"Shocking and shameful"
From the Chronicle's Letters to the Editor, April 12:
Incompetent SFPD
I find it disheartening that heavily armed and trained law officers were unable, without killing him in a rain of bullets, to disarm and subdue one possibly dazed and confused homeless man with a kitchen knife. It appears that the only force left willing to risk their own lives and safety to save human life is the fire department. The inability of police, often in numbers, here and around the country, to subdue men and boys, unarmed or with only a blade, without an over-the-top armed response, is shocking and shameful. We focus a lot on race issues, as we should, but we might also want to look at plain incompetence as well.
Jeremy Snitkin
Novato
Thanks to SF1st.
Labels: Punks with Guns
posted by Rob Anderson @ 10:37 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
My brother, a police patrolman for more than a decade, counseled me once to trade in my pocket jackknife for a can of pepper spray because, as he told me, a knife is considered deadly force by combat experts and in law. His police academy training included demonstrations by trainers of how a knife-armed man can deliver a deadly wound in a small fraction of a second even when starting from more than 6 feet away from the victim. He and his fellow officers were trained to treat a knife-armed assailant as a deadly threat when closer than a specified distance which, although I don't recall exactly, was less than 10 feet.
When officers respond to a deadly force threat with their pistols they are trained and directed to "empty the clip", firing multiple rounds in quick succession at the target. This is because pistol shooting in an action setting, even when done by the best marksmen, is notoriously inaccurate. Emptying the clip is the best tactic for increasing the probability of one of more rounds will hit the target and neutralize the threat.
Personally, I am not qualified to issue a credible opinion as to the value and merit of police training. If I were highly-trained and experienced in close-range, armed, personal combat, like military combat veterans, for instance, then I could credibly evaluate and judge police training and methods for dealing with violent threats. My question to you and others who seem so convinced that they know better than the trainers at the Academy: What are your credentials?
This isn't about some kind of expertise or "credentials." It's surely about training and the kind of men attracted to law enforcement. Why do cops in the US kill more people" than cops in other Western countries?
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