A gun-toting Brooklyn bandit dodged more than 80 police bullets early Friday in a wild street shootout that began with a botched armed robbery and ended with his arrest, officials said.
Oft-apprehended Jerrol Harris, 27, was busted around 1:10 a.m. when a single bullet — out of 84 fired at him — pierced his calf to end a blocks-long police pursuit through Bushwick, cops said.
That’s a lot of rounds fired, but I would like to know more about the incident before being critical of the police involved. A running fight is not like shooting on a static range.
Seems like NYPD has a number of these incidents - remember the Empire State Building street incident a year ago?
It’s not totally a surprise for a city and state where legal handgun ownership is extremely difficult, and few if any of the good guys grow up around guns and having a chance to learn how to shoot. Obviously it also shows a lack of training and standards, because even starting with people who have no background (like in the UK) with enough training you could still get to a high skill level.
Ahhh, the criticism from people who have CLEARLY never been in a gunfight of any sort. Things don’t happen like they do at your indoor range guys, sorry. Cover, concealment, range, number of shooters, speed of pursuit, length of foot pursuit, visibility conditions, etc all come into play.
You’ve got to admit that is a lot of lead being thrown around in the streets with an exceptionally poor hit ratio and NYPD seems to do it pretty regularly. I’ve never shot a Glock with their lame trigger setup but I’m sure that doesn’t help matters. In any event there are plenty of cops that know how to shoot well. Case in point: http://bearingarms.com/austin-mounted-police-officer-dropped-homegrown-terrorist-312-feet-one-shot/
I have. In a very extreme and dynamic situation. So I’ll use my experience to echo what others are saying. Don’t spray the city with rounds that aren’t hitting! If you can’t think clearly and make good decisions in extreme situations, then you have no business doing it as a profession. NYPD has a SERIOUS problem with its firearm standards. I don’t give a shit what the logistical challenges are for a department that big, they need to figure it out. The consequences for failure are way too high not to put more emphasis on it.
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You also might want to consider the difficulty in ensuring that 33,000 officers have a modicum of marksmanship ability to begin with, much less maintain that ability.
Thats alot of lead flying, and alot of liability. However, having been there myself , its easy to say WTF…I was involved in a shooting in 2001, fired 3 rounds from a G21 at a dirtbag who cranked off 6 rounds at me.(Shot the hell out of my cruiser, but nothing connected with me;)) Anyway distance was only about 10 ft and 2 of my rounds totally missed…And I consider myself a “gun guy”. With the adrenaline pumping, its not so easy. I dont even remember seeing my sights.
“Let’s give our cops a trigger that is hard to pull, it will reduce accident discharges, they just won’t be able to hit shit when they need to.” Great thought process, typical admin/lawyer bullshit with opposite results and unintended consequences.
Agreed. As much as I think that in many of these situations the cops need to stop firing and rethink there approach, the true blame lies with the department heads and admin.
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What has always kind of tripped my trigger about big city versus little city/rural cop thing is that, in my experience, the latter generally know more about the law and general tactics, than the former. For example, on the NYPD ‘stop talk and frisk’ thing that was in the news a while back, very few of the NYPD officers, or retired NYPD officers, active on forums could discuss (or seemed inclined to discuss) the Constitutional issues. Seems to me if you were a righteous, professional cop, you wouldn’t be taking action that violates the rights of citizens.
Maybe NYPD needs to trade their pistols in for semi-auto-only pistol-caliber carbines.
That being said, even in Heat (a fictional movie, but one often beloved of gun guys) the good guys fired hundreds of rounds - mostly with long guns - and hit their targets, what, three times?
I would have just thrown my nightstick at his legs and tripped him to the ground. Cuffed and stuffed in 5 minutes. You just have to practice. Sometimes I put in 4 or more hours throwing my nightstick at the heavy bag so I’ll be prepared for action.
I am not defending the officers involved in this situation and I won’t criticize them without sufficient information about the incident. Can anyone provide specifics about the background behind the suspect when the shots were fired? I cannot.
Training and budget considerations are always an issue with LEO agencies. If their department had a yearly budget to purchase 7 to 8 million rounds and the materials necessary to maintain at least minimal proficiency, there is no guarantee an officer is going to hit a suspect, especially if the suspect is firing at them. Firing discipline is important, but if you wait for the perfect shot you’ll never shoot.
I’ll maintain a neutral position on this incident until more information is available.
Actually they hit most of the cops. Different scenario though. The full auto suppress and maneuver methods used in heat are a military based tactic used more for being able to move under fire more so than for eliminating the enemy. One of the best attributes of full auto is the ability to keep constant pressure on the target so it stays pinned. If it moves it dies, if it stays put you can move much more freely (for what end is entirely situation dependent). The purpose of a firearm for law enforcement is to eliminate a lethal threat. LEO’S need to focus on as high of a hit percentage as possible, the extreme reduction of collateral damage, and high lethality. In order for LE to stop the threat effectively, they need to focus heavily on killing /stopping the threat as quickly as possible. Civilians have far more in common with LE than military in terms of SD rules and requirements.
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