Various moving parts to this one to unpack, but it’s a good example of how pistol rnds in duty loads are poor man stoppers and the psych aspect matters. He’s unphased by taking two center mass almost point blank to the chest and brain and body react well after he could have pulled a gun, knife etc. She did not do a mag dump on him.
Noting the position of the body cam, either she’s a tiny little person, or he’s a giant, or both. You get a sense of her size (height and girth…) by body cam of partner running up. She went right to lethal force. Would a large male LEO have done that? I don’t expect her to get into a wrestling match with the guy no, but I question the wisdom of then having a tiny physically defenseless person working alone as an LEO. This man (vet?) obviously suffering serious mental illness. Did he have to go out like that?
I was not there, not going to throw her under the buss and pretend I’d have taken him down with a leg sweep and all that ninja BS, but I feel there’s legit Qs to ask there:
Did she follow UOF SOP of the PD? I don’t know. He could just as well have rushed her, taken her gun, and killer her with it after the 2 shots before he died, which has happened, hence why the “shoot until the threat is no longer a threat” SOP developed.
Did she follow UOF SOP of the PD? I don’t know. He could just as well have rushed her, taken her gun, and killer her with it after the 2 shots before he died, which has happened, hence why the “shoot until the threat is no longer a threat” SOP developed.
Police Officers should be able to safely work alone and engage in physical confrontations when needed, furthermore they should have the judgment to disengage when extra help is needed.
If you are too small to work safely alone, you should not be allowed to be a police officer.
Simply being small does not give one a license to kill.
Police Officers should be able to safely work alone and engage in physical confrontations when needed, furthermore they should have the judgment to disengage when extra help is needed.
If you are too small to work safely alone, you should not be allowed to be a police officer.
Simply being small does not give one a license to kill.
I do not have a YouTube account and cannot watch the video.
Handguns are terrible at stopping people. A Chicago Police Officer that participated in the Northwest Suburban Pistol League told us of an account where his handgun did not stop the suspect. He was at handshake distance, took a 1911 and placed two rounds of .45 ACP +P 185g JHP into the sternum of a suspect, then the suspect ran away. The suspect ran several blocks before he lost enough blood to make him collapse.
I do not have a YouTube account and cannot watch the video.
Handguns are terrible at stopping people. A Chicago Police Officer that participated in the Northwest Suburban Pistol League told us of an account where his handgun did not stop the suspect. He was at handshake distance, took a 1911 and placed two rounds of .45 ACP +P 185g JHP into the sternum of a suspect, then the suspect ran away. The suspect ran several blocks before he lost enough blood to make him collapse.
Reminds me of a trauma we ran once, guy tried to kill himself by shooting himself in the chest, a .32 if I recall. First shot did not work. Neither did the second. He was talkative and hemodynamically stable. A shot to the heart or aorta, yeah, game over, in a hot second. But there’s a a lot of vital territory you can miss for sure.
Reminds me of a trauma we ran once, guy tried to kill himself by shooting himself in the chest, a .32 if I recall. First shot did not work. Neither did the second. He was talkative and hemodynamically stable. A shot to the heart or aorta, yeah, game over, in a hot second. But there’s a a lot of vital territory you can miss for sure.
Society has deemed that police departments can/t discriminate against people because of their race, sex, size, weight, etc. That allows people to enter the field when they are small and unable to physically control people of average size. I dealt with these issues for many years while working in the LE field and you would not believe the issues we encountered. Complaints against any of those officers became issues of discrimination and we quickly learned we had to keep our mouths shut to keep our jobs. Many of the small stature individuals were injured, many only slightly but they received full medical retirement pensions for the remainder of their lives. That is about all I am willing to share at this point.
You’re not exposing info those in LE or those who know/work with, LE are not aware of. We all know the realities of it I suspect. What do you think of how she handled that event specifically?
I had a friend take a .25 auto to the chest and seriously put hard hands all over the guy who shot him. He actually drug his assailant through the coals of a campfire during the fight.
He wasn’t a big Guy, not an athlete, just a normal guy.
Broke up a good bonfire though.
I had a friend take one to the chest, and he too beat the guy into a pulp. He was a big guy with lots of muscle, so it didn’t get passed his pec muscles. He was not a gun guy but from his description and hole I saw, I figured .25 or .32. Guy tried to mug him in Vegas. Who tries to rob a huge muscular guy with a mouse gun and not expect to get a serous beat down? Per common report, he said he didn’t even know he’d been shot until he saw some blood.
