of the cop.

Arguing that a knife is a "lesser deadly weapon" than a gun is simply ridiculous and pointless.
Deadly is deadly. You use a deadly weapon against a cop, you die. Period. End of conversation.

100% justified shooting.
Period.

Many people have been.

As for 20 feet, it very quickly turns to 2 feet, for an average person lunging, in about 2 seconds.

Who was directly killed by a boxcutter, sliced across the throat. Granted, the person killed was a bus driver, and his death caused an accident that killed forty passengers. But still, let us compare that number to those killed by regular knives, or better yet, guns. I'm sorry, but if you are afraid of somebody with a box cutter then you're a wuss. And yes, I've faced knives in the hands of thugs, real knives not boxcutters, and gee, I managed to disarm them all by myself without killing or permanently injuring them.

Making your argument ridiculous as it relates to anyone holding a gun to you, let alone multiple guns.

Airlines flights 93 and 175.



A quarter inch is all you need to take a life.

Using boxcutters. In fact the witnesses testimony is quite confusing, some say the hi-jackers had boxcutters, some say they used plastic knives, others say they were four inch long knives, a long way from boxcutters. And none of the witnesses said anything about anybody being killed with one, merely threatened.

at me....:eyes:

called "arms" and "legs" and if you shoot those appendages they fall down and grab the wound - usually you can kick them in the head or ribs and they'll fold up like a lawn chair..

Any competent bar bouncer could have handled this guy. I've seen bouncers SHOT with a 22 handgun who STILL beat the shit out of the gunman, and then took the SECOND ambulance to the hospital.

Certainly a box cutter could open the jugglar vein in anyone's neck and they'd have about 8 minutes of life left and no way to stem that kind of bleeding, at least without brain damage.

A leather coat wrapped around an arm is a pretty good way to deal with a sharp object in case you run into that.

Why don't cops just carry around a cue ball, I've seen guys knocked out in a bar before - you throw a cue ball at someone's body, particularly his forehead and DOWN they go.

Multiple cops gunning a man down is a pussy way of dealing with a stupid attacker.

how about a net and a sedative. There were more than enough cops there to take him down he couldn't watch them all. The cops were to afraid to let him get close to them, any excuse.

And a billy club. But noooo, that would require the cops to get a bit down and dirty, and why do that when you can just shoot the poor bastard:eyes:

This is such BS on the part of the cops, and it is lazy police work to boot. Thirty years ago this guy would have been safe and sound in a jail cell right now, with little more than a bump on his head and one hell of a headache. Sad to say, now he lies in the morgue, never to feel anything again.

Just one more symptom that our police have gone from considering themselves public servants to considering themselves the guards at an outdoor insane asylum. When you have that kind of attitude, life becomes real cheap.

is that this attitude has bled all the way over to DUers. If progressives cannot see the evil in street executions and instead choose to rationalize it, then we are lost as a society.

"He was stupid" is not a reason to kill someone.
"What if..." is not a way to act, but a thing to consider.
"He lunged" is unverified, just the only side of the story we know...because the other one is DEAD.

Too many of these stories (tasered old ladies and children, gunning down people in gangways) have been coming out as of late, a pattern that greatly disturbs me.

There are quite a number of fiercely right-wing folks who post here regularly because they don't like Bush for whatever reason.

Next week: a white prominent preachers wife will have a bad reaction from meds and a knife -- Praise ya'll for understandin'

How about a simply solution such as a shield?

How about trying to calm the man down, get all civilians out of the area, and try to stall until you have back up in riot gear and with shields. Then you force the man into a corner and overpower him with your shields. Just like they do when they extract a violent prisoner from a cell.

Why where they in such a hurry. The man was obviously disturbed, and by stalling, they might have been able to calm him down. Why the rush to a quickly end to the standoff?

Just asking.

There was no time for backup.

They tried the non-lethal means they had at hand (i.e. pepper spray) it had no effect.

They had no nets.

