"Why don't cops just shoot at their legs???"

[Fix The Stupid]

This is why.

Stop getting your expertise from movies and TV shows.

[PCIntern]

1. Yeah. When I was a kid

I used to watch westerns like the Lone Ranger wherein the hero would shoot the gun out of the villains hand or nick them in the shoulder so that they couldn’t hold a weapon.

My father who was a four year veteran of the Pacific theater in World War II told me that that is just not how it works and that even an expert marksman with a pistol would have trouble doing what these guys did routinely on TV. He told me that when you see a gun the assumption is it is set to kill you And anyone who thinks otherwise knows nothing about weapons or war.

[PatSeg]

2. Good point

Though I have to wonder why more cops don't use those tasers that they are so fond of. I hate them because they are frequently misused and can cause serious damage and on occasion death, but at least they are less lethal than a gun.

[ripcord]

6. Because it isn't how they are trained

Deadly force is met with deadly force because of the consequences of less than lethal weapons failing to stop the suspect.

[PatSeg]

14. And apparently many are not

trained to defuse a bad situation, something we see on TV shows, but not always in real life. I also think there are some cops who really want to fire their weapon and could be looking for an excuse to do so. So much of their job is tedious and boring and I think some create drama where it is totally unnecessary. We see videos of that kind of bully behavior all the time - harassing the elderly, the handicapped, and even pregnant women and children.

Being so many victims of police shootings were unarmed, there is obviously much more going on than the need to use deadly force against deadly force. Clearly some people are in the wrong job.

[Jedi Guy]

37. "So much of their job is tedious and boring..."

There most certainly are officers like that. A fair few of them are adrenaline junkies, it's one of the things they like about the job. When I worked as a dispatcher, I'd ride along with an officer every so often, just to see how the other half lived. I was riding with a graveyard shift officer in the midtown division, and it was utterly dead. He looked at me and said, totally serious, "Man, I really wish someone would rob a bank or something."

On the other hand, you had the officers who would just pull traffic constantly to avoid being sent on calls. That was super frustrating, especially when something big happened and you were trying to shake loose enough officers to respond to the problem.

[PatSeg]

40. The coffee can only keep you

going for so long and I have seen some who were hoping for that adrenaline rush like you said. Many people don't realize how tedious and dull it is most of the time.

[Miguelito Loveless]

3. The police are "at war"

with their communities?

Also, funny how they react differently to White people with actual, obvious, highly visible weapons, as opposed to non-Whites whose weapons turn out to be wallets, cell phones, keys, figments of the officer's imagination...

[Devil Child]

4. Good op and vid, thanks Fix The Stupid! n/t

[stillcool]

5. they riddle a body with multiple bullets...

but that's usually in the back, arms, chest and head. They go for the kill. It's a phenomenon how they restrain themselves with some people like the Boston Marathon Terrorist, and many mass shooters. How they can wait people out for whatever reason. I think policing has become more of a blood-sport these days, due to training, toys, and steroids, and it must be a real feel-good with bragging rights to kill someone.

[2naSalit]

10. +1

[Devil Child]

11. Boston PD were restrained when arresting Tsarnaev!?

I’m not quite seeing that as they unleashed a hail of gunfire on him while he cowered wounded in a boat. He received multiple additional injuries and was almost killed during his arrest. You have an interesting definition of restrained.

[Treefrog]

18. THANK YOU.

[Devil Child]

23. You're most welcome Treefrog!

[stillcool]

24. I don't know....10-12 bullets seems like a normal amount of lead

for expired tags...