Id like to hear her articulation of the situation. It seems like she has some avanues to explain the need for legal force… size difference, maybe the initial attack injured/disabled her that we can’t see on the bodycam?
But I definitely would not want to be in her shoes explaining this one. I give it a 50/50 chance of indictment at this point. Barring any extra info.
Her articulation will be there was a big size disparity, he was being aggressive verbally, he attacked her, he pressed on, she warned him repeatedly she’d shoot him if he didn’t stop, and he did not follow those commands. How does that fit with their UOF? I don’t know.
She’s a little tiny Spanish woman, he was a big burly bearded white guy who said mean things to her. I think you know where the math will land on that one in these modern times. Unless some family member of his pushes as to the justification for lethal force in that event, I’m doubting anything will happen to her.
He’s a big ass dude, and she’s a tiny little woman. Society dictates what departments can and can’t do. They hire small people, don’t provide them with quality training, and send them out solo…oh well, what do you want? And they do it for close to minimum wage. This guy didn’t need to die, HOWEVER California severely limits force options for police. They have the tools, but aren’t allowed to use them. Until we collectively want to un**** ourselves and our priorities, and demand government does the same, this will continue to happen. Combine that with flooding the streets with the mentally ill, and tolerating their behavior, its going to keep happening.
I will provide a few of my opinions of the video recorded shooting based upon my background and training. Many things in LE are based upon the officer mindset and there is more than one way to handle a call. I might handle it one way and others might handle it another but that does not mean that either of us are wrong. Officers deal with individuals larger than themselves on a frequent basis and my opinions in this are not based up the sex of the officer. We all have different physical abilities and have to learn how to deal with our individual physical limitations.
This was not an emergency call but the nature of the call would cause more than one car to be dispatched to the scene. The officer should have waited for a second officer to arrive before she initiated contact with the individual.
The female officer briefly attempted to verbally deescalate the situation but she quickly lost control and allowed him to take mental control of her and the situation. She exercised poor officer safety skills and never told him to take his hands out of his pockets. His verbal statements showed he was a threat to her and she could not know if he was armed with a weapon.
She approached the individual but should have maintained much greater distance between herself and the individual. The individual displayed signs of mental illness and that should have provided her increased levels of concern and caused her to increase her distance since she was way too close in distance.
She exercised a poor level of physical skill when the individual grabbed her and she became extremely stressed by the physical encounter.
She should not have been that close to allow personal contact and she did not follow proper arrest control techniques upon being grabbed.
She should have established a much greater distance between herself and the individual, who clearly established he was a threat to her and others in his words and physical behavior.
The officer appeared to panic after she was grabbed and her decision-making process was affected by her panic.
She had many options to break contact and obtain greater distance, even if she had to break and run away, but she was mentally overwhelmed and didn’t know how to react to the situation.
She did not try to deploy any less lethal force such as gas or a baton. Less lethal options are mandatory in every agency that I have dealt with in the last 30 years and can’t imagine she didn’t have less lethal force training and options at her disposal.
Her panic caused her to over react and draw her firearm and threaten the offender. She could have deescalated the situation by breaking contact, running away if she needed to, and waiting for the arrival of additional officers. The situation was escalated by her decision to draw her firearm.
She continued in her panic driven mind set and threatened to “kill” him and to shoot him.
The individual did not back down or back away but he did not charge or increase his level of intensity as he was challenged at gun point. He did not indicate he had a weapon and did not display a weapon. He maintained his pace as she was backing away and the distance between them did not change.
I did not see anything that caused her to fire but she lost her ability to think clearly due to her overwhelming stress level and panic.
She made a decision to shoot the offender as he continued to approach her as she was backing away. She fired her first shot but it did not stop the offender’s behavior and she fired a second shot three to four seconds after her first shot. The individual changed his course of movement and he walked away after the second shot was fired.
The officer maintained her distance as the individual walked away and the officer called shots fired to dispatch.
Thanx for the breakdown. I’d think (hope) her actions at least lead to a hard review by her response to that event. On #9, I don’t want be on of those “she could have just whacked him in the knee with her baton or shot him in the knee” derpa derps having not been in her position, but no attempt to employ what non lethal options she had given the fact patterns you outline, seems questionable.