Unlimited Ferguson Thread of police state nightmare fuel.

[Raz Tech]

Whatever happened to shooting to incapacitate?  Wouldn't a bullet in the lower leg down most people, without killing them?

That can be considered intent to maim, which would (ironically?) land you in hotter water than "proper" use of deadly force.

[hooplala]

Whatever happened to shooting to incapacitate?  Wouldn't a bullet in the lower leg down most people, without killing them?

Police are not trained to shoot to incapacitate.

That should probably change.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

The biggest problem I see with the way they handled the situation is getting out of the car with guns already drawn.  That kind of escalates things, so it might have been better to wait until they had a better idea of the situation.

That's a good point.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Whatever happened to shooting to incapacitate?  Wouldn't a bullet in the lower leg down most people, without killing them?

Police are not trained to shoot to incapacitate.

That should probably change.

We could maybe hire Roy Rogers.   

Hitting anything with a pistol in an actual event is extremely difficult.  You get tunnel vision, numbed extremities, etc.  So you shoot center mass (ie, the chest).  You try to hit an arm or a leg, you miss, and the bullet goes down the street looking to make new friends.

[hooplala]

Whatever happened to shooting to incapacitate?  Wouldn't a bullet in the lower leg down most people, without killing them?

Police are not trained to shoot to incapacitate.

That should probably change.

We could maybe hire Roy Rogers.   

Hitting anything with a pistol in an actual event is extremely difficult.  You get tunnel vision, numbed extremities, etc.  So you shoot center mass (ie, the chest).  You try to hit an arm or a leg, you miss, and the bullet goes down the street looking to make new friends.

Oh right... physics...

[Junkenstein]

To derail a moment, where are we actually up to with less-lethal weapons? I'm guessing there's still nothing reliable enough to consider switching to yet, but surely that's got to be coming too?

I can understand that trying to shoot a limb isn't particularly practical in high stress situations, so that would seem to make less lethal alternatives even more compelling. Lawsuits are expensive, I'm told. It might just take a few forces going bankrupt before this is taken remotely seriously though.

[hooplala]

There's rubber bullets, but they sometimes kill too.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

This is all ignoring the fact that single gunshot wounds are very survivable if you don't have eleven of them. Or a hundred. I can dig up the data if people want to see, but if you have a heartbeat when they take you to the ER and it's just bullets, you're probably surviving.

The key thing the officers here are not doing right is having the guns out in the first place. You shouldn't be waving guns around at protesters (see "protect and serve the shit outta you" image). If some guy's got a knife, there are multiple non-lethal options for dealing with the problem, including rubber bullets and other non lethal rounds which the officers should have been equipped with anyway, since they were going into a protest that had the potential to get confrontational.

Junky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-lethal_weapon

[von]

Whatever happened to shooting to incapacitate?  Wouldn't a bullet in the lower leg down most people, without killing them?

Police are not trained to shoot to incapacitate.

That should probably change.

We could maybe hire Roy Rogers.   

Hitting anything with a pistol in an actual event is extremely difficult.  You get tunnel vision, numbed extremities, etc.  So you shoot center mass (ie, the chest).  You try to hit an arm or a leg, you miss, and the bullet goes down the street looking to make new friends.

Oh right... physics...

The idea of "shoot to wound" also introduces a very dangerous mentality to someone who employs a firearm: that they can be used as a reliable less-lethal compliance tool rather than lethal force.

Even assuming you're some sort of model operator who can reliably hit someone in the leg or arm without it becoming a "liability shot" (i.e. hitting little billy who's 20 meters behind the target), it still has the potential to be fatal.
So you aim at his lower leg, but because it's a real scenario and not just a day at the range, you fuck your trigger pull up a little bit and it causes the shot to hit a foot higher than your point of aim. Congrats, your attempt at "just wounding" the target has turned into a case of his femoral artery blowing the fuck out, and now someone who you were trying to subdue with less-lethal force is now probably going to bleed out unless you immediately get your ass over there and apply a tourniquet.

so the idea of "shoot to wound" kinda gives the shooter this poisonous mentality of "oh, I can less-lethally shoot him for X-scenario where it would be totally wrong to lethally shoot him", when, come to find out, it could end lethally anyway just because...well, that's what guns are good at.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

To derail a moment, where are we actually up to with less-lethal weapons? I'm guessing there's still nothing reliable enough to consider switching to yet, but surely that's got to be coming too?

I can understand that trying to shoot a limb isn't particularly practical in high stress situations, so that would seem to make less lethal alternatives even more compelling. Lawsuits are expensive, I'm told. It might just take a few forces going bankrupt before this is taken remotely seriously though.

Thing is, that changes the messages to and from the cop.

From the cop:  I'm here to fuck your shit up, because it's non-lethal.
To the cop:  Our go-to response is thump first.

Don't tase me, bro.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

And then THIS fucking thing:

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cell-phone-video-emerges-refutes-st-louis-cops-version-shooting/

Not exactly work safe. The full video of the other guy shot in St. Louis.

That was horrible. But it still looks like suicide by cop to me.

The cops account of the situation was exaggerated, but what would you do if someone walks toward you with a knife after saying "Shoot me, shoot me now"?

Back up. Spread out. Adopt a non-threatening posture. And try like hell to communicate with that part of the dude that doesn't want to do this. THAT if I'm of the mind that lethal force (or any force) is the last god damn thing on earth that I want to employ. If, OTOH, I had been trained to assert my authority and stand my ground according to a formula of tit fot tat escalation, I would have done exactly what they did.

[Junkenstein]

To derail a moment, where are we actually up to with less-lethal weapons? I'm guessing there's still nothing reliable enough to consider switching to yet, but surely that's got to be coming too?