They had no dart guns with sedatives.

They had no bean bag shotguns.

They had no rubber bullets.

They had no tasers.

they had no time for somebody to bring any of the above before the guy lunged.

There were how many cops there? Fourteen, fifteen, plenty of strong sturdy bodies to keep the guy in place, and away from harming himself or anybody else long enough to get the material you need.

Hell, when I was living in that most RW of places, Springfield Mo, I watched the cops keep an unstable man wielding a fucking ax contained and controlled until they got the back-up and equipment that they needed, then they simply pressed in on all sides of him with riot shields until he dropped the ax. And gee, not only did that guy live, he barely recieved a scratch. And this was in Springfield, a place hardly known for kindness and compassion from its law enforcement officers. Gee, I think that a fucking boxcutter would be a piece of cake, but apparently not, apparently it was just easier to kill the guy.

Sorry, but there is no excuse in this case.

The instant the guy lunged, all options went out the window. It's a direct attack that will either kill you or one of your fellow officers if you do not react with lethal force.

You don't stand there like a fucking target, you move. Yes, those poor cops would have had to work up a sweat, but jeez, this poor mentally ill man would be alive right now. Nice to see that people are so willing to throw away the lives of the mentally ill so readily.

Besides, let me point out again, this man was using a BOX CUTTER. Gee, he lunges at you, whack the outstretched, oncoming arm with your nightstick, problem solved.

Sorry Walt, but there is no justification in this situation to kill a mentally ill man who was barely armed, lunging or not. Hell, somebody just stick their foot out when he lunged and it all would have been over.

And if you consider an attack with a box cutter some sort of imminent threat then quite frankly you haven't been around the block much. The first week I went to junior high school thirty years ago I had a switch blade pulled on me. I delivered one kick to the guys wrist, which broke, scooped up the knife and went on my way, problem solved.

It is just so damn disgusting to see so many peope around here more than ready to kill a mentally ill guy who is no threat. God forbid any of you folks become so ill.

IF you don't shoot, you could be dead.

It';s kill or be killed. Those were the only options left.

Sorry, but if that many cops cannot bring down a man armed with a boxcutter, without killing him, then none of those men deserve to be on any police force.

You know, years ago there were these types of incidents, yet the knife wielding madmen weren't killed, and neither were the cops. They were disarmed, banged up a bit in the process, but they lived. What has happened between now and then? Have the cops gotten to be that much more of a wuss? Or do they just no care anymore?

And twenty feet in a conflict is a lot of room to move friend. And again, let me point out it was a friggin' BOXCUTTER. Sheesh.

had a few years ago. They taught us to disarm an "attacker" with a 6 inch knife (and an "attacker" with a gun, but that isn't relevant right now) in a couple different scenarios. One of the scenarios the knife was up against your neck, the other was where the "attacker" waved the weapon at you. I'm 5'0, and 100 lbs., and I took down a 6'2 "attacker" with no problem at all. There were how many cops, and they could not handle one guy? I find it really hard to believe that it could not be resolved more peacefully.

It's not that easy on the street when you've got a hyped big dude coming wildly at you. I spent 27 years training in Martial Arts and IMHO many people get a false sense of over-confidence doing short courses in many self protection courses.

Did you do techniques where the attacker picked the attack they were going to do and didn't tell you? I've participated in and judged 2nd degree black belt tests and when we did this there was a good percentage of the time many a very well-trained black belt would've been injured if we had used real knives. They usually disarmed the attacker but in doing so the attacker sometimes got his slice or stab in.

I hope you kept practicing those techniques you learned, that you try them with different opponents moving and not standing still and that you keep it simple and not try 101 ways to defend against a knife.

