Yeah that was very rough. Reminded me of the incident in Niger. Someone needs to post the link to the cartel **** getting lit up. I hope my wife and daughter never have to see me in something like that, I can’t imagine what its like for those that do.
Honestly, I think most competent shooters, if they were inclined, could probably get the drop on most LEOs in a straight up, no warning ambush like the above. LEOs are not on 24 hour “ready alert” to engage in gunfights. You can’t live like that and if you tried, there would be an astonishing number of unsupported shootings by law enforcement because most people who make regular contact with law enforcement are just f’ing stupid and do stupid shit all the time, only realization that many people are just f’ing stupid and a basic level of restraint keeps hundreds of people (who aren’t criminally dangerous) from being killed by police every year.
And it’s a hard goddamn balance. Too much and your career is over and you are facing charges, fines and jail time and too little and you are attending your own funeral. This wasn’t a case like the GA cop who made so many errors it was cringe worthy, this was a guy who knew probably 5 seconds into the contact that he was gonna execute this cop and did almost nothing to tip his hand.
I would probably bet the first thing on Jarrotts mind is “he’s gonna run.”
Not disagreeing but I’m pinning this on the feds. They were 30 seconds out. Really smells like a setup. Feds are incompetent bastards
Much respect to the fallen.
I have a lot of respect for cops because they really seem to have the odds stacked against them.
Incompetent people don’t win almost everytime.
Yes, and no. You mitigate certain risks, place yourself in positions of advantage, and control what you control. This officer did none of those things. He died because he did not practice basic officer safety on traffic stops. There were so many points that the risks could have been mitigated, but never eliminated.
I’ve been doing this job long enough to recognize that if anybody wanted to kill me, all it would take is creativity or chance. I control what I can control to mitigate those chances, but every door I’ve ever breached could have easily had an AK on the other end of it. You have to treat every traffic stop like it could be this one, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be polite, kind, and respectful.
I just can’t figure out why he didn’t wait for cover to get the guy out of the car.
Here’s the thing, let’s say YOU pull ME over and I’ve got a SIG on my hip and what looks exactly like a M4 on the seat next to me only it’s actually an airsoft because I was running indoor drills in my friends basement.
Are you gonna go Defcon 2 on me? I haven’t done anything wrong yet, but from your perspective I’m probably pinging everything hard. But if you draw on me, I’m going to be very upset and you’ll probably hear a lot about it later.
Like I said, it’s a hard goddamn balance and even you acknowledge if somebody wants to they can set up on you in ways where you realistically don’t have a chance. Maybe there were things Jarrott could have done differently that might have changed things but that’s maybe’s and might’s and he still might have ended up dead.
I didn’t see any big “OMG that’s just wrong” things, I didn’t see anything that struck me as “he’s gonna get himself killed doing it like that”, I mostly just saw a guy who wasn’t given enough information and wasn’t given much of a chance.
The fact that “the Feds” apparently directed him to do a “ordinary stop” already put him at a mental disadvantage because they clearly didn’t indicate that he should exercise any kind of additional caution.
You say that. But you can do absolutely everything right and still die.
I suppose that’s why I never really look forward to the future very much.
Cancer, Coronary, Crash, or Capped. I’m sure at least one of these will happen to me eventually on a long enough timeline.
My greatest fear is actually living to be elderly. I don’t think I would survive it
If I don’t kill your ass, then you’ll eventually get over it if I shove a gun in your face and advise you to cooperate like yer life depended on it.
But your scenario is a word problem that could be perpetually “What if’d” and caveated.
The Trooper knew he was in over his head but was bullshitted like most State Troopers into not knowing when to roll off so he stuck to his little dialogue tree and ritual.
You gotta be able to see, hear, vibe, smell, and just feel a stop. I stopped a dude years ago coming back from a machine gun shoot with all kindsa UZIs, Stens, and he was wearing Camo. We nerded out for a spell and I cur him loose. He had enough hardware and ammo to raid Saipan. But he had a good aura.
Then there was this one guy with some hidden mouse gun who just gave me a vibe. Warrants, dope, the whole nine.
It’s the Second Sight. Like what they call Samadhi. You cannot learn it nor teach it.
Ol buddy didn’t have it and he got killed
Honestly if anybody hears my words, if you catch a vibe you cannot explain and have no immediate back up; just let them go or just leave and drive off.
