Lt. Jim Cunningham, El Cajon Police Department (Ret.), asks…
Shoot, or Don’t Shoot? You have a split second. A 9mm bullet has a velocity of between 1,200 and 1,400 feet per second. You are 6 – 8 feet away. Your decision. Shoot or Don’t Shoot?
(Click for a larger shot)
He then adds…
BTW: It’s a vape.
Comments 3
I think the bigger picture is that more and more cops have the hampering fear of being shot. These fears are costing taxpayers over 600 million in wrongful death suits.
The only way to make a significant dent in this problem is to prevent unstable people from getting guns. That is something for politicians to do to make our cops safer. Which laws to enact I don’t know, but any kind of physical violence or mental unstability is definite no no.
Do you have any idea what the cost is to taxpayers when an officer hesitates, and winds up killed or disabled?
Those who have never been a police officer armed with the power of life and death, or, at least, taken some training in combat shooting, have no idea of the dynamics of these confrontations. It is among the highest stress situations possible. Humans react to the immediate threat of death or serious harm with a flow of adrenaline which cannot be consciously controlled. The reaction of the brain to this flow is to nearly turn off the cognitive, judgment functions and shift to the survival, instinctive mode – the best description is “get him before he gets me!” The threat presented also reduces the officer’s accurate perception of the situation, for example, potentially making a vape in the hands of a man in a combat stance look more like a gun because people see what they expect to see. It takes a great deal of training to keep the judgment part of the brain functioning in this situation, and, even with that training, there is a high possibility of error. No one can excuse brutality, malice or racism in making these split-second decisions, but, if we want police at all, and most of us do unless we all want to learn combat shooting, we should accept the reality of what happens in these confrontations and reject the absurd fantasy that all officers are racists or brutal savages. There are a few who should not be officers, but the overwhelming majority just want to do the job and go home to their families at end of shift. Let’s forget the media hype, political exploiters and cop haters, review the facts and come up with some better ways to handle these situations.