No ticket
No ticket
WIN!
OP - I appreciate you posting this. Since I got my CCL I have not been pulled over. Well, actually I haven't had a ticket in many, many years <touch wood> Good to know for when I do though...
While I understand this statement I have problems with how it is used these days. I'm sorry but the life of the officer is not more important than that of an honest citizen. The officer should never put his life above the life of the citizens he is trying to protect.
This rule when used in the context of the original post would imply that the it would have been acceptable for the officer to have shot the lady in the car. The OP even stated that they lady broke no laws. I believe this so called rule is overused and is a dangerous mindset to have.
As for the original post I believe the officer acted responsibly.
Michael
You've misinterpeted the rule then. It does not place the officers life above the citizen. It directly correlates to the emergency 1st responder's #1 rule, "don't become a victim". It's a matter of remembering officer safety and not taking things for granted. There are studies that show "officer friendly" has a proportionally greater likelihood of getting killed by an offender. It's not because he's too friendly, but because he doesn't prioritize his own safety. He's also slow to project authority and issue directives in a command voice when necessary. We can always de-escalate once we have control over a situation. It's much more difficult to come from behind on the OODA loop and regain control.
As for the parts I've bolded, working as a LEO is a continuous exercise in risk assessment. An officer may be expected to risk his life, but not foolishly so. I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that the rule is overused. We've already had 112 officers killed in the line of duty this year, 46 by gunfire. That's up quite a bit from this time last year. In light of that, you might reconsider being so cavalier about the rule being overused.
And your post, if applied without context, is over or mis-used as well.
My life is more important than yours; To ME. Your life is more important than mine to you.
The rule "Always go home alive at the end of your shift" is about officers not succumbing to errors of body or mind, not about mistake of fact shootings caused by someone else's mistakes. It has context; you have simply chosen to ignore it or believe that others have.
All the officers I know understand the difference or they wouldn't get through their shifts without murdering someone nightly.
If you really believe this concept is overused, you must have a lot of experience in this area to make such a broad statement, so you must be a police officer. Then you would have some perspective for your belief.
Since I'm guessing that you're not a police officer, I would direct you to the FBI's Officers Killed and Assaulted Summary which for years has been quoted as saying the profile of a murdered officer is consistently one for whom "customer service" was top priority, so obviously your statement lacks empirical evidence.
Now, because of the nature of my job I may die trying to protect someone else or maybe even trying to protect their worthless property. Does this mean I valued their life or their property more than my own? Any logical person could recognize that this is not the case.
What is does mean is that I take a calculated risk, which may be incorrect, based upon the facts presented to me, frequently in very rapidly evolving situations such as the four or five seconds it takes to go from an officer receiving a driver's license and SDA permit to a driver reaching for their insurance and exposing a firearm. The hope is that an ever-changing combination of luck, skill and experience will result in no one getting hurt.
However this ever-changing combination varies every time a police officer contacts a citizen, or vice-versa, and sometimes the combination of luck, skill, and experience is not enough to extinguish the situation and someone gets hurt, either officer or citizen. This is simply the nature of interpersonal contact.
That does not mean that the purpose of the contact was worth the officer's or the citizen's life. It simply means that in this imperfect world, imperfect things happen.
So when applied in the context of all the officers I know, the rule "Always go home alive at the end of your shift" isn't overused or invalid. It is simply a human rule that is subservient to the truism that "tomorrow is a promise to no one."
If we would quit nit-picking statements and ignoring the context of those statements, we would probably all get along a little better........
Michael Brown
You've misinterpeted the rule then. It does not place the officers life above the citizen. It directly correlates to the emergency 1st responder's #1 rule, "don't become a victim". It's a matter of remembering officer safety and not taking things for granted. There are studies that show "officer friendly" has a proportionally greater likelihood of getting killed by an offender. It's not because he's too friendly, but because he doesn't prioritize his own safety. He's also slow to project authority and issue directives in a command voice when necessary. We can always de-escalate once we have control over a situation. It's much more difficult to come from behind on the OODA loop and regain control.
As for the parts I've bolded, working as a LEO is a continuous exercise in risk assessment. An officer may be expected to risk his life, but not foolishly so. I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that the rule is overused. We've already had 112 officers killed in the line of duty this year, 46 by gunfire. That's up quite a bit from this time last year. In light of that, you might reconsider being so cavalier about the rule being overused.
I guess I should have waited until you posted so as not to waste bandwidth with one of my wordy replies.........LOL.
Michael Brown
Actually you and I are in total agreement on how the rule is meant. What I was referring to was when this rule is invoked to cover a bad shooting. Such as when an innocent person is shot. Such as when a person is shot while reaching for his wallet. When that happens it should be negligent homicide at the very least. A person who is shot because of a mistaken fear is wrong whether committed by a private citizen or a police officer.While I understand this statement I have problems with how it is used these days. I'm sorry but the life of the officer is not more important than that of an honest citizen. The officer should never put his life above the life of the citizens he is trying to protect.
This rule when used in the context of the original post would imply that the it would have been acceptable for the officer to have shot the lady in the car. The OP even stated that they lady broke no laws. I believe this so called rule is overused and is a dangerous mindset to have.
As for the original post I believe the officer acted responsibly.
