Police shoot an "armed" middle school student

[Reiterpallasch]

Rubber bullets are used for riot control; not when lives could potentially be on the line. Besides...shooting someone holding a gun with rubber bullets isn't going to 'take them down'. They can still...you know...shoot people.

Absolute bullshit. You're not going to be getting back up, let alone shooting anyone, when you've been popped a couple of times by a rubber bullet. If they hit you in the chest you're going to have trouble breathing. And hitting somone in the head can render them unconscious, if it doesn't kill them.

Rubber bullets are more than enough to drop a threat. Only with the added bonus of perhaps not killing them.

Pain makes your body seize up and freeze, if you are holding a weapon you will pull the trigger. Being shot in the chest with an actual bullet will send your body into the survival state.

you will go limp and the gun will fall from your hand.

rubber bullets has a small chance of return fire; actual bullets to the chest mean no return fire.

period.

You've never seen someone get shot have you?

Even if they're shot in the head by live ammo there's a slim chance they're going to return fire. A rubber bullet is going to be just as effective as a live round at putting down a threat.

Yes, yes I have seen someone been shot before. and being shot in the head doesn't send your body in to survival state it does the same as the rubber round; send your body into shock and will more than likely force your finger to yank back on the trigger.

People still return fire after being shot in the chest, or the shoulder, or the leg, or the stomach. There is no guarantees with practically anything you shoot someone with. There's always the off chance they'll shoot back.

Regardless of shock or survival states.

Rubber rounds would be just as effective as live when putting down un-armoured individuals posing a threat with small arms.

No, it isn't regardless of shock or survival state, because one will make you spasm and pull the trigger, the other will make you go limp and not pull the trigger.

Real life begs to differ. Because it rarely fits neatly into a box like that.

Exactly, it rarely fits neatly into a box. That applies to the nonlethal rounds as well.

The non-lethal option has a lot more variables to consider. Namely that even though a rubber bullet will knock someone on their back, crack some ribs and cause some internal bleeding, there's still a significantly greater chance that they'll retain enough consciousness and motor ability to discharge their weapon, perhaps multiple times.

Even if those shots aren't aimed, that's still a few live shots that have a good possibility of hitting someone, especially since this took place in an area with several crowded classrooms nearby.

When dealing with such a situation, you can't leave anything to chance. A moment of hesitation or an insufficient application of force could lead to the deaths of you, your fellow officers, or nearby bystanders.
The officers gave the teen multiple opportunities to drop the gun, and they only fired once he made to point the gun in the direction of the officers. You cannot ponder the merits of firing or not in such a situation. You have to take decisive action to prevent the loss of innocent life.
Considering the factors at work, the officers did exactly what they should've done.

it's a tragic incident to be sure, and i can only imagine what the officers involved are going through emotionally.

Frankly, I think the the teen wanted to be shot. I doubt he was really stupid enough to point a replica firearm at a cop and expect anything else to happen.

 

[Reiterpallasch]

Well it's good to see some intellectual honesty after some of the shit that was flying around earlier.

It is true that people still manage to fire back after being shot in the chest (though this is generally an anomaly rather than the rule), the chances of that happening are much greater with a non-lethal round than a lethal one, especially if the perp retains consciousness (which is almost a sure thing unless the round hits him in the head, though that would most likely kill just as surely as a lethal round).

 

[Reiterpallasch]

Honestly though, the topic of non-lethal rounds is not that relevant to the original topic. The officers didn't have them, period. So it's really doesn't pertain to the question of whether or not the cops were justified.

Though it's definitely a worthy subject of discussion for properly equipping police officers to prepare for future incidents.
On that subject, I am firmly in the lethal round camp. Unfortunately, there will be situations in which lethal rounds are necessary to resolve a situation, and time spent determining which ammo you're loading into your gun and taking the time to switch your ammo could prove fatal. And of course there's the psychological effect of knowing that your rounds are non-lethal may lead to a greater propensity to use them, even when completely unnecessary, which could ironically lead to greater amounts of injury and/or death. It's just another variable thrown into an already tumultuous mix.

 

[The Bucket]

*snip*

"Border town"? You think this is a video game or something? I don't care what kind of town it is. Kid is a kid, cop is a cop. And a kid is DEFINITELY not running a drug cartel. I don't know why you think cartels make a difference in this debate. And you have no idea if negotiations would've worked or not. You weren't there. I see no reason why negotiations wouldn't have worked. Words don't magically lose their meaning just because people feel scared.

