LOAD OF POLITICALLY CORRECT HORSE MANURE

Police Chief Charlie Beck claims LAPD officers are never trained to ‘shoot to kill’

In an op-ed piece published in The Government Center Gazette (April 19), Chief Beck wrote:

“Every day when Los Angeles Police officers pin on their badges and prepare to protect and to serve, they’re reminded of what they learned as Academy recruits: a reverence for human life. Los Angeles Police Department officers are never trained to 'shoot to kill,' only to stop a deadly threat in order to keep the community and themselves safe. This isn’t a rhetorical turn-of-phrase or semantic contrivance, but a real world reality: taking a life — anyone’s life — is never our intent. It’s a tragedy when it occurs for everyone involved and for the City of Los Angeles.”

It is true that when L.A. cops pin on their badges and report for duty they have no intention of taking anyone’s life. And it is a tragedy whenever an officer takes someone’s life, both for the family of the deceased as well as for the officer himself.

It is also true that cops everywhere, not just in L.A., have “a reverence for human life,” including their own lives. So when Chief Beck says that officers are never trained to shoot to kill, he is unloading a heap of politically correct horse manure.

An officer is prohibited from using deadly force unless he fears for his own life of the life of someone else. During firearms training officers are not taught to shoot a gun out of an adversary’s hand or to shoot him in the leg. They are trained to double-tap shoot at ‘center mass’ and that means shoot to kill any way you cut it. In order to stop a deadly threat, as Chief Beck puts it, you usually have to kill the person who has the means and looks like he is about to carry out that threat to kill or seriously injure you, or someone else.

The public has been watching too many TV shows and movies where the good guy shoots the gun out of the bad guy’s hand or where the good guy gets the living shit beat out of him by a big bad guy, only to win by a knockout in the end. But that’s not the way it happens in real life. If an officer merely wounds someone pointing a gun at him he could very well end up dead. And when an officer tries to duke it out with a big bad guy he’s going to end up in the hospital, if not the morgue. If he’s about to be sent into dreamland or beyond,, an officer is justified in using deadly force against someone who is unarmed.

People need to know that when they threaten an officer’s life or limb, they are likely to get killed. So Charlie, please spare us that load of politically correct crap about your officers never being trained to shoot to kill. For the sake of your officers, just be thankful that they are trained to shoot to kill!