The cops shooting vs hits percentages are improving!

[kmitch200]

-The man killed by a former co-worker on a Manhattan sidewalk Friday was shot five times in the head, the New York Medical Examiner's office said Sunday.

That certainly makes a statement. Kinda strong for "Go away, I don't like you", but different people express themselves in different ways.

[Solus]

I read a statistic recently, not verified, that a lone police officer has about a 50% hit rate. 

When more than one officer is involved in the shooting the combined rate drops down into the low 20's.

(as I recall the numbers were close to that-  I read the statistic in an email from Tim Schmidt of USCCA)

[Magoo541]

There were ten hits on the perp if I remember. Those are pretty good hit percentages, is that 120 or 125%?

    

This isn't voting in NYC this is shots fired, of which only 100% count.  And 10 out of 16 is only 62.5% and not all on the bad guy as stated before.

[DGF]

What are the rules of engagement in a situation like this? How much collateral damage does law enforcement consider acceptable? Although no-one will know, it appears to me this was suicide by cop and the cops obliged. We could  have had nine inocent citizen fatalities. Yes they were just wounded, but that is not by anything but random luck. Rolling the dice as those cops did could have easily resulted in 9 fatalities not including the bad guy.

I would think that in big cities this situation would be a fairly common occurrence. Aren't police trained to hold their fire until they have a clear shot? It it had been a legal CC citizen in that situation and he had shot collaterally nine people, what would be the outcry? What charges would he be facing?

[alfsauve]

Another possible scenario (other than suicide) is that the perp was just going to hand over the gun and surrender.

Not that the cops would know that, nor would I want to have to make a split second decision myself.

[Sponsor]

[DGF]

It seems to me that the split second decision to be made was "I can't shoot, I'll hit innocent civilians".

[Solus]

It seems to me that the split second decision to be made was "I can't shoot, I'll hit innocent civilians".

I'm sure we all have realized that should be become involved in a self defense gun fight that one advantage the bad guy has is that he will not be at all concerned about hitting bystanders because he doesn't intend to or expect to be facing the consequences for that.

Unfortunately it is often the case where the police do not expect to be facing severe consequences for accidentally shooting bystanders.  Way to many times we have seen the police face very small consequences for intentionally shooting an innocent suspect.

The statistic I posted earlier might show that a single officer involved in a gun fight is focused on the job at hand...surviving the fight and taking out the bad guy.

When more than one officer is involved, it seems it might be devolving into a pigeon shoot.

[DGF]

I believe that the only reasonable decision is to not shoot when in that situation. It has nothing to do with percentages. The decision is only, shoot or not shoot. We have come to expect policemen to be lousy shots, that is a given. Consequently they can only discharge their weapons when innocents are not in the line of fire no matter the danger to themselves. Since when do policemen get to sacrifice  innocent civilians, women or children, to save their own butt?

[alfsauve]

Now just to lay out the flip side of this:

The responding officers, at best, knew the perp had shot and killed someone.   They had no way of knowing it was a targeted shooting and for all they knew, he was about to start shooting more people, not just at them.    What may have been in the balance is how many people will he kill before he's stopped him later verses how many will we hit if we fire immediately.   

Maybe they did or didn't go through that thought process, but they took the later course.   9 innocents were injured, but we'll never know how many lives they might have saved.

Not taking sides, just presenting another view.

[DGF]

The operative words in that flip side senario are " They had no way of knowing....". What they did know is that when you discharge your weapon in a crowd the chances are extremely good that you will hit innocents maybe kill them. As much as people would like to make excuses for these policemen, they were wrong. NYPD will probably give them a medal though just to make it look good. I believe they were just trying to save their own butts and damn the civilians.