I'm not going to embarrass myself by going into great detail about my "skills", but I'll tell you this.- I've entered over 35 jello/oil wrestling contests...And I've never lost. No matter if I was matched against a girl twice my size, or a man 3 times my size, I won. And it was due to that protection course I took. I've won a good deal of money "betting" my "skills" against others in bars. Not really proud of that fact, but I'm am really good at it. Believe it or not, men will pay good money to watch a good looking girl fight. (My dad was state wrestling champ in his weight division in Ohio when he was a senior in high school, so I guess it runs in the family.) I'm not saying I'm invincible, but I'm not "afraid" of anyone. I've been in my far share of bar brawls, and I've had men and women come at me with broken bottles, and pool sticks, and I've never had a serious injury yet. (My hubby owned a large bar for several years before we were married.)

When I read your post I initially laughed, but by the end I think you're serious? I'm not trying to insult, it's just not what I expected.

If it's true, you should write a book!

As you can probably see from my screen name, I am a reformed puke. I used to be an outright redneck....I am not particularly proud of my past, but it makes me who I am today. -Ya ever heard the saying "You can take the girl out of a fight, but you can't take the fight out of the girl?" It's 100% true.

I suggest you check the facts again, the guy had a hunting knife.

I don't buy it. I'm 5'0 and 100lbs. soaking wet, and I could have taken the guy down. I took a self protection course where we fended off attackers with knives and guns. I took a 6'2 "attacker" down in every scenario with no problem at all... I'm a tiny little thing, with a basic understanding of leverage, and I could have done it. If this is what our "protection" in this country amounts to...I shudder to even think about it.

on edit- I took out an antagonizing statement.

You learned a few moves, and in class the other person played the part they were supposed the play. The choreography pumped up your confidence. Against a real street person, you would be sliced or shot. And taking someone's gun away is movie stuff, unless they are unwilling to fire.

What will you do if, in a real encounter, the bad guy holds the knife differently than in class, or comes at you differently?

I'm not going to embarrass myself by going into great detail about my "skills", but I'll tell you this.- I've entered over 35 jello/oil wrestling contests...And I've never lost. No matter if I was matched against a girl twice my size, or a man 3 times my size, I won. And it was due to that protection course I took. I've won a good deal of money "betting" my "skills" against others in bars. Not really proud of that fact, but I'm am really good at it. Believe it or not, men will pay good money to watch a good looking girl fight. (My dad was state wrestling champ in his weight division in Ohio when he was a senior in high school, so I guess it runs in the family.) I'm not saying I'm invincible, but I'm not "afraid" of anyone. I've been in my far share of bar brawls, and I've had men and women come at me with broken bottles, and pool sticks, and I've never had a serious injury yet. (My hubby owned a large bar for several years before we were married.)

Where do you get this from, Walt? Why do you take it as indisputably carved in granite that every encounter between beligerents automatically entails an exchange of lethal force? Don't you find empirically that a great many beligerent encounters take place in the world which don't involve one party ending up dead? I mean, walk into any hospital (especially a mental one), any police precinct, any penitentiary, hell, even a great many taverns, households, interstate highways, and most courtrooms, and you will find daily instances of hostile exchanges, almost none of which result in anyone being killed. So where do you get this notion that the instant a person demonstrates hostility, your only recourse is to kill that individual before they kill you? You keep repeating that over and over as if it were a universally accepted and unchallengable fact, but I just don't see that as the case.

Do you imagine for an instant that the ball point pen lying on my desk right this instant, were it driven through your eye socket, would be any less lethal than a quarter inch exposed blade on a box-cutter? Or this telephone cord could make an extremely lethal garotte. This heavy lamp base right here could crush a person's skull with no problem at all, I'd wager. Frankly, I'd be more afraid of the lunatic armed with the three foot length of pipe they found lying in the street than of the guy armed wielding a box-cutter. So don't tell me that "most beligerent encounters don't involve lethal weapons" as that's an utterly preposterous claim.

It seems to me like they didn't have enough time to bring in a few doctors to diagnose the man. I'm just asking.

Will be considered either drugged or unstable until proven otherwise. Again, it was a boxcutter! Are you honestly saying that a fucking boxcutter is a lethal, deadly weapon?