Negotiations don't work when its confrontation. You either:
A) do what you're told.
B) Get hurt and imprisoned.
C) Die (if armed).

Okay, this isn't part of my argument, but on the side I gotta say, out of context these lines are extremely creepy. In fact, even in context it's pretty creepy.

Now I don't know what your qualifications are. But if you've been a cop, you probably haven't been a psychologist. And if you've been a psychologist, you probably haven't been a cop. So either you don't know how cops operate, or you don't know that negotiations won't work. Pick one or the other.

It's true that "some men just want to watch the world burn", but most people are looking for something. I still see no reason the cops couldn't have tried talking first. Yes, they have to deal with cartels and crime all the time. But that's no excuse. The kid wasn't a cartel. It wasn't the same situation. Not being able to adjust on a case-by-case basis is just laziness, and you're making excuses for that laziness. If the cops always behave the same way without ever applying individual reasoning to it, they're no better than robots. And that's a pretty abysmal existence.

If that is indeed the system our police operate under, then it's a pretty shite system and in need of reform. Crime isn't black and white, so neither should be the responses to it.

You keep thinking that the cops can reasonably be assumed to have the hindsight we do, and that just because the guy was 15 that their was no way he could harm someone. They didn't know whether he was in a cartel or other violent gang, and they had no way to know for sure that wouldn't have risked their own lives (which cops have never, despite your talk of the glory days, been allowed to risk for the live of a potential muderer). You talk about applying individual reasoning, but they had no extra information. All they had was some guy with a gun who was perfectly capable of killing them and everyone around at any minute who refused to lay down his weapon repeatedly. They didn't have time to get a psycologist, who would have even less obligation to risk his life. Your letting the fact that this guy was so young cloud everything else.

The rate of cops being killed by gunfire is at an all time high, they aren't skirting their duty, they are dying more than ever for us. If someone pulls a gun (take being 15 out of the equation) imagine how much higher that number would rise if they had to wait for him to shoot every time before taking him out.

 

[ElPatron]

There are a surprising number of places on the body where you can poke a quarter-inch hole clean through and not cause lethal or even incapacitating damage. Mostly around the limbs, of course, but even through the torso in some cases. Hence the complaints.

So you are implying that a round that is 2mm wider and travels slower you cause damage to those tissues?

You're preaching to the choir, one of the worst performing hits fro 7.62x39 is the lungs.

The ideal, frankly, would be something along the lines of one of the new blended metal rounds, which functionally disintegrate inside a soft target. The test footage is... disturbing. Which is why frangible rounds in general are banned from military use.

FMJs, due to their high speed, fragment the copper jacket and tumble, creating a bigger temporary cavity than frangible rounds.

No offense to your friend, but if the round spun him twice and knocked him down, that was less a matter of the power of the bullet and more a matter of him being unprepared for the hit.

I cannot stress how wrong that statement is.

Psychologically speaking, a person is more likely to fall after being shot if that person acknowledges it is being shot at. A bullet WILL. NOT. CAUSE. SOMEONE. TO. GO. DOWN.

It causes a penetrating wound, it's not blunt force. We humans try to move in the same direction of the shot because it "slows" down the impact if you compare the movement vectors.

What I said was that the round was able to knock him down by simple transfer of forward momentum onto his arm, creating rotation.

I dare you to take a 5.56x45mm on your elbow and not rotating, even if you have been preparing yourself for days. Of course, this is only hypothetical, because I know for a fact you can't "prepare" yourself for a hit.

By the physical laws of the universe, the hit he took contained less energy than the one sustained by the man firing the weapon. Depending on the range, quite possibly considerably less. It is, however, theoretically compressed in time; rather than building over the length of the barrel, it is delivered over the depth of the wound.

Nope. The mass of the weapon reduces greatly the velocity a gun recoils back, meaning that the shooter will have less Kinetic energy transferred to him.

Plus, the buttstock of a weapon has a bigger surface area than a spitzer bullet. I don't know what you're talking about.

It's important to note, however, that not all rounds are created equal, and that a heavier round, moving more slowly, can have more energy than a smaller round, moving faster. A 300 grain or so .44 Magnum round will actually hit harder than the 70 or so grain bullet from a .223 Remington cartridge, even though the .223 has a muzzle velocity around twice that of the .44.