You actually can do that
Of course my awareness would be extremely heightened if I pulled you over and you had a pistol and rifle. I will do what I can to mitigate risk without being unprofessional. So, I’ll likely stay behind the pillars, I may call for a cover car, and I’ll ask that you don’t touch your guns. I’ll talk to you in a nice conversational tone and I’ll show you respect, but I will also be mentally prepared for the possibility that you may want to grab one of those guns. But, I won’t show. Now, if you started to exhibit aggression, intoxication, or made furtive movements, I’d wait til a cover officer arrived and then ask you to step out the car until the stop ended. Obvious bad guy with guns is a far different scenario than obvious good guys with guns. You guys can twist that and tear me apart for it all you want, but homie with face tats and an AR will likely be asked to exit the vehicle, where as a gentleman of any color that gives off a good guy vibe won’t be.
I pull over tons of lawfully armed folks, as long as I set myself up for success, I can be cool as a cucumber throughout the stop because I know I have my bases covered.
You may not see any “OMG” things about his stop, but that’s because we have different experiences. Passenger side approaches are safe for highway stops, and allow you to see alot of the inside of the car. They can still be done behind a pillar; offset from the driver, causing the driver to crane his neck to talk to you. This makes it much harder for a suspect to shoot from their seat. If he wanted the driver out of the vehicle, he should’ve remained at the window, engaging the driver in conversation/running a clearance via radio if possible, until cover arrived. Then, and only then, should he have moved to the driver side and then asked him to exit while the cover officer provided security.
Had he waited for cover, he would likely have survived. Had he been on the driver side when asking the driver to exit he would have likely survived. He got complacent, and complacency kills. In this line of work, we debrief relentlessly and pick apart videos like this all the time. We don’t do it to monday morning QB or denigrate the fallen, we do it so we can learn from the incident and get better. The officer made mistakes that cost him his life.
There is no “ordinary stop” if you condition yourself to live with a heightened sense of awareness. Treat everyone with respect and kindness, but never treat any situation as routine or ordinary.
Like I said, it’s a hard goddamn balance and even you acknowledge if somebody wants to they can set up on you in ways where you realistically don’t have a chance. Maybe there were things Jarrott could have done differently that might have changed things but that’s maybe’s and might’s and he still might have ended up dead.
But thats not how that works. If a boxer gets knocked out because he dropped his hands and absorbed a left hook, we can attribute his loss to dropping his hands. We can say that if he had kept his hands up, he would not have been knocked out by that left hook and would have had a fighting chance to win the match. We don’t know if the boxer would have eventually won, but we know that had he kept his hands up, the knockout would not have occurred and the fight would’ve continued. Thats what we see know. An officer that let his guard down and an opponent who took advantage of that.
No, I totally agree. I do my best to mitigate risk and control what I can, but I am alive today because I am lucky, not because I am good.
Ok, so I’ve had the polite discourse with an LE when I was rolling a MP5 on the passenger seat. I was calm and knew how to talk to cops without freaking them out and he was an experienced officer who quickly understood I wasn’t actually a threat.
I’m glad you know what I’m talking about but at the same time if you drew on me, I’m going to remain calm and collected but still consider it very impolite and it will be taken up at a later time. I’ve been through that twice and while nobody got shot on one occasion I did make an issue out of it later, because the guy was really, really wrong about a few things and needed to know.
So obviously we don’t want to do 10 pages and I bolded the most important part of your statement. I completely agree with “cover your bases” and other due diligence but sometimes you need to work without a net because somebody is just retarded but they aren’t being a legit threat (or you are 90% positive they aren’t a legit threat).
I think the three of us are mostly on the same page but just looking at it from different sides. While not directed to you, lots of cops find fault with the actions of some LEO who just got shot on YT as a way to self reinforce “can’t happen to me, he made a mistake, I won’t do that” and while that validation is important and helps keep you on your toes I still stop shot of “Jarrott did something wrong” because I personally believe he was set up in a bad place without sufficient information by reprehensible assholes who didn’t want to do their own job.
I think you guys both keyed in on a point where Jarrott realized “something’s wrong” but it was too late and he didn’t have time to process to “this guy is going to try and kill me right now” before it actually started happening.
And I hope I’m not coming across too hard like I’m debating you, this one just really pissed me off. The first time I saw it, I sorta had a sick feeling for a couple minutes and that’s rare these days. Last time I got that from a video was probably the Daniel Pearl video and if you don’t know what it is already don’t go looking for it.
Question for the law enforcement here: I know that DHS didn’t give this poor trooper enough intel, but when DHS asks you to initiate a stop, wouldn’t that set off alarm bells? As in, don’t treat this stop casually in any way, shape, or form? I don’t think the trooper did treat it casually, but neither did he seem to be trying to control the situation. Was he trying to get the driver to drop his guard?
And what was the reason for trying to get him out of the car? Or was that part of the plan from DHS.
