BETTER SHOOT TO KILL, NOT TO WOUND!

OK, so police work is 95 percent utter boredom and five percent sheer terror. The problem is that a cop never knows when that terror will strike. For a lucky few, it rarely happens. For some it can happen more than once a day.
　
What really gets me is the total ignorance shown by people, including some legislators, about deadly confrontations between cops and civilians. When an officer believes he is threatened by the immediate use of deadly force, he’d better shoot to kill - never mind that shoot to stop crap - and he shouldn’t stop shooting until person presenting that threat is down and out. There have been far to many instances in which an officer was killed by someone he has just wounded.
　
Of course, there have been tragic cases in which an unarmed person was shot by a cop who believed the victim was armed. Children have even been killed when pointing a toy gun at an officer. What can I say other than, shit happens! But if the officer thought that he was looking down the barrel of a real gun, can you really blame him for shooting first?
　
Cops really don’t ever want to kill anyone unless that person is a cop-killer or has committed an unspeakable heinous homicide. No cop gets ready to go on duty and says to himself, ‘Man, I hope I’ll get to be in a shootout today.’ And how do you think those cops felt after shooting a kid with a toy gun? They find it hard to live with themselves.
　
So here we go again. For the second time some jerks in New York have introduced legislation requiring cops to ‘shoot to wound.’ These ‘No Kill’ bills, if they ever became law, would be sentencing police officers to death. And that kind of shit should never happen!
　
SO-CALLED ‘NO-KILL’ BILL SURFACES IN NY
Ill-advised piece of legislation was drafted in the aftermath of the death of Sean Bell outside a Queens, New York strip club in November 2006
　
By Senior Editor Doug Wyllie
　
PoliceOne.com
May 26, 2010
　
Lawmakers in New York are again contemplating the notion of "shoot-to-wound" legislation and cops in that state are understandably furious. The so-called ‘minimum force’ bill was drafted in the aftermath the death of Sean Bell outside a Queens, New York strip club on November 25, 2006. Similar legislation has been previously presented, and defeated, but the fact that it’s come around again indicates a particularly slow learning curve among law makers about what law enforcers actually do.
　
According to a newspaper report by Murray Weiss of the New York Post, the bill would "amend the state penal codes’ ‘justification’ clause that allows an officer the right to kill a thug if he feels his life or someone else's is in imminent danger."
　
Weiss writes that the bill proposed bill "would force officers to use their weapons ‘with the intent to stop, rather than kill’ a suspect" and would mandate that cops ‘shoot a suspect in the arm or the leg’ as opposed to the present practice of aiming center-mass until the threat is stopped.

Here’s just one problem with this ill-advised piece of legislation: cops already shoot to stop — not kill — the threat.

Sure, there’s the one-in-a-million instance — usually when a hostile suspect is holding a hostage at gunpoint with imminent danger of death to said hostage — in which an immediate de-animation shot is required. But there are many, many more instances in which an officer — or multiple officers — have put rounds on a dangerous suspect, stopped them from being a threat, and then instantaneously rendered life-saving aid.
　
"When I encounter civilian response to officer-involved shootings, it’s very often ‘Why didn’t they just shoot him in the leg?’" Dr. Bill Lewinski, executive director of the Force Science Institute, told Force Science News in a 2006 interview centered on Paterson’s proposed legislation. "When civilians judge police shooting deaths–on juries, on review boards, in the media, in the community–this same argument is often brought forward. Shooting to wound is naively regarded as a reasonable means of stopping dangerous behavior.
　
"In reality, this thinking is a result of ‘training by Hollywood,’ in which movie and TV cops are able to do anything to control the outcomes of events that serve the director’s dramatic interests. It reflects a misconception of real-life dynamics and ends up imposing unrealistic expectations of skill on real-life officers."
　
Vice President Joe Biden apparently agrees, according to the FSRC report. "When Michael Paladino, president of New York’s Detectives Endowment Association, showed him the bill he reportedly scoffed and suggested that it be called the ‘John Wayne Bill’ because of the unrealistic, movie-like sharpshooting skills it demands of officers," reads the Force Science paper.
　
PoliceOne Firearms Columnist Ron Avery is quoted in the Force Science Research document as saying that shooting to wound "reflects a misapplication of police equipment. Less-lethal options should be attempted only with tools designed for that purpose."
　
Avery says further that if you "deliberately use deadly force to bring people into custody without incapacitating them, you’re using the wrong tool for that job. Also, if you shoot them in the arm or leg and you destroy muscle tissue, shatter bone or destroy nerve function you have maimed that person for life. Now attorneys can play the argument of ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ and pursue punitive damages for destroying the capacity of your ‘victim’ to earn wages and so on. You don’t try to just wound people with a gun. Period."
　
This legislation — and other such nonsense like it — was almost certainly drafted by a group of people who have never in their lives operated a firearm, much less done so in the life-or-death context that police officers face every day they pin on the badge. Avery has an idea on how we can help those folks get an idea. "Put them in a cage with a lion," Avery suggests. "Then let’s see if they shoot to wound."