No it cannot.

What you mean is that since it's slower, the round will have more time to decelerate and transfer it's energy. More deceleration equals higher energy transfer.

But it won't have more kinetic energy than (say) a 60g .22LR bullet traveling at 4500 feet/sec (barrel runner speeds).


This is a 55g bullet shot from a 30-06 cartridge. It is a sub-caliber sabot load, with 0.224" diameter, which is the same diameter in 5.56 or .223 Rem.

The velocity made it hit much harder than the .308 in the related videos, since it did not penetrate all the way trough.

 

[ElPatron]

Most of the modern blanks use the plastic caps which do come out of the muzzle either whole or in shards after the weapon is fired and fall a few yards in front of the weapon. This is the second reason why the cadets have to stay a distance away.

I think I know what you are talking about.

They have red/green plastic tips with an X on them.

When someone says blanks I always think of those crimped cartridges or those used in movies, which are safer to point at humans.

A .223 round has much less of a chance of penetrating a Kevlar vest than a .45 round or a 9mm.

Wrong.

Plus the .223 and 5.56 are nearly the same thing. They offer similar performance and they are both deadly enough to kill deer.
You can't shoot 5.56 out of a .223 rated barrel because of pressure and headspace issues, though.


But you won't know the difference if you got shot with both. The bullet weights and speeds are identical, which means .223 will kill you as dead as 5.56x45.

 

[Reiterpallasch]

You have to consider the political climate we live in too. Since 2000, there have been 52 school shootings that resulted in injury and/or loss of life.

For the officers involved, the situation was rapidly devolving into another such incident. The horrors of the Columbine, the Vtech shooting, and other recent shootings are still fresh.

Age has nothing to do it, the bullet's lethality isn't altered by the age of the person pulling the trigger. Most school shootings are perpetrated by teenagers around the ages of 15 and 16, not to mention gang violence outside of the schools (and in the area in which this incident occured, that is most certainly a factor as well). They can't gamble the lives of themselves and the people they're sworn to protect on the off-chance that the perp presents no real danger.

Bottom line: The student was brandishing what appeared to be a functional firearm (rule #1 of gun safety: always assume the gun is loaded.). Officers drew their weapons and gave the student multiple opportunities to disarm. The student refused and moved to point the weapon in the direction of the officers. Officers view this (and rightfully so) as a sign of intent to shoot and open fire on the student. Just as they have been trained to do, and they showed quite a bit of restraint by only firing 3 shots between two officers.

For all they knew, the perp had a loaded firearm and was intending to use it. They cannot roll dice with that sort of situation. I really can't make that any more clear.

 

[Shock and Awe]

It's quite unfortunate, but if the Pellet gun really did look lIke a real pistol the officers had no choice.

 

[Volstag9]

I think this thread is one of the reasons i just lurk all the time rather than post.

I read the whole thread and not much else needs to be said. I do agree with the cops on this one. Not because I'm American or that i think guns are the best thing ever, but because in the same situation in which i was being visibly threatened by something I thought was a gun I would have defended myself and everyone in that school.

Look, it's sad that the kid had to die. I get what a lot of foreigners are saying about gun use and non lethal weapons. Things are different here across the ocean and the border. It's difficult for any of you to understand just like it is for Americans to understand foreigners. Sometimes you just have to act in a way that can guarantee the safety of yourselves, your fellow officers, and everyone around you.

 

[Reiterpallasch]

Well said volstag

 

[jklinders]

I'm with the cops here.

it's been stated by others why. The pellet gun looks close enough to being real to be seen as a credible threat to within 5 feet. He was warned multiple times. He stated that he wanted to die and it looks a lot like suicide by cop.

Guns are not drawn by cops to shoot to wound. That is stupid, full stop. Guns are drawn for the purpose of threatening and inflicting lethal wounds. To do otherwise to a armed person is to risk innocents being hurt.

The parents are understandably upset but they really need to do some soul searching about what was going on with their obviously very troubled child for it to have come to this. Blaming the police for making a judgement call like this is unfair to them in the extreme.