Michael
You've misinterpeted the rule then. It does not place the officers life above the citizen. It directly correlates to the emergency 1st responder's #1 rule, "don't become a victim". It's a matter of remembering officer safety and not taking things for granted. There are studies that show "officer friendly" has a proportionally greater likelihood of getting killed by an offender. It's not because he's too friendly, but because he doesn't prioritize his own safety. He's also slow to project authority and issue directives in a command voice when necessary. We can always de-escalate once we have control over a situation. It's much more difficult to come from behind on the OODA loop and regain control.
As for the parts I've bolded, working as a LEO is a continuous exercise in risk assessment. An officer may be expected to risk his life, but not foolishly so. I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that the rule is overused. We've already had 112 officers killed in the line of duty this year, 46 by gunfire. That's up quite a bit from this time last year. In light of that, you might reconsider being so cavalier about the rule being overused.
I have no problem with an officer taking precautions such as cuffing an individual if he feels it is necessary. I do have a problem when a mistake in judgment takes an innocent persons life. When that happens there must be repercussions or people will lose faith in the system.
Growing up in the 60's with a cop for a father I am well aware of the stress encountered on the street. It takes a special type of person to handle it. We all know of those who cannot deal with the pressure and should never allow them to hide behind this rule.
Michael
The is completely inaccurate both legally and ethically. Reasonable perception is the standard not absolute fact.
For instance if a subject points a realistic-looking toy pistol at you during the course of a robbery and you BELIEVE your life is in danger, you are justified in using deadly force.
This is a mistake of fact shooting. The subject posed no lethal threat to you, so by your logic that person should be guilty of negligent homicide.
That is absolutely stupid.
In your example of a person reaching for his wallet, I ask people for items that they retrieve from their wallet on a daily basis and haven't shot someone for it because I expect they would be reaching for their wallet.
However, unexplained movement to the waistband is a court-accepted pre-assault cue; i.e. the Diallo shooting in NYC. Two courts both accepted than when confronted with ALL the facts, this was a reasonable mistake of fact shooting.
Do you have an example of a non-justifiable shooting by police where a subject was minding his own business doing nothing criminal or suspicious, reached for his wallet after being asked for ID by police and was shot in response? Do you have more than one?
If not, then GTG and my criticisms of your post are valid since you stated that the "go home alive" rule was being overused despite evidence to the contrary i.e. number of unjustifiable shootings by police, number of justifiable shootings by police, and number of felonious officer deaths. The number of unjustifiable shootings by police pales in comparison to justifiable shootings by police so the rule is obviously not "overused" as you so broadly stated.
The point is that your statement, while perhaps not malicious, was ill-informed and not supported by empirical evidence and I will not simply allow you to make such broad, unsupported statements about a very important topic.
Simply having a police officer for a father does not make you well-informed on this issue. I have two children who don't have a direct understanding of what police officers do so I'm confident that while they, and you, may be sympathetic to police officers the relationship in and of itself doesn't mean you understand anything.
There are repercussions for mistake of fact shootings but they are civil, not criminal as they should be if the perception was reasonable.
If the perception in such a shooting is NOT reasonable that is a different issue, however the facts being incorrect IN HINDSIGHT is not the accepted standard for any use of force by any citizen, police officer or not.
Michael Brown
I keep my insurance card clipped on the visor under the garage door opener for that exact reason. Knock on wood, it has been more than a decade since I've been puled over. Not bad since I live in Stillwater and my office is in Tulsa.
Sounds to me like a bit of an over reaction by the op to me. It seems in this instance the CCW holder had informed the stopping officer of her status as a CCW holder and was showing the officer the weapon... likely as instructed by the stopping officer and retrieving her insurance also, likely instructed by the lead officer, later (not sure of the time frame) the backing officer sees the CCW reaching for her insurance, which happens to be near her weapon, and pulls his weapon and admits he was close to shooting her? Over speeding? Sounds at the least like a massive miscommunication and I think the CCW holder was not as far in the wrong as in the op's opinion.
Michael you bring up the Diallo case, which does indeed back up the reaching for the waistband as reasonable justification for a shooting, I do however, have a quote from a police official interviewed after the shooting: 1999: "It looks like one guy may have panicked and the rest followed suit," a police official told The New York Times after the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Amadou Ahmed Diallo, a Guinnea-Bissau immigrant who was killed when four white New York police officers in plain clothes fired 41 shots at him, 19 of which hit his body. The officers said they thought Diallo was reaching for a gun when they shot him in the doorway of his apartment. Turns out it was his wallet." Are we sure that is a good standard to follow?
Anyway, I know the police have a tough job and are under appreciated, however, there does seem to be an us verses them mentality in certain officers (not saying this was the case here) and in some instances even viewing the people they protect and serve as enemy combatants. It seems a more balanced approach could be reached.
Michael you bring up the Diallo case, which does indeed back up the reaching for the waistband as reasonable justification for a shooting, I do however, have a quote from a police official interviewed after the shooting: 1999: "It looks like one guy may have panicked and the rest followed suit," a police official told The New York Times after the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Amadou Ahmed Diallo, a Guinnea-Bissau immigrant who was killed when four white New York police officers in plain clothes fired 41 shots at him, 19 of which hit his body. The officers said they thought Diallo was reaching for a gun when they shot him in the doorway of his apartment. Turns out it was his wallet." Are we sure that is a good standard to follow?
Anyway, I know the police have a tough job and are under appreciated, however, there does seem to be an us verses them mentality in certain officers (not saying this was the case here) and in some instances even viewing the people they protect and serve as enemy combatants. It seems a more balanced approach could be reached.