During the manhunt for him on the evening of April 19, Tsarnaev was discovered wounded in a boat in a Watertown backyard, less than 1⁄4 mile (400 m) from where he abandoned the SUV.[75] David Henneberry, the owner of the boat, had noticed that the cover on the boat was loose and when the "shelter in place" order was lifted, went outside to investigate.[78] He lifted the tarpaulin, saw a bloodied man, retreated into his house and called 9-1-1.[79] Three Boston police officers responded and were soon joined by Waltham police. Tsarnaev's presence and movement were later verified through a forward looking infrared thermal imaging device in a State Police helicopter.[80] The suspect was observed pushing up at the tarp on the boat and Boston police began directing a large volume of gunfire at the suspect, stopping only after calls from the superintendent on the scene.[81][82] After initial reports of a shootout between police and Tsarnaev, two U.S. officials said on April 24 that Dzhokhar was unarmed when captured.[83]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzhokhar_Tsarnaev

[Devil Child]

28. So if 10-12 bullets is standard lead to kill an unarmed suspect then surely the thousands fired off

by Boston PD towards Tsarnaev would immediately define it as excess lead?

Just saying the Boston Marathon bombers aren't the best example of PD coddling a suspect during arrest as your post suggests.

[stillcool]

32. Excess lead? I don't know there is such a thing...

I used the word "restraint", your word is "coddling". I would imagine it must be very difficult for some cops to restrain themselves from riddling a body full of lead, and yet at times they do. Guess that's called coddling. Walking away with your life.

[fescuerescue]

15. There might have been a thousand bullet holes in boat the BMT hid in

And they locked down an entire community at gun point to find him. And searched hundreds of homes. At gunpoint.

That might have been the least restrained arrest I've can think of.

[pidge]

19. The people of Watertown wanted their homes searched and

later thanked the cops for a job well done.




.

[fescuerescue]

22. oh yea - I'm sure that 100% of them did.

Especially the ones held at cop gunpoint.

They probably thanked the cops the most.

I mean who doesn't want a cop holding you with a gun while they go through everyone room in the house?

[stillcool]

26. the fact that he is alive

is a testament to restraint. His crimes were not expired tags.

[Devil Child]

30. What did Tsarnaev have that granted him the privilege of PD restraint?

[RegularJam]

7. There are a lot of reasons.

You shoot to kill. It's kind of the whole purpose behind shooting someone. Emptying your chamber into the body of someone is the most effective way to go about it.

Lawsuits. The lawsuits would be outrageous.

Risk. The legs are a smaller target. Bullets are far more likely to lodge in a torso. Pointing a gun at a lower trajectory, at a smaller target, would injure others more often.

Tazers. Just the thought of shooting someone in the legs goes against the whole concept of less lethal force.

Additionally, looking at that video tells me the problem isn't where they shot him, the fact he had a knife, or anything of the sort. Those officers were clearly trained extremely poorly.

We need to stop looking at clearly untrained officers and making grand judgements.

[StarfishSaver]

8. They're not poorly trained

They are trained to use force commensurate with the degree of threat they perceive - to use lethal force when they confront a deadly threat and to use less-than lethal force when faced with a less-than-deadly threat.

Their training works just fine when they encounter white people. But too many of them have a propensity to see Black and Brown people as deadly threats when they aren't and when they don't assume similarly-situated white people pose a similar threat.

Being irrationally scared of Black and Brown people is not a training problem. It goes far beyond that and can't simply be trained out of someone with a 10-hour course at the Academy.

[RegularJam]

12. You say "They're not poorly trained....."

And then use three paragraphs to highlight poor training.

One cannot look at that video and think they are anything but extremely poorly trained.

I never said that a ten hour course at the academy would fix it. That is literally a fallacy you put forward.

[StarfishSaver]

13. What I described is not poor training. It's bias

They have the training.

But implementation of that training depends upon the officer's subjective perceptions. When those perceptions are based on racial stereotypes and assumptions, all the training in the world won't prevent these deaths.

Let me break it down for you...

Police are trained on when and how to use lethal force and when not to. They are trained that when they are facing a deadly threat, they should employ deadly force against it. They are trained in what constitutes a deadly threat - the person they're facing poses a threat of serious injury or death to them or others. That could mean the person has a gun or a knife or in some other way is a direct threat. If they determine that the person they've encountered poses such a threat, they are trained to use deadly force. But the determination of whether that person is a threat depends solely upon the officer's observations and assumptions. It is often a subjective judgment call.

