Thursday, October 23, 2014
This is what cops deal with...
Time to balance the scales.
I've been trashing police and the militarization that I see in their forces for at least the last few months if not the last year. But just because I see them heading in a stupid direction doesn't mean that they don't deal with real issues.
The above video is a case in point.
Is it possible that if the cop that was providing slack to the one that approached the car didn't tackle the woman that we would see headlines blasting the fact that cops shot and killed an older woman?
Yeah we would have.
But the kicker is that this short video, at least to me, show that a shooting would have been totally justified. Additionally the officer doing the tackling did not react properly to this situation! He placed himself in danger and a by the book response would have been for him to draw his weapon and fire.
Why?
Because the lady made a slashing motion...in effect she attempted to kill a police officer. Her surviving this encounter is really an act of God and extremely restrained law enforcement.
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He may have thought the other two cops would be in his line of fire.
ReplyDeleteStanding so close and being at her back makes the tackle a good option. He's nailed her hard a lot quicker than he might have drawn his weapon, shouted a warning, tried to miss his colleagues and so on. I'm also guessing he's got a lot of muscle memory from his old school football days!
"By the book"? Just because you can doesn't always mean you should.
totally agree about the book. but i would bet money that a defensive tactics instructor wouldn't advise any cop to tackle a person with a knife. you have to remember the book isn't just something to tell you how to do it but also a shield against liability.
DeleteThis is from an episode from COPS. The officer tackles her and she falls on her knife. When they roll her over, she has the kitchen knife embedded up to the hilt in her chest.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.break.com/video/cop-tackles-crazy-lady-with-knife-304075
which goes to my liability statement. the public outcry would probably be intense but legally he'd be better in court if he had shot her rather than tackled her.
Deletedoesn't matter though. the incident was caught on tape and i'm sure they won't face criminal charges...i'm not sure about civil though.
Damn she was faster than a hungry Zombie!
ReplyDeleteThey barely had time to react.
Kitchen knife?
Looked like a K-Bar to me!
Sol I can say I have been in at least 5 incidents that now that I have learned more I probably would have shot them instead of what happened. Through my academy we were taught the way the city wanted officers to handle things for liability and public perception reasons. Now that I have been through some federal and state funded schools I am just glad the times I could have shot went as they did and neither myself or a partner didn't get stabbed or shot due to my actions.
ReplyDeleteI know the higher ups think about the city and the departments image and liability over individual officers safety, but I have a family to go home to and I'm not worried about the department heads being pissed. All I care about is making it home and doing it legally.