I don't think I even mentioned a "fucking boxcutter".

If you don't have a child, find a neice or nephew or a friends kid. Borrow one.

Give him/her a magic marker with the cap removed. Step back 20 feet. Now explain that the game is that they are to try to get you with the magic marker as many times as possible, while you try to take the marker away without getting touched at all. Now go!

It ain't easy. If you think it is, either you haven't tried it, or you've got some really lifeless little kids as relatives.

And now, as you examine what your little Michelangelo has wrought, think about all the stuff there is, 1/4 of an inch below each of those lines.

And one final thing. The whole box cutter itself is thinner than many knives. I used to use them at an old job. It can cut WAY deeper than 1/4 inch, and since the razor tip is sharper than most knives, it cuts real easy. 1/4 inch is NOT the limit.

Step back 20 feet and put a 9mm slug into the kid's leg (get permission from the parents first!) and see how many times he touches you with the magic marker.

It is unbelievable the levels of bullshit you apologists come up with.

Have them give you a target about the size of a leg, set it 20 feet away, and try to hit it. If you haven't shot a gun before, not only will you miss, but you wont even know in which direction you missed.

And that's going to be far, far easier than hitting the leg of a suspect who is charging with a knife.

To continue the farce above, give yourself a nerf gun and, in that second you've got, decide how to stop the kid. I suspect, in the playful moment, you'll shoot, miss, drop the gun and wrestle. The kid will still wind up cutting you. Or, if you DO get the marker away, the kid will see the gun you dropped sitting on the floor, pick it up and shoot you with it.

Nice going, hero.

Honestly, try either one of these things. Let us know how it goes. If you can hit the target, if you can stop the kid, maybe you should become a cop?

get him off guard, improvise!

If those are all the facts, it is a simple solution, however unfortunate or unpopular it may be, their only choice was lethal.

I have watched enough movies to know that all I would have to do is roll forward, jump up a few feet and kick the knife out of his hand. Then as the knife was coming down I would swing around and grab the knife with my one hand and grab the "perp" (see.. I even know the lingo) with the other hand. I would then head-butt him so he hit the ground. Then I would cuff him and I would say "book 'em Dano". And after that I would walk away with a real cool walk while music plays in the background.

:rofl:

gotten the job done, as your president would say. Good job McGarrett!

You're just as likely to knock yourself out. LOL

...against the flat part of theirs. Personally, I will pass. A .45 works much better.

Training films. Pump them up on steroids, and then teach them to dance. They'll be taking out the perps with their ninja/action hero moves in no time!

to law enforcement for years, says the rule is one leaping bound - that is the space that makes it OK to strike fist or take a life in self defense. Depends on the person, but he defined it as a minimum of 10' (taking adrenaline into effect, 10 feet is really too close even)

On edit - he is speaking of a manual weapon like a knife, box cutter, club, etc., not a gun....any time a gun is pointed at you it is defensible to shoot to kill in self defense.

With a really good lunge, you could fly through first class, unlock the cockpit door, and kill the pilot and co-pilot with a standard eyebrow tweezer or nail clipper.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who wanted to track down the purchasers of box cutters or nail clippers or tweezers and kill them in an act of preemptive self defense would be completely justified (and I think that's currently the law in Florida, but don't ask for a link).

By the way, how many of the posts in this thread are sarcastic? Please tell me it's a majority.

There have been victims who have responded in self defense, and were later shown (in court) to have been trained in martial arts, and were subsequently brought up on charges for defending themselves in situations far more "life threatening" than this. Certain states prohibit a response that is not appropriate to the threat. Try to parse that out at the moment when you, or your loved one is attacked. This one seems as if that occurred, but I wasn't there. Let a jury decide.

And no, you don't have to tell the guy attacking you that you are a black belt. I always liked the saying better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.

Too bad it is misleading and bears little to no resemblance to a similar incident that has this board flaming.

objects, or you put your own life at risk.