We have seen time and again police officers, when facing white people, make a judgment call that that person does not pose a threat. We have also seen all too often that cops, when facing Black and Brown people under the same circumstances, make a judgment call that that person is a threat - and we often find that those judgment calls were extraordinarily faulty and based on irrational and unreasonable assumptions.

The training is fine - the cops know that when faced with a threat of deadly harm, they should respond with lethal force and when faced with less than a deadly threat, they should respond with less-than-lethal force. The problem is that when making the subjective determination of whether the subject poses a deadly threat, their biases and often outright racism kicks in and affects their assessment of whether to use lethal force or not. That is not a training problem. It's an ingrained bias/racism problem.

More or better training won't train that out of people. The solution is to stop hiring cops with these kinds of biases and, if some slip in anyway, get rid of them the minute they evidence it instead of coddling and tolerating them.

[Lancero]

34. Training is supposed to weed out poor behaviors and correct for innate biases.

Training that fails to do so is poor training.

Unless traits such like that are what the training is looking for, meant to amplify. In which case, the training in a grand success.

[StarfishSaver]

35. Police training isn't the place to weed out bias.

That's supposed to be dealt with in the hiring process long before the training even begins.

Once the training starts, it relies heavily on subjective decision-making and that subjectivity is a fundamental element and can't be eliminated.. If that decision-making is based on prejudices, the training will only build upon it. So if a cop has been hired who thinks that Black people are more dangerous, training him or her to use lethal force against danger is going to mean their actions will be tainted by that bias. That can't be easily trained away, especially within the culture and processes that currently exist in police departments. The key is to screen for that attitude much earlier during the hiring process so that we reduce the likelihood that men and women harboring such prejudices are brought into the fold in the first place. But that kind of screening is sneered at by police types, conservatives, and others as "political correctness" and "woke culture."

[fescuerescue]

16. Cops are poorly trained. That's a fact.

The gal who cuts your hair gets abut 12 times more training.

The guy driving that semi next to you on the highway gets about 3 times more training and is monitored MUCH MUCH more closely.

Cops are 1/2 notch above unskilled labor in this country.

Clean record? Clean urine? Can lift 50 lbs? Come on down and get 2 months of training and then your badge and gun.


Cops should have 4 year degrees, be paid about twice as much. Then we'll start to see better policing.

Right now we just have high school bullies doing the job. And it shows.

[StarfishSaver]

27. They're not killing Black and Brown people in disproportionate numbers because of lack of training

If poor training were the cause, they'd be killing white people in numbers commensurate with the rate their killing people of color.

You are no doubt right that many cops are poorly trained. But the unjustified killings of People of color is not a training issue.

Derek Chauvin didn't grind George Floyd into the ground until he died because he lacked proper training. But treating it like it's just a matter of bad training ignores the real problems of bias and racism in police departments across the country.

[fescuerescue]

33. That's a reasonable argument but I think it over simplifies

on the issue of the moment.h

The reality is that cops kill to many white people too. Or just to many people. Unjustified killings.

It's a training issue, and it is magnified by racial bias.

Fix either one and deaths will go down. Fix both and it will go down tremendously.

[StarfishSaver]

36. Please don't do the "cops kill white people too" false equivalence

Yes, cops kill white people. But they kill Black and Brown people in significantly higher proportions.

Killing too many people may be a traini g problem. Killing Black and Brown people at the rates they are is not a training issue - since, as I've said, if it were, the rates would be comparable. It's a bias issue that will not be addressed simply with better training.

[fescuerescue]

38. It's not a false equivlance.

Because no one has even said it's equivalent.

It happens. And it's just as tragic. It's ok to have concern for other victims ya know.

