Police fatally shoot a man in West Philly

I for one am all for us going back to using batons...

Its much harder to fight back when you're trying to stand on a broken leg.

Non-lethal, and effective. Who says no?

Criminals, and those who support them.

 

He got his wish. Apparently the left thinks that if they encounter an erratic man with a knife they should put down their weapons and allow themselves to be stabbed. I is a matter of seconds. Think it through folks.

 

Only on TV. Cops are trained to do exactly what these cops did and for good reason.

 

I say no. A cop can't allow an armed person to get close enough to use a baton.

 

I'd like to think that I would have tried to immobilize him. But cops arent trained to do that. Perhaps they should be... but thats more a discussion to be had at our local city council.

Or perhaps they were trying to immobilize. During sim-munitions training, I had a federal officer empy his mag at me at point blank range and miss with every shot. Granted he was new, but he had passed his quals on the range. Everyone has bad days I guess.

 

The videos I've seen appear to show a man holding a knife at his side walking toward the officers. It's difficult to tell what happened before that moment, but the officers seem to go from the sidewalk to the open street and are followed by the man. Hopefully no one here disputes this.

The main dispute by the posters on this thread seems to be around the threat level of the individual and whether or not it justified lethal force. No one except the officers can truly know how threatened they felt at that moment, but the legal system does have a way of defining a lethal threat. I suggest we all let the system work as intended in determining the appropriateness of the officers' actions.

 

For the umpteenth time, its crystal clear that he was. He pursued them around a car. Are you trying to say that every single time the cops changed directions he just happened to change to moving in the same direction as them?....with a knife out.

The cops were retreating away from him ordering him to drop the knife. He continually came after them. And yes, this is crystal clear on the video.

I really want to hear your explanation of what he was doing if he wasn't coming after the officers.

 

Is that what you call it:

 

Freedom TVs

 

I just noticed he was 27 and had 7 +1 kids. I'll just presume he was a doctor and had no issues paying for all those kids who were definitely from the same mother.

 

Trying to "shoot to immobilize" is a terrible strategy. First off, shooting someone, for example, in the leg, will be fatal to the perpetrator fairly regularly anyways (femoral artery bleeding will leave someone dead within a few minutes - and that's excluding the shots that were intended for a leg but ended up in a head or chest cavity anyways, because cops aren't all expert marksmen). Secondly, shooting someone in the leg doesn't necessarily immobilize them. There are a lot of things the bullet might hit in a leg, from arteries to bones to some fat or muscle. A significant fraction of leg-GSW victims are still going to be able to walk / hop / limp around afterwards, and stab someone if they get close enough. And thirdly, and most importantly, a lot of those shots at a small, moving target like a leg are going to miss entirely, and then you end up like that scene outside the Empire State Building where the NYPD shot 9(!) bystanders a few years ago. Nobody wants that. Let me be explicit - they want that less than they want dead criminals with knives. A lot less.

 

I wish the PANG would start treating it more like a 'rebellion' then.

 

Can we edit the title to be accurate. “Armed man”.

“Cops defend themselves from armed aggressive lunatic.”

 

If I did that I could never watch the TV. OH HEY a black criminal got shot by the police.......................let's go steal a new TV.

What are we going to do about these animals that have no respect for the law or other LAW ABIDING citizens?

 

It was nine kids with one more on the way from what I heard on the radio. In the cold eyes of his evolution, he was a winner. His genes will get passed on. Irresponsible behavior is rewarded by our government. This is why the math doesn't work for America. To support those kids who will never contribute a damn thing to society will take 100 or so productive workers. This is true power of the Democratic Party and why they own the future. It is also why the crash coming America's way is unstoppable. The group that uses the least federal resources is imploding at the same time as the groups that use the most resources are exploding. We are currently using debt spending to cover the costs but eventually the credit card will run out. This problem will get a little worse every year with absolutely no end in sight. The best we can hope for is that we die peacefully in our beds before the civilizational collapse.

PS: It really upsets me that the Democrats got Latinos hooked up to the welfare grift. That was a very scummy move. It will harm them and kill America in the long term.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/pre... in Government Assistance Programs Each Month

 

Don’t worry. His career in n Robotics was about to take off.

 

All good points.

...but I think I would still try to incapacitate. If it was me.

 

All good points.

...but I think I would still try to incapacitate. If it was me.

 

Against a knife or a gun..............I don't think so.

 

You don't try to immobilize someone coming at you with a knife. And a shot to the leg can be quite deadly but the bigger mass is in the torso.

 

Within 20 feet with a knife is considered legals, a person can cross 20 feet in less than a second, even a person who has been shot. And again if you are going to try and shoot them in the leg to incapacitate you stand as good a chance of killing them as a shot in the torso.

 

You're certainly entitled to adopt whatever strategy you choose, should you ever find yourself in the unfortunate need to do so. I was merely explaining why, as a matter of public policy, "shoot to wound" is a bad policy.

 

then you'd be going against any and all firearms training you'd receive from a professional instructor.

There's a reason you're taught to aim center mass. Missing could mean you die. When you are the one being attacked, you shouldn't be expected to take that chance.

 

Its not that Im expected to take a chance, its that Im not entirely certain I would live a happy life if down the road I felt like I'd killed someone that I didn't need to kill. Life is full of risks, and I might prefer the risk of a leg injury not slowing down my attacker over the risk of a lifetime of sleepless nights.

Or not.

Hopefully I never find out for sure.

 

And that's fair. You know you better than I do.

Firearms safety is taught to keep you alive, not the person attacking you. Decades upon decades of analysis has shown that aiming anywhere other than center mass is taking a HUGE risk....one that officers can't afford to take if they're to make a career as a police officer. That's why the officers were correct here.