I would hope everybody understands that lesson.

Oops guess not huh? Just don't do it if you are mentally ill.

Fortunately, I have not had to actually fire my handgun after seven years but I have had to pull it out and aim it at subjects numerous times. That usually gets the message across that we mean business and they might want to drop their weapon. They usually comply.

In our extensive training, we watch actual footage of individuals with weapons such as box cutters lunge at officers, the actual title of this training is the "21 Feet Rule", because if a person lunges at you from 21 feet or less, he can and will reach you before you have the time to unholster your weapon and stop the attack. I am a pretty liberal guy and I wish it wasn't true, but in fact it is...I have no idea what kind of training these officers have, but here in Southern California, it is mandatory and crucial for many day to day situations.

In many similar situations, I have been able to get my less than lethal bean bag shotgun from my trunk and prepare for this type of individual, but depending on the background of the call, they may not have had time to react this way. Many departments have started carrying Tasers also to try and avoid actually shooting bullets into a suspect. I find it hard to believe that any officer would actually enjoy shooting somebody just to do so, and unfortunately, "sympathetic fire" is common in these situations. Not that everybody wants to join in on the shoot, but the split second decision that one officer makes can certainly impact how other officers at the scene react. The one rule we are taught in the academy is that we will go home to our families at the end of our shift and if the situation showed the suspect actually making it to the officers and actually cutting or God forbid, killing one, the public would question what the officers were thinking and why they didn't act quicker...

I love my job, but sometimes it's a no-win situation, I actually signed up to protect and serve people and unfortunately, some bad apples have ruined it for the bunch...

And a very good friend a state trooper have faced those same instances when it WASNT APPROPRIATE TO KILL FIRST. Those guys are still alive and kicking. One is still on watch lists for threatening to kill a senator. Locked up and alive and kicking.

Ok, you got that, it used to NOT BE APPROPRIATE ...But apparently things they are a changing - and not for the better.

Ps The very good friend also sits on the board of the Mental Health Alliance and I'm sure he could tell you some doozies. He also works with LE in his states to stop this senseless violence against the mentally ill.

Any other circumstances, a court will put you away for murder.

I have no sympathy for any cop in any circumstances... They've been treated too well for too long and it's time for them to pay.

Just make sure when someone threatens you, your family or your property, don't call us, just take it like a man.

If I'm bleeding on the ground it doesn't help much to have some pig laughing at me and then walking away.

If I'm bleeding on the ground it doesn't help much to have some pig laughing at me and then walking away.

Because I can only laugh so much on one shift, at least I can scratch one less off my list.

I guess you won't last long on the force.

<snip>

Two sergeants and one patrol officer fired nine shots after Hayes tried to stab a lieutenant, Riley said. He said he did not have an autopsy report, so he did not know how many bullets hit Hayes.

<snip>

Patrol officers don't carry stun guns or beanbag guns, and there was no time to bring in a SWAT team, which might have had such equipment, he said.

"It happened within three minutes. SWAT couldn't have made it there in that time," Riley said. "And it's not a situation where normally SWAT would have been called."

The officers would have betrayed their police training if they had aimed to fire a non-lethal shot, Riley said Tuesday. The officers are trained to treat knife attacks as deadly force and are not schooled in disarming suspects with knives using hand-to-hand combat, he told The Associated Press.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051228/ap_on_re_us/police_shooting

needs to be changed.

I could post numerous instances of police officers who have DIED trying that.

Taser from 30 feet away, with armed backup ready to shoot if Taser fails...good plan.

Beanbag round from 30 feet, with armed backup...good plan.

Going Jackie Chan on the guy...not a good plan.

At near-contact distances, a knife is more dangerous than a gun. Even at 15 feet, between a knife and a drawn gun, the person who makes the first move will have the upper hand, regardless of which weapon they are using.