 

[Reiterpallasch]

I can forgive the parents for their reactions though. They lost their son in a horrific way, and they sought something to blame. The police were the obvious target.
I cannot, however, forgive the media spin on the story. The headline of that article alone is meant to spark outrage against the police for their actions, despite the factors at work. The article then focuses on how well-adjusted he was supposed to be and his good relations with the people around them. It's obvious that they're trying to spin it as another "police brutality" incident, and that sickens me.

 

[Sovvolf]

I think this thread is one of the reasons i just lurk all the time rather than post.

I read the whole thread and not much else needs to be said. I do agree with the cops on this one. Not because I'm American or that i think guns are the best thing ever, but because in the same situation in which i was being visibly threatened by something I thought was a gun I would have defended myself and everyone in that school.

Look, it's sad that the kid had to die. I get what a lot of foreigners are saying about gun use and non lethal weapons. Things are different here across the ocean and the border. It's difficult for any of you to understand just like it is for Americans to understand foreigners. Sometimes you just have to act in a way that can guarantee the safety of yourselves, your fellow officers, and everyone around you.

Well even as a foreigner and an Englishmen, I've done nothing but agree wholeheartedly with what the officers had to do in this situation. All the arguments I've seen against it are weak at best or are built on false assumptions of how fire arms work.

Maybe its because even though I'm a Brit, I'm an avid fan of plinking and target shooting so I've spent a lot of time around pellet pistols. I know how easily you could mistake one for the real thing. I've even shown my pellet pistol (well truth be told its a .177 co2 powered BBgun though its not much different) and it looks alarmingly realistic even upon close inspection. You can see how, without the power of hindsight that we all have, this would get mistaken for a real gun and the officers, given the situation would have no choice but to take the lad down.

Also, our response to our (relatively) rare gun crime is not much different to the US. While our ordinary police aren't armed with firearms, if the rare situation pops up where we have to deal with a loon with what is believed to be a fire arm, an ARU is sent out, often packing MP3 submachine guns and not willing to mess around.

snip.

Noticed that you keep making posts trying to reply to people but its not quite happening. If you press the quote button on the message you want to reply to, it will send a message to those users noting that you've replied to them and it will show others who you are replying to.

Not getting on at you here mate, just a suggestion to help you out.

 

[Griffolion]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't all pellet guns in the US meant to have an orange tip on them so as to differentiate? If so, how far away was the police man standing in order to not clock that?

 

[jklinders]

I can forgive the parents for their reactions though. They lost their son in a horrific way, and they sought something to blame. The police were the obvious target.
I cannot, however, forgive the media spin on the story. The headline of that article alone is meant to spark outrage against the police for their actions, despite the factors at work. The article then focuses on how well-adjusted he was supposed to be and his good relations with the people around them. It's obvious that they're trying to spin it as another "police brutality" incident, and that sickens me.

The parents reaction is completely understandable.

As for the media spin. I have seen articles sourced from different places than the one that headed this thread. They were more balanced. The Huffington Post is far from my first resource for news. They are basically the Fox News of the left.

 

[Reiterpallasch]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't all pellet guns in the US meant to have an orange tip on them so as to differentiate? If so, how far away was the police man standing in order to not clock that?

I'm pretty sure it was stated in the article that the guy filed down the orange tip to make it look like a real weapon.

This happens more often than you think, criminals who can't afford a weapon will often obtain an airsoft gun or pellet gun of some sort and either remove the orange tip or paint over it.

On the flip side, you sometimes have people painting the tips of real guns orange to make them seem like toy guns.

Given that he deliberately modified his pellet gun to make it look like a real firearm, and then brandished it at police, it really makes the suicide-by-cop thing more plausible don't it?

And thanks for the tip Sovvolf, This is the first thread i've posted in on the escapist

 

[jklinders]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't all pellet guns in the US meant to have an orange tip on them so as to differentiate? If so, how far away was the police man standing in order to not clock that?

Not sure where I saw this but I was under the impression the orange band was either removed from this one or it was never on this model to begin with. I did see a reference pointing to a need to clarify that the Associated Press had wrongfully admitted that there were exceptions to the rule. But no original source on the gun itself.

In other words not all facts are available.

 

[Kadoodle]

He had a right to shoot the kid. But three shots? That's ridiculous. He's a kid. 1 is enough, and he might even live, too.

And why in the chest? Why not in the leg or arm? Wouldn't that effectively disarm him?

I agree, the police had a right to shoot him, but the way they shot him was uncalled for.