NEW YORK (AP) - A candy bar, a wallet, even a pair of baggy pants can draw deadly police gunfire.
The killing of a hairbrush-brandishing teenager last week was the latest instance of police shootings in which officers reacted to what they erroneously feared was a weapon. It has revived debate over the use of force, perceptions of threats and police training.
“We have cases like that all over the country where it can be a wallet, a cell phone, a can of Coca-Cola and officers have fired the weapon,” said Scott Greenwood, a Cincinnati attorney who has worked on police use-of-force cases across the country and who is a general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
“It does not necessarily mean it was excessive use of force,” he added. “However, those types of incidents do give rise to greater suspicion on the part of the public about how police use force and they call into question the training departments are using to train officers to perceive and respond to threats.”
The New York Police Department says the officers who fired 20 shots at 18-year-old Khiel Coppin on Nov. 12 were justified in their use of force. The mentally ill teenager approached officers outside his mother’s home with a black object in his hand - the hairbrush - and repeatedly ignored orders to stop.
Full Story Here:
NYPD Shooting Revives Debate Over Force
My very 1st question is this, they fired 20 shots at this person, how many were hits?? How many were in the 10 ring??
Let me tell folks something, for those that may not know, when you’re an officer and you are engaged in a close proximity confrontation, nerves are taught, tensions are high and your self survival is the 1st thought in your mind if a suspect has an object in their hand and you consider it to be a viable threat to your safety or that of others, and if you feel that threat is a deadly threat, you remove it as soon as possible in a manner that leaves no room for a counter attack by the suspect, whether that suspect is male, female, white, black or green with yellow polka dots…
The officers were responding to a 911 call in which Coppin could be heard in the background saying he had a gun. But in a second 911 call Coppin’s mother told the operator her son wasn’t armed, and after officers arrived she repeated that to them.
And here’s another tidbit for the uninformed, a domestic violence call is THE most dangerous call an officer can respond to, family members, even when beaten, battered, abused, cut and in some cases shot, WILL stick together once the police become involved, often times police are attacked by the victim of the violence as they, the police, try to subdue and/or arrest the person that had caused the harm, it’s a fact of life, and once that initial call went out that the suspect was armed with a gun, just because his mother calls back and says otherwise brings nothing to bear in the response of the officers involved, the natural and logical assumption of the officer is that the suspect is ALWAYS armed…
Last year, New York officers fired 50 bullets at three unarmed men in a car, killing Sean Bell on his wedding day and seriously wounding his two friends. Three officers are scheduled for trial in February.
In 1999, four New York City undercover officers fired 41 shots at Amadou Diallo, striking him 19 times, when the 22-year-old man reached for his wallet while standing in an apartment building vestibule. The officers said they thought Diallo was reaching for a gun.
To me and my way of thinking, the 2 above quoted paragraphs beg for one more question to be asked, who in the hell is teaching the NYPD cops how to shoot?? I don’t know how many rounds struck the guys in the 1st paragraph but in the 2nd paragraph, regarding the shooting of one Amadou Diallo, 41 rounds were fired and 19 hits were sustained, that’s less than 50% efficiency, and that is a totally unacceptable figure for a shots fired to hit made ratio, those guys need more time on the pistol range in MY opinion…
NYPD instructors say recruits are repeatedly cautioned to be aware of their surroundings and to try to take cover and assess a situation before opening fire. But once shooting starts, officers are trained to “shoot to stop” by firing at a target’s “center mass” or torso.
And that translates into SHOOT TO KILL, and once again, for the uninformed, you don’t shoot anyone to make em feel better, IF you’re forced to fire your weapon, you fire for CENTER MASS, the 10 ring, and you make every attempt to put your adversary down permanently…
I guess my 1st thought was correct, these guys need more time on the range…
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