And it's solved by training which will reduce ALL murders.

[StarfishSaver]

39. Ok, not "equivalence." A whataboutism distraction

The fact that cops sometimes kill white people is completely irrelevant to the issue of the over-policing and disproportionate killings of Black and Brown people and bringing it into the conversation only serves to try to diminish the very real problem of racist police behavior and policies.

Injecting the fact that white people are sometimes killed by police into this discussion is no different than responding to "Black Lives Matter" with "ÄLL LIVES MATTER!"

And no, racist police treatment of people of color will NOT be solved by more training.

Please explain what training would have stopped Derek Chauvin from crushing George Floyd to death?

[fescuerescue]

41. I suppose

But we obviously have a cop problem with killing people. especially, but not exclusively black people.

The opportunity to make over the police only comes once a generation. And we are still waiting on our opportunity.

I want to fix the unneeded killing of everyone.

To your question - better training also means better evaluation of police. Nowadays if you have clean urine, clean record and can lift 50 lbs, you get your 2 months of training and are issued a gun.

By raising the bar, more training which means more evaluation which means more undesirable candidates either drop out or are kicked out.

And besides. surely more training isn't going to hurt. Let's train them at least as much as we train the gals and guys who cut our hair and drive our trucks.

DO you know who DOES train and evaluate the heck out of their candidates? the FBI. To my knowledge we don't have a problem with the FBI killing black folks.

[StarfishSaver]

42. The FBI screens of the heck out of their people BEFORE they're hired

and screen them regularly afterward.

I doubt any of the problem cops we see would have made it past the first round of hiring at the FBI. And even if they did manage to get in, they'd have gotten bounced out long before they could do any serious damage to anyone.

[fescuerescue]

43. Thats true

And the education requirements and training are an order of magnitude higher.

[Johnny2X2X]

9. Aim small, miss small

You aim for the biggest part of the body and pick a spot on it. Shooting people in the legs is extremely hard, in the video the officer probably does so because they are in a crowded area and shooting higher up with have had a risk of missing and shooting someone behind him.

When you learn to shoot, a lot of time you're in the woods shooting at trees. Picking a branch about as big around as a leg and shooting it from 10 feet away is not that hard, but you still miss your first shot anyways more often than not. Now if it was moving in an unpredictable pattern it's really hard. Aim for a spot on the biggest part of the body. I agree with not going for the legs, it's not a safe shot.

These officers showed how difficult it is stopping a violent assailant even when you're trained with a gun. In 99% of the cases, a gun makes a situation worse, this was one of the rare instances where a gun stopped the assailant, but not before they were able to land a couple deadly stabs.

This Youtube channel has a checkered past though, I think they've been caught misrepresenting their videos in the past. They have an agenda for sure.

[jimfields33]

17. Most of the recent and not so recent killings were not even necessary

Give them a ticket and let courts figure it out. Using a fake 20? Give a ticket. Selling cigarettes? Give a ticket. Registration expired? Give a ticket. It’s ridiculous that cops went full bore on these situations.

[48656c6c6f20]

20. Because a hail of bullets makes for a

Better Woody?

[maxsolomon]

21. OK, now do "Why do Cops shoot fleeing suspects in the back?"

and "Why do Cops treat knives like they're firearms?"

BTW, this is about the 100th time I've been told on DU why cops shoot center mass. The uninformed you're addressing aren't on DU.

[ColinC]

29. If there is body cam footage of a cop killing somebody who is actually coming at them with a a knife

I imagine the department won't hesitate to release it. It's always the ones where the body camera footage will directly contradict the police report that don't get released. And they almost always have to do with shooting people who are clearly no threat to them.

[H2O Man]

25. Do not cry for me, Argentina!

[hardluck]

31. Sucks that the officer died of his wounds

Looks like fatal stab was above his collar bone. Unfortunate that neither had a trauma kit. Quick application of hemostatic gauze might have given him a fighting chance.