IF not, then I can’t imagine how the shooting was appropriate.
…
Police said an officer was on patrol when he spotted a man sitting on the sidewalk, whittling, and approached him.
The officer told the man to drop the knife several times, police said, but instead of doing so, he stood up. When the man refused to heed to his commands, the officer opened fire and hit the man.
The unidentified man was fatally injured. Nearby witnesses said they heard as many as five shots being fired.
“It was rapid succession of five or six shots, straight to the chest. It was point blank,” said one witness who wished to remain anonymous.
thats a pretty over-simplified version of what i heard-
the officer saw a bum (he was, and looked like, a bum- and it DOES made a difference) with a knife, whittling on a stick. knives over 3.5" are illegal in seattle, the officer intended to check the length. pulls over, begins walking toward the man… the man gets up with the knife in front of him, acting like he’s going to stab the officer… the officer was heard by witnesses ordering him to stand down several times, the man kept coming while holding the knife in an attack-like position, so the officer shot him a few times.
i don’t have a link… i could have read it anywhere, but i’m pretty sure that’s what the seattle times reported.
i have no opinion either way… we’re still preliminary, and it sounds like a good shoot so far.
That sheds a whole new light on the incident. Thanks for the details. I am pretty sure most here would open fire on a bum aggressively advancing with a knife.
At the risk of drifting this thread I found this part of the story absurd:
According to city code, it is unlawful for anyone to “carry concealed or unconcealed on his or her person any dangerous knife, or carry concealed on his or her person any deadly weapon other than a firearm.”
Just so I get this straight it’s ok to carry a concealed firearm but it is illegal to have an unconcealed knife greater than 3.5 inches? That makes perfect sense.:blink:
we often read articles like this and think, “well shit- i would have shot the fucker too.” but that ignores the whole part about cops roving loose in the world, fucking with people because they might be in violation of knife length laws.
“Furtive movement” is something that was beat into us in the Academy and something I have always kept in my consciousness whenever I was in uniform. I did so because I need to make sure that any movement I see is deliberate in its intent.
There has been a lot of folks killed because of this. But there has also been a lot of folks who committed “Suicide by Cop” with the help of furtive movements. It’s been pretty much their main means (primarily because “Shoot me!!” just wasn’t enough of an invitation to get shot).
Or maybe he was doing his job??? maybe a citizen called in on a homeless man sitting with a knife, maybe he was just going to check to see if he had warrants ???
The man stood up and advanced toward the officer, ignoring several “loud commands” to stop and drop the knife, Witt said.
and
About an hour after the shooting, an agitated, disheveled man walked up to the scene demanding to see his “street brother,” apparently referring to the dead man.
“I want to see my street brother for the last time,” the man shouted at officers.
As he became increasingly agitated, officers asked him to step back onto the sidewalk.
At least one officer drew his gun. When the man appeared to pull an object from his pocket, officers wrestled him to the ground and handcuffed him. He was taken away in a patrol car.
Let me throw in my .02 cents here. I used to live north of Seattle and was a bail bondsman there for 4 years. I know this area well and there is a lot of street trash around. Homelessness, pan handling and other problems are rampant (at least during the time I was there).
The homeless people can be very aggressive in that area. I have seen them harrass people while pan handling to the point where they were scared not to give money.
Several years back there was a retired fire captain from Seattle who was stabbed to death by a homeless man near the Kingdome.
In addition several years back there was a homeless guy that used to wander the area with a duffle bag. Inside it was samurai sword that he carried around. I commented to a SPD officer once that I didn’t understand how he could just wander around like that considering the city’s moronic ban on fixed blade knives and knives over 3.5" (another thing to remember is that the laws vary from county to county and city to city). His response was that he was harmless. That was until he wigged out and started acting out on a street corner during rush hour traffic. That prompted the SPD SWAT team and fire dept. being called out and traffic being backed up for around 4 hours. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtRgweQxXi8)
He was finally taken into custody. I believe that he was also declared mentally incompetent.
So not sure what to make of this incident. The officer may well have been justified or he could have overreacted. From what I remember about Seattle they seem to have a fairly thorough review process and I wouldn’t see that he’ll just walk away. They are fairly liberal there.
I think the primary lesson here is don’t believe everything you read in the newspaper - there’s usually a lot more to the story than what gets printed initially. I’d be willing to bet that the “homeless” guy wasn’t whittling with a boy scout jack knife or he wouldn’t have attracted all that attention in the first place.
BS laws and jokes about bringing a knife to a gunfight aside, a person armed with a knife is nothing to sneer at, they can do a lot of damage if they know what they’re doing. You can’t react faster than someone can act.