I can understand that trying to shoot a limb isn't particularly practical in high stress situations, so that would seem to make less lethal alternatives even more compelling. Lawsuits are expensive, I'm told. It might just take a few forces going bankrupt before this is taken remotely seriously though.

Thing is, that changes the messages to and from the cop.

From the cop:  I'm here to fuck your shit up, because it's non-lethal.
To the cop:  Our go-to response is thump first.

Don't tase me, bro.

Just because it's non-lethal (I prefer "less-lethal", you can kill anyone with pretty much anything, if you're so inclined) doesn't mean you get to whip it out and hose down the whole street into compliance though. You still need to demonstrate you're using fair force for the situation at hand. I say "demonstrate", I mean "get away with". Thinking back, I seem to recall a discussion based around research that cops were more likely to fire a taser than a gun, and that seemed to extend to other shit like rubber bullets. It's an area of many issues and probably more relevant to another/new thread. Or remembering what the old one was.

There was something earlier about Republicans supporting camera on cops reforms, now I'm more certain than ever that the concept must have serious flaws I've not considered/realised/understood the full implications of.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

To derail a moment, where are we actually up to with less-lethal weapons? I'm guessing there's still nothing reliable enough to consider switching to yet, but surely that's got to be coming too?

I can understand that trying to shoot a limb isn't particularly practical in high stress situations, so that would seem to make less lethal alternatives even more compelling. Lawsuits are expensive, I'm told. It might just take a few forces going bankrupt before this is taken remotely seriously though.

Thing is, that changes the messages to and from the cop.

From the cop:  I'm here to fuck your shit up, because it's non-lethal.
To the cop:  Our go-to response is thump first.

Don't tase me, bro.

Just because it's non-lethal (I prefer "less-lethal", you can kill anyone with pretty much anything, if you're so inclined) doesn't mean you get to whip it out and hose down the whole street into compliance though. You still need to demonstrate you're using fair force for the situation at hand. I say "demonstrate", I mean "get away with". Thinking back, I seem to recall a discussion based around research that cops were more likely to fire a taser than a gun, and that seemed to extend to other shit like rubber bullets. It's an area of many issues and probably more relevant to another/new thread. Or remembering what the old one was.

There was something earlier about Republicans supporting camera on cops reforms, now I'm more certain than ever that the concept must have serious flaws I've not considered/realised/understood the full implications of.

Perhaps you missed our national fad with tasers?

[von]

To derail a moment, where are we actually up to with less-lethal weapons? I'm guessing there's still nothing reliable enough to consider switching to yet, but surely that's got to be coming too?

I can understand that trying to shoot a limb isn't particularly practical in high stress situations, so that would seem to make less lethal alternatives even more compelling. Lawsuits are expensive, I'm told. It might just take a few forces going bankrupt before this is taken remotely seriously though.

Thing is, that changes the messages to and from the cop.

From the cop:  I'm here to fuck your shit up, because it's non-lethal.
To the cop:  Our go-to response is thump first.

Don't tase me, bro.

Just because it's non-lethal (I prefer "less-lethal", you can kill anyone with pretty much anything, if you're so inclined) doesn't mean you get to whip it out and hose down the whole street into compliance though. You still need to demonstrate you're using fair force for the situation at hand. I say "demonstrate", I mean "get away with". Thinking back, I seem to recall a discussion based around research that cops were more likely to fire a taser than a gun, and that seemed to extend to other shit like rubber bullets. It's an area of many issues and probably more relevant to another/new thread. Or remembering what the old one was.

There was something earlier about Republicans supporting camera on cops reforms, now I'm more certain than ever that the concept must have serious flaws I've not considered/realised/understood the full implications of.

About cop-cams:

they're pretty exploitable. Just consider

>suspect is a violent shit head who makes a bad example of himself and can be used to drive a narrative if need be
Camera comes out fine and is used as evidence, and mailed to every news org from here to the hinterland.

>cop acts inappropriately and brutalises a legitimately decent citizen
Camera is conveniently "damaged in the altercation" or the storage media suffers from some sort of "misfiling" issue.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

To derail a moment, where are we actually up to with less-lethal weapons? I'm guessing there's still nothing reliable enough to consider switching to yet, but surely that's got to be coming too?

I can understand that trying to shoot a limb isn't particularly practical in high stress situations, so that would seem to make less lethal alternatives even more compelling. Lawsuits are expensive, I'm told. It might just take a few forces going bankrupt before this is taken remotely seriously though.

Thing is, that changes the messages to and from the cop.

From the cop:  I'm here to fuck your shit up, because it's non-lethal.
To the cop:  Our go-to response is thump first.

Don't tase me, bro.

Just because it's non-lethal (I prefer "less-lethal", you can kill anyone with pretty much anything, if you're so inclined) doesn't mean you get to whip it out and hose down the whole street into compliance though. You still need to demonstrate you're using fair force for the situation at hand. I say "demonstrate", I mean "get away with". Thinking back, I seem to recall a discussion based around research that cops were more likely to fire a taser than a gun, and that seemed to extend to other shit like rubber bullets. It's an area of many issues and probably more relevant to another/new thread. Or remembering what the old one was.

There was something earlier about Republicans supporting camera on cops reforms, now I'm more certain than ever that the concept must have serious flaws I've not considered/realised/understood the full implications of.

About cop-cams:

they're pretty exploitable. Just consider

>suspect is a violent shit head who makes a bad example of himself and can be used to drive a narrative if need be
Camera comes out fine and is used as evidence, and mailed to every news org from here to the hinterland.

>cop acts inappropriately and brutalises a legitimately decent citizen
Camera is conveniently "damaged in the altercation" or the storage media suffers from some sort of "misfiling" issue.

Or we can just arrest anyone who takes a pic, right?   

Like your heroes in Ferguson.