Scout Schultz and Our Current Society

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(09-22-2017, 11:07 PM)Dill Wrote: When I was in college in 1969, I remember local police disarming PTSD-stressed veteran who had drawn knife after a traffic stop. I am not sure how they did it. I think they surrounded him and two grabbed him from behind and brought him to the ground. This was a large, powerful man too.

Is it your view that police should abandon riskier but less lethal tactics when dealing with the mentally ill or otherwise incapacitated who may be armed? Is a cop who kills someone with a gun less likely to trigger a lawsuit than one who accidentally kills with a taser?

I'm not sure why shooting Scout in the leg would be as ridiculous as shooting the tire of a speeding car, especially if he were approaching slow the police slowly.  It doesn't appear there was any attempt to use mace or maybe club the guy. How big was that knife? Some say the blade was not out.

And good for those police officers, they personally felt that risking their lives was worth it in that case. That said, it wasn't their obligation to do so. A police officer with a newborn at home might have a different threshold of how much they're willing to risk their lives than a single middle aged officer with no children.

My view is that giving a person opportunities to put down a knife peacefully while they continue to advance on you is the threshold a police officer has to reach. After that, it is up to them how much danger they're willing to put themselves into in order to subdue a uncooperative person coming at them with a weapon. Maybe those two guys get stabbed taking him down, or maybe it all happens safely. You'll never know how it will turn out until AFTER the fact. There's no sign hanging on each person that says "mentally ill, needs help" or "high on drugs, will rush through mace and stab you a lot" or anywhere in between. Not to mention just because someone is mentally ill doesn't mean they're not dangerous.

A police officer who kills someone with a gun will have the standard investigation and if they're cleared, it's generally because there was reason enough for the shooting, thus a lawsuit is pretty much doomed to fail.

A police officer who shoots someone with a taser has made the decision that a gun (and thus death) was not the correct response to that situation, thus if someone dies from it, they're 100% getting sued and going to have to settle for multi-millions.

As for the leg stuff, police are trained to aim for center mass. The same reason why they don't try shooting guns out of people's hands or anything. They train over and over for shooting center mass. It's the easiest place to hit, and it's the most likely to keep the bullet from going elsewhere. What people forget about bullets is they don't just magically stop or vanish if you miss. They go elsewhere. So if you shoot at someone's leg and miss (keep in mind it's dark, they're walking, your adrenaline is pumping from a dangerous situation) that bullet is still going to go somewhere. Bricks are not bullet proof. Drywall is not bullet proof. Cars are not bullet proof. You shoot, miss, and that bullet could hit an innocent bystander who's just driving past, or sitting in their apartment eating their dinner, because you wanted to shoot someone in the leg rather than the chest. Meanwhile you missed the person you were shooting at and they're still closing in on you.

Not to mention that the whole "shooting in the leg is safe" thing is total bullshit. The second largest vein (the femoral artery) is in your leg. You nick that and the person's going to bleed out fast regardless. Even if you were an expert marksman, there's not really any magic spot where you can reliably shoot someone that is guaranteed to disable them as a threat, but not threaten their life. Hence, people have watched too much TV.