Sent from 80ms in the future
I say this not trying to sound douchey but I would rather get complained on rather than be paralyzed with a colostomy or dead. I’m at a point in life where complaints don’t register with me (not that I get complained on really).
Without veering into “what if” territory, you can kinda suss out the difference between someone just hauling a gun versus someone up to no good.
And Again without my words being used as a template for any What If: Choose Your Own Adventure mental extrapolation, I say this:
If I am not 100% on someone armed, I would rather ask them out of the vehicle where I am at the advantage and can see everything with a positive reaction gap. At the first sign of non-compliance then I am egressing while drawn or I am going to close and shove a gun in his face. A legitimate honest person will understand. A dishonest person realizes he is losing his advantage and will show his cards.
It’s Art and Science. There’s not always a concrete answer. Only a broadly worded statute, perhaps case law, and a policy.
Side of the road is no place to argue or be Rosa Parks.
That said, I’ve let people be actively holstered up with whatever guns in their vehicle because you can tell they were shooting or hunting or whatever dumb shit they were doing.
If I see or smell weed or liquor or a beaten up woman or child or somebody giving me the “oh shit oh shit” stare; then I’m probably not going to be so liberal about it.
Same if a person is sizing me up. That’s absolutely a fast track to gun in face time. If I see someone wanting to try their cowboy hand or staring at my gun then I will gladly give them a closer look.
The Cartel guy was obviously sizing this trooper up and the trooper knew it but still went along like it was Leroy with a Dimebag.
None of you know just how many police officers seriously don’t believe someone will actually kill them. The bodycam on his corpse is giving you a Body eye view of what it’s like to be dead. You’re just waste at that point.
I won’t lie and say my life cosmically matters. It doesn’t and most likely I’m going to Hell. But it is my life and there is a principle at play here so you’re gonna have to work for it if you wanna kill me
It most certainly would and they would be told to get fcked. Cartel knows a “tint meter” stop is find a fish BS and that he was getting moved on.
Everybody knew what was going to happen but the trooper until he was past the point of no return.
And I wouldn’t want you to get killed or crippled either. I think we both have a “don’t show me yours and I won’t show you mine” understanding.
Like I said, been through it twice. Once really bothered me because it was all wrong, the other didn’t bother me because I quickly got on the same page and we moved passed.
Btw, last time I starred at a cops gun was because she was rolling a really old Beretta with wooden grips and I hadn’t seen that in a long time. She probably thought I was checking out her ass. Normally it’s just a quick glance “Ugh, Glock…man you need to step up to something better.” Anyone still rolling 1911s get’s a “nice sidearm” comment.
Lets see if his command staff raises a stink about the feds who got him killed.
Lets see if his fellow officers stage a walk out or do anything to try hold the feds responsible.
Lets see if those 2 feds get fired for gross incompetence.
I bet they wont.
After 4 pages you are the only one mentioning trying to hold the feds who served him up responsible. Looks like you are one of the few people who gets it. All the useless outrage “OMG he shot him point blank in the head, OH THE HORROR!!!” isnt going to do anything. All the videos of the cartels chopping people up and melting faces off with a blow torch and people still don’t understand that animals are going to do what animals are going to do.
I don’t like “what ifs” because you can always argue into something that’s unwinnable anyway so I’ll just say that almost everyone I encounter in the field is armed, usually handguns and often concealed but often with longarms (sometimes more than one) as well and not just during hunting season. I have never gone Defcon 2 simply because I saw a firearm. I’d be lying, tho, if I said it made no matter because the fact is I don’t know YOU or your intentions off the get-go.
Most of the time I end up just talking about gun nerd stuff for a minute and then we’re all friends.
Also, airsoft gun or not, if it looks like a M4 then that’s how it will be seen.
Ummmm HELLO.
Post 16:
That DHS had a local officer initiate a stop with no warning of what he was dealing with is so negligent I don’t know where to start. Heads need to roll.
Post 18:
It needs to be the main focus in my opinion. Sure as shit the current administration is gonna focus on the firearm used, but this is worse than Fast and Furious (where ATF lost track of firearms deliberately provided to drug cartels, one of which was used to murder a border patrol officer), in this case it very much seems that DHS blindly walked this officer into his own death and could have orchestrated events in such a way where they directly participated in the traffic stop / first contact and provided direct support but chose not to.
This might be the worst thing I have ever seen.
Your comment about state and local LE enforcing federal law notwithstanding, I think the real take away is state and local LE can no longer simply trust federal law enforcement for anything. Everyone involved in this operation from the top down to the guys who were only “minutes away” need to be investigated, fired and sentenced.