Debatable. Was he shooting AT these people? All I saw was him discharge it into the air in the video. Were people in danger? Yes. Was using his car to run up onto a yard in a neighborhood at 50mph the best course of action? Front what I’ve seen I don’t think it was. I think it was reckless and more harm than good could have been done than had someone taken a shot with a firearm.
I never said they should let him go about his way so don’t put words into my mouth to try to validate your point.
So which course stands a better chance of bringing the suspect’s actions (day long crime spree) to an end with the least chance of hurting people? Hitting him with the car (where there’s a chance someone might be struck by the vehicle but they’d have to be in the immediate area of the vehicle) or getting into a gunfight with the suspect (where multiple rounds are going to be traveling a lot faster and are harder to avoid than a car)?
And waiting for this perfect “sniper shot” is allowing the suspect to go about his way
Firearm safety 101…
Always be sure of your target and what is beyond it.
Beyond the suspect in the direction of travel of where the cops guns would have been pointed are what looks like a small business, a large office building, lots of parked cars… Probably lots of people as well…
And let’s be honest, these are cops with hand guns we are talking about. Not Delta SEAL marine force recon snipers with their MK12 MOD1 precision rifles ready to go.
If I was an on scene officer, who knew of his multiple felonies that day, I’d sure be concerned about him taking a quick left turn into one of those small homes/businesses (whatever they were on his left side). Now you have a home invasion type of scenario.
Exactly. Given the known sequence of events; including the reckless discharge of a firearm it’s not unreasonable to conclude that the guy was a clear threat to those around him. It’s also not unreasonable to suspect that if he gains access to one of those homes or other populated areas he would pose an immediate threat to life and limb. As such; the guy needed to be subdued ASAFP. To achieve that goal the officers had to make a choice. Put a dozen or so supersonic projectiles into the air or go to ramming speed. While not so common place I don’t think the officer chose poorly. What has more potential for collateral damage: dozens of rounds going down range or a car? Given the propensity for misses during a stressful event, the lack of a realistic one shot stop, possibility of pass through, ricochets and all sorts of other means by which a projectile can end up in someone other than this POS; I think the car was less dangerous.
So aiming a firearm (that you’ve qualified extensively with) at your intended target to neutralize a threat is reckless but ramming them with your car at 50mph onto front yards is not.
All those liberals have finally got to guys I’m afraid.
You need to get out of here with that voodoo logic that criminals commit crime and police officers arrest criminals!
M4C GD Policy states only LEOs are criminals. Everyone else is just misunderstood, man.
I have yet to say either option is reckless. You do have to weigh all the mitigating and aggravating factors (in a fraction of a second) and go with the less shitty choice
My point is the for several reasons I feel as though shooting is a less shitty choice. I won’t say it’s substantially better but from a control standpoint it is & in a residential area that better be a high priority.
Based on what we know about the incident, I believe that shooting at the suspect would have posed a greater danger to the public. A stray round can travel a great distance.
Officer who struck the perp was involved in an excessive force lawsuit while employed as police officer in NY. Charges were dropped.
Officer Michael Rapiejko was with the New York Police Department from 2003 to 2006. Two years after he left, he was one of the defendants in a suit filed by a man who alleged that Rapiejko pointed a gun and threatened to shoot him and handcuffed and choked him in front of his family during a 2005 arrest.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/16/us/arizona-police-run-over-suspect/index.html
7.62 -The case settled for 20,000, kind of an indication there was not much merit to it.
The City of Marana is 30,000+ so I’d be willing to bet they had patrol rifles. That would create less danger than a handgun, and an almost certainty of death to the subject. In this case the subject survived, although the force used was almost certainly not chosen to accomplish incapacitation without serious injury or death.
Jer - This was a rapidly evolving situation, the man had (reportedly) already threatened officers by pointing the weapon at them, he was approaching a business area where the likelihood of injury to bystanders would increase. He could easily have walked into a business and taken hostages or injured or killed occupants. Given the same fact situation, a rational calculation of the likelihood of this guy killing someone in the next 10 - 20 seconds (the minimum time it would take to the unit with a patrol rifle, take position and fire a well-aimed immediately incapacitating shot) is high.
Based on that, the most immediate way of ending this threat was the action this officer took. Granted he hit a fence, and there could have been someone by it, but with all the siren activity and units on the street, that was not very likely.
The courts have been cautious in second-guessing the actions of officers in rapidly evolving situations like this, in fact in the case of Graham v. Connor, the SCOTUS gives specific instructions as to how such cases are to be judged - from the perspective of the officer at the scene, having only the knowledge that the officer had at the time, not using 20/20 hindsight to judge the objective reasonableness of the officers actions.
It is also necessary to remind ourselves that this man had 1) robbed a 7-11; 2) committed aggravated arson by setting an occupied church on fire; 3) broken into a house and stolen a vehicle by force; 4) stolen a weapon, by force, from a Wal-Mart; 5) aimed said weapon at a police officer and then fired rounds into the air. He may be mentally disturbed, but that is a moot point, his clearly escalating actions give any sane person probable cause to believe he poses an immediate threat of death or great bodily harm unless he is arrested (seized) without delay. In such cases lethal force has always been justified.