Look, I AGREE with you that more less-lethal options should've been available; Tasers, for example. That could arguably be a failure of department procurement policy. My point is that trying to shoot someone in the leg with a handgun is NOT a rational less-lethal option; if shooting to center-of-mass isn't justified, shooting someone in the leg isn't even legal.

but the probability of someone getting knifed in that scenario is still quite high.

Some sort of nonlethal stand-off weapon in addition to OC would have been good to have on-scene, though. But I don't think any department in the nation would want its officers going hand-to-hand against a knife, even with superior numbers, unless someone is wearing one of those knife-proof bunny suits like they have on hand in prisons.

Something says yes, he was lunging with something dangerous to one's welfare and therefore a threat. Something says no, this was one man with a box cutter surrounded with 16 armed police officers which on the face of it seems like excessive force.

:scared: I am so scared. I used to be from "Home of the Brave" but now I live in Bush*ville and we are all terra-fied....:scared: ooohh :scared: Get a Life....

even though I don't usually watch cable news, I did happen to catch this video while waiting for Keith Olberman's show, and it showed 16 cops practically in a circle around the guy.

You're telling me that eight guys couldn't rush him from behind while the guys in front took turns distracting him?

There was a case in a school in Japan in which a student brought a hunting knife to class and stabbed a teacher to death. He was subdued by two unarmed other teachers.

See, I'm cynical about cop shootings, because there was a case in Portland in which the cops shot a mentally ill woman who was completely unarmed inside a store. Another off-duty cop in the suburbs of Portland shot a Labrador retriever who ran after him while he was jogging--if you know Labs, you know that the dog was just trying to play, and the idea of jogging with a gun while in the outer suburbs of Portland spells "paranoid asshole" to me. I've also had encounters with cops who like to throw their weight around in general, even with people who aren't doing anything illegal. So while I recognize the worthwhile service that cops perform and realize that they have a dangerous job, I also know that hotheads slip through the training process.

Failing to properly deal with persons with psychiatric disabilities and criminalizing disablities, is NOT a progressive view. What should be highlighted here, rather than justifying excessive force against a mentally ILL person, is the lack of training of police officers to deal with persons with pyschiatric disabilities.

snips

http://www.centerforpublicrep.org/page/78039;cat_id=768

In 1989, the Supreme Court held that municipalities could be liable for failure to properly train police officers, City of Canton v. Harris 489 U.S. 378 (1989 )(municipality only liable for failure to train officers if the failure to train reflects deliberate indifference to the constitutional rights of the inhabitants of the municipality). Again, different circuits have different standards for liability for failure to train, a claim that has also come up under the Americans with Disabilities Act (see below). Liability for the municipality in City of Canton v. Harris can be shown if “(1)the officers exceeded constitutional limitations on the use of force; (2) the use of force arose under circumstances that constitute a usual and recurring situation with which police officers must deal; (3) the inadequate training demonstrates a deliberate indifference on the part of the city toward persons with whom the police officers come into contact; and (4) there is a direct causal link between the constitutional deprivation and the inadequate training,” Zuchel v. City andCounty of Denver, 997 F.2d 730, 734-35 (10th Cir. 1993).

The leading case in the Sixth Circuit on failure to train, Russo v. City of Cincinnati, 953F.2d 1036 (6th Cir. 1992), points to the importance of expert testimony in establishing plaintiff's case, and holds that simply having a seven hour training at the police academy is insufficient to establish a defense as a matter of law.
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Much more attention has been paid to the “criminalization” of people with psychiatric disabilities than to police-involved deaths and injuries. But deaths and injuries are a major problem, as is the less visible trauma caused by many police encounters. Most of these deaths and injuries follow a predictable pattern and are preventable. Protection and Advocacy agencies can take a number of concrete and relatively simple steps to become involved with this issue, and areinvited to contact the Center for Public Representation for sample materials referred to above.

He wasnt a mentally ill person until hours afterwards when that info became known.
Mentally ill people don't walk around with "I'm mentally ill" nametags. DUH.