Michigan Police Shooting-Update

[suntzu]

Here is an update on the shooting of the man with a knife in Michigan.:

Officers in homeless Michigan man's shooting get punished - CNN.com

Some officers punished, no criminal charges.

Here is original story:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/16/us/mic...ing/index.html

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[mcp1810]

And of course they don't say what the officers are being disciplined for.
Being a personnel action they won't discuss specifics but I would not be surprised if the discipline was due to the officers knowingly taking cruisers with dead cameras and the sergeant got busted for failing to inspect them at start of the shift.

[IAm_Not_Lost]

Wow, I hate to ever take what the media reports as any sort of hard fact, but that video was pretty...persuasive.

[40Bob]

Note to self: Do not take a knife to a gun fight. Just think, if those cops had been using revolvers they would have only fired 36 times.

Ok, so you have a mentally deranged subject armed with a knife refusing multiple orders to drop the knife, he gets shot, next.

Personally I would have felt safe in trying a Taser or a Pepperball system like (FN 303 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) this that I have experience with, being backed up by armed officers in case it did not work. You cannot expect every police department to have a huge training budget.

[PEF]

I can't really tell from the video. I can't see if he was advancing toward the officers or some other person.

What I do know is you only need to be stabbed once to die. Not saying what the officers did was justified, but I understand why they had weapons drawn.

Personally I wouldn't look to less lethal options if I'm faced with an opponent armed with a deadly weapon. Just sayin'.

[Harryball]

I have said it before, Ill say it again. If you want to get shot, bring a deadly force weapon and challenge the police. You will loose.

The punishments whatever they may be, are brought about a mother making waves, about how her boy, was a good boy, but misunderstood. Media induced crap.....

[tricolordad]

Or it was brought aout by the officers going overboard...

[Harryball]

Or it was brought aout by the officers going overboard...

Or the Bad Guy didnt put the knife down. Bash the PD all you want. If he was waving that knife in front of me, telling me he was going to stab me, kill me, whatever, I would have shot him to the ground to.....

[multistage]

I guess I have no problem with the police responding as they did, for only a fool would brace 8 cops with a knife.

46 rounds? Hmmmmm............

[40Bob]

Or it was brought aout by the officers going overboard...

OK, what would you have done?

[oneshot]

I have said it before, Ill say it again. If you want to get shot, bring a deadly force weapon and challenge the police. You will loose.

The punishments whatever they may be, are brought about a mother making waves, about how her boy, was a good boy, but misunderstood. Media induced crap.....

^^^^^^^^YEP^^^^^^^^^^^

Or it was brought aout by the officers going overboard...

OK, what would you have done?

^^^^^^^^^I guess he would have ^^^^^^^^^^^^^


socially engineered the knife-wielder off the proverbial ledge, and everyone would have gone home happy, and the whole town would have had a ticker tape parade for the poor, misunderstood assailant, who is now dead because of HIS inability to do as he was told by the nice officers.
Jeezzzzzzzz.
Where the hell was the morons family if they were so concerned about him and his so called mental ilness.

Oh thats right, his rediculous mother lives in Albuqurqe NM.

Delusional people who think the world is full of pixie dust and fairie's.


This is what Hall did prior to officers rolling up on him.

Police responded to a call from a woman at a nearby mini mart before the shooting. She complained that the Hall was rude and aggressive, and had refused to pay for a coffee and other items. She also said Hall spit on someone inside the store.

Hall threatened a responding female police officer with a knife. Investigators said Hall refused to drop the weapon, despite police orders to relinquish the knife and came within a few feet of the officers.


If you or I were exposed to someone acting like this, we would beat feet, call 911 and let the police handle it.
They don't have the luxury of walking away.

[64zebra]

As someone that has been in this situation but with only one other officer, I can attest to the fear of what can happen. I've been a split second away from pulling the trigger and having everyone in my city and online ripping me apart and saying what I should have done instead of stopping the deadly threat presented to me with deadly force.

It is absolutely the best possible scenario to talk someone down and get them into custody.
The 2nd best is that that you have to use some sort of less-lethal equipment to get them into custody.
And the least desirable is that you have to resort to using deadly force.

Thankfully, of all the standoffs I've been involved in, I didn't have to pull the trigger on my pistol or rifle, but I've been darn close a few times and it is not any fun. Its not something I was hoping to get accomplished.

As for these officers, like mcp said...we don't know what the discipline was for...could be the video issue or some other policy, maybe their department specifies when they are to call for swat or other response, maybe they are to only have so many officers on that particular type of call.....we may never know.
What we do know is there was a man with a knife in his hand that had threatened people, was refusing to follow officer's commands, and made movement towards the 2 officers behind the bushes. What some people (including the deceased's mother) don't realize is that when a threat is presented officers will fire until the threat is no longer there. There is no "I'll shoot but you just stand here and watch" type of thing. Just as you don't fire one round and expect a threat to stop, you don't expect your partner's rounds will stop the threat either.
6 officers opening fire to a pretty close target will tend to get off a pretty high number of rounds. The last time I was on a timer, from combat ready I put 6 rounds on steel in under 1.2 seconds, multiply that times 6 and the fact that he was very close to other officers shows why round counts seem "excessive" or high.

Just adding $0.02 from someone's perspective that has held that sight picture/sight alignment and thankfully didn't have to take the next step.

[_Hawkeye_]

I watched the vid, with luck, I would not be in that situation, but were I, I am currently (temporarily) in a wheel chair (broke hip, hey y'all watch this moment with a horse) and if a man with a knife threatened me, then advanced on me, I would shoot him until he stopped.

[retsupt99]

Could they have zapped him? Just asking...not judging.

[64zebra]

Could they have zapped him? Just asking...not judging.

could have tried, if they had Tasers (don't know if this department provides them); but at that distance Taser is not the best option nor is it the end-all/catch-all solution that some (not saying you of course) think it is; when the Taser works it works great....when it doesn't your stuck with a neat looking toy in your hand with an even more irate person coming at you/fighting you/etc

I've had the Taser work great, and sometimes not so great, I've Tased a guy in a standoff just like this, and even with both probes hitting him with good spread he was able to reach into his shorts pocket and pull out the 10" kitchen knife that he was previously holding to his chest, and stabbed himself in the chest twice on the way down to the ground; so even with good hits its no guarantee to stop the threat, and with the close proximity to the officers, his aggressiveness, and going towards the 2 officers behind the bush, he forced their hand