Just my ‘expert’ opinion.
One thing to consider is that if the officers decide in this instance to engage with firearms they are not likely to be the only ones shooting. The felon is armed with his rifle, and on a 360 degree range likely cares very little about his backdrop. If none of the officers have a rifle or shotgun immediately available, handgun rounds are not likely to immediately incapacitate the suspect, and this will allow the suspect to potentially spray rifle rounds all over.
What is needed is a solution that provides a high likelihood of immediate incapacitation with a low chance of failure. By employing the cruiser, the officer used the vehicle to effect a tackle, so to speak, on the suspect. Now obviously, if you are going to tackle with a cruiser you have to meet the requirements for the use of deadly force. The cruiser offered a relatively high degree of protection for the officer and a low likelihood of missing due to the relative size of the cruiser compared to the intended target.
Would a single CNS shot provide the same effect? Absolutely. But if the officer misses, the situation escalates to a shootout. In this case, the vehicle strike likely stuns the suspect and the impact likely separates him from the weapon as well, removing his ability to engage officers.
And yes, I have had officers on my watch use vehicles against suspects with effective results.
Officer Rapiejko took decisive action and brought about a successful conclusion to a dynamic and fluid situation. Instead of holding back and “containing” and armed felon who just shot a round off, threatened suicide, and committed various felonious offenses the Officer took action to neutralize the subject so he could not duck into the business that were close by full of people and take hostages or commit an active shooter style attack.
I guess he was supposed to “hold back” and let the bastard enter one of those places and take hostages; maybe hours or even days later he would have thrown in the towel. What bewilders me is that folks are okay with the LEOs shooting the perp but not running him down with a squad car.
If you apply the same standard to the use of the car as you do to a weapon, he had no idea what was behind that wall when he attempted to drive the car (and the bad guy) though it.
I’m not entirely convinced that the same thing couldn’t have been accomplished at less than 30 miles per hour, while hitting the brakes as the vehicle hit the guy.
I think it’s easy to criticize this event after the fact. I’m in the should have shot the guy camp. But, we don’t know if they had rifles. Plus that could have not worked out and ended in a gun fight.
However, this time, the officers decision worked brilliantly. Who knows what was happening at the time during the action. Maybe the cop knew someone that lived on that street and said to himself, He IS NOT going further, this ends here.
OODA loop and associated theory says agility and maneuvering wins.
Shooting from a vehicle is hard. I’ve done it chasing pests on the farm. I’ve only done it from a truck. Best hope is rifle across your lap, turn at a 45 to the right, stop use the mirror our brace you arm and window sill. I imagine a car should be harder given less elevation to start with. Your 5-10 seconds to do this.
I’d say the this was this event ended in success, perp was subdued. Was it safe? Life is unsafe in general in my opinion. Agility and fast decision making wins the day, again. Violence of action is a quality all of its own.
Sucks for the guy who got his driveway wrecked. But better than a front yard shoot out, home invasion, and god knows what else this time.
I love how because I question the chosen method immediately people put words in my mouth about not acting at all and letting him continue his plans as if that’s what I’m saying. I’m merely saying that using his vehicle as he did in that situation wasn’t the wisest of decisions. Using your car in a similar manner on a highway or large parking lot is a different story. This is a residential area we’re talking about with 20’ set-backs from the street. If you’ve ever been in a vehicle that left the roadway at highway speeds you know that there is ZERO control involved and you are quite literally at the mercy of momentum & physics. To say that deploying firearms of ANY kind is more reckless than hurtling your car out of control TOWARDS homes and unknown backgrounds is parroting what anti-gun people have been selling about firearms and I refuse to believe this is in any way more effective in this situation. It just isn’t. If your argument about not using firearms is the background and yet somehow this magically is a non-issue when accelerating your cruiser to highway speeds at the threat in the exact same scenario then something is very wrong here.
In today’s anti-LE political climate, tell me what would have been the headline had there been two little girls coloring with chalk in the driveway the other side of that wall who were hiding behind that wall when the shots rang out. How would that exact same scenario have played out in the court of public opinion. God forbid they were girls of an ethnic race because it would have been unreal.
Now that you are actually thinking about what could have happened, tell me the exact actions of the officer and the precautions he took that prevented that from happening. If you can’t and it was all based on luck that’s entirely too high a price to put in the hands of dumb luck.
That’s my point.
People are giving you grief due to your repeated use of “reckless” to describe actions taken
“reck·less
ˈrekləs/Submit
adjective
(of a person or their actions) without thinking or caring about the consequences of an action.”
Given he didn’t know what was on the other side of that wall or when his vehicle (which was aimed at homes) would have come to a stop, you tell me what that choice was.
You can’t argue with results! Job got done, innocent people didn’t get hurt, and there wasn’t any drawn out standoff endangering officers/citizens. What officer coulda/shudda done or what happens because of it, he got the job done. And I’m thankful for it… The funny vid of low life getting run over is icing on the cake.