Its definitely a damned if you do damned if you don't situation. Either return fire as the assailants are shooting at you and risk stray rounds hitting someone else or back off and allow two armed murderers to get away and in the process continue to be a threat to the public.
Cop in America doing a bad job, again
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Its definitely a damned if you do damned if you don't situation. Either return fire as the assailants are shooting at you and risk stray rounds hitting someone else or back off and allow two armed murderers to get away and in the process continue to be a threat to the public.
I think it is. He attempted to close the distance on the vehicle to get better and accurate shots off. Even the shots he took a little further away looked on target to me.
Exactly. That's what I meant earlier. There was always going to be strong criticism for his actions either way.
Only way he wouldn't have been damned is if he called for back up and the suspects where taken in without more casualties. But I agree, it's a shitty situation.
Again, I don't think you can blankly state the cop is in the wrong here as a lot of people do. Is it reckless? Yes. Was it the wrong thing to do? Quite possibly. But being fired upon is not a situation where logical thinking will always prevail. "well don't be a cop then!", I hear people yelling. Well, someone has to fecking do it, and it's not going to be you and it's not going to be me risking their lives to apprehend armed murderers who are shooting at you.
Imagine if there would be no cops at all to stop these lunatics. Now that would be a bad job. And as for people being accused of being anti cop? Well some on here most definitely are. Admittedly so I think.
He did call for back up when he called in the shots fired and also called for ambulances at the beginning.
Yea, I meant call for back up and back of himself, but as you said, what if they would've killed more people. He'd be painted as a coward not fit to wear a badge.
I didn't see anyone advocating letting them go, did I miss something? Personally, as I posted early with the disclaimer that I'm not PO, I feel it would have been safer to back off and coordinate something with other units.
You said that you wouldn't do the same as the cup in the video so what would you have done@choiboyx012? And to your point about criticisms. When you posted this video here what were you expecting?
Like someone said, it doesn't have to be black or white, there is an in-between. The tendency to make things a them versus us situation is rarely ever helpful to relations.
Backing off and allowing them to speed away would be tantamount to letting two armed murderers go when he had a chance to neutralize them.
No it wouldn't, back off doesn't mean to stop and let them go over hear (it means to pull back, take your foot off the gas, tone it down, etc) what's it mean in the US?
The assailants shot 35 times at the cop so he would either have to return fire or completely disengage to where their rounds couldn't reach him, which would mean getting so far back where they couldn't see him. At that point they are being allowed to speed away since he has no idea where they are.
What do you guys suggest the backup should have done anyway? It would just have been more shots fired from more cars on the same street... No one is going to ram a car off the street while being shot at from point blank range.
How could he, or his backup, know where they were going to drive to prepare something though? This wasn't a freeway without exits etc. They could have driven anywhere and their best hope would have been to follow them from the heli and hope they don't shoot at anyone in the meantime.
His actions are extremely dangerous, I don't think anyone would argue that, but there's no obvious better solution in my eyes.
I'm not having that but what do I know. I'm from the UK. He's on the radio coordinating with other units. No chance of directing them ahead and corralling them somewhere? Tracking them from the sky?
So basically you're telling me he had no other option but to speed down the road weaving thru traffic banging off shots like we see in the movies (but are often told it's not really like this).....
It's crazy but like I said I can't relate.
I don't know mate I'm just looking at all the ways that could have gone wrong. Fair enough of y'all think that's how it should always go down but I can't see it... Feck do I know tho?
You say they could have started shooting up the place. They were, so it's whether or not they were shooting because of the presence of the police or do they just like shooting? Maybe @choiboyx012 had a better or less dangerous way to handle it in mind. He's the PO.
That was so GTA. Props to Tony for taking matters into his own hands. Should have spawned a rocket launcher though. Noob.
No of course not. I can critique his actions, but also appreciate the kind of stress and dilemma he is faced with. And I can be thankful that he ultimately "got the job done" and neutralized the threats without harm to anyone else except the murderer suspects. Speaking of which, I can't recall any post mentioning the suspects' deadly and reckless actions, only the cops'. Maybe I was just reading too much into it.
You stated that you wouldn't do it, same as us. Does that make you anti-cop too? Or maybe, we aren't anti-cop, just anti-accident?
I would have done what most have said on here, as I have my own departmental policy on pursuits and shooting to abide by. Back off, request airship unit, alert neighboring agencies, have other units go parallel to the suspect vehicle.
Didn't realize this until now, but an airship unit takes a while to respond to a location and I don't think the video showed if the heli arrived on time. So again, there's a dilemma in that "tracking" is usually done when the heli is up and has visual of the suspect vehicle so the officers on the ground can back off. The video is about 4 minutes long and I doubt a heli would have responded that fast. So there was a strong chance that backing off when the shooting started would have given advantage to the suspects in fleeing and doing God knows what else to whoever else.
Cheers.
That’s what I was figuring had happened... chopper not on the scene at the time.
Here's a similar incident from LAPD very recently. The biggest difference being that it was a 2-person unit so the FTO (Field Training Officer) on the passenger side returned fire initially with her pistol and then with the shotgun. My buddy who works in the same division has dealt with the driver before.
This is a debrief video released by the department. You can skip towards the end for the video w/sound
Helicopters in our location are horrendous for being able to respond.
“Down for weather” is the usual response. Pursuits will often be done before they’re ever close to arriving, if they take off at all.
We had two pursuits last week that ended up in crashes before any helicopter was near us.
We have better chance at getting allied agencies helicopter to respond to our pursuits than our own.
On the plus side, at least we’re still allowed to pursue.
“Down for weather” is the usual response. Pursuits will often be done before they’re ever close to arriving, if they take off at all.
We had two pursuits last week that ended up in crashes before any helicopter was near us.
We have better chance at getting allied agencies helicopter to respond to our pursuits than our own.
On the plus side, at least we’re still allowed to pursue.
Have you any experience of that tech that fires a tracker from a pursuit car onto the target vehicle and allows the cops to back off? I'm guessing it's still very much in development.
Nope, none at all. At best we’ll try to get the plate so if we have to cancel the pursuit, we have some follow up. It varies on what the original want was though.
I think it's bad to kill civilians
@Skizzo can you explain why you always see loads of cars and cops at the aftermath of an incident or at an ongoing scene? Sometimes it seems like there are way too many cops there than necessary and not looking out for other stuff elsewhere? Just doesn't look like a good use of resources.
Typically it depends on the incident and what’s requested. I can’t speak for other departments, but shootings/fatal scenes we will typically have a decent number of people out there because there’s lots to process.
Yeah, good thing they finally caught Mr. Atkins in the end.
They shot into a crowd and killed a civilian.
So beat cops do processing too? I thought it was just CSI types. What exactly is processing?
Just had a look at the comments below the Telegraph article on this episode...Britain is not that much different, sadly. The difference being a lot of people here are ‘too polite’ to say similar things in public.
Edit: post obviously belongs to Who is America thread
Edit: post obviously belongs to Who is America thread
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That’s what I meant by it depends on the department. For example, we don’t hbe detectives out of every office, so we tend to handle our own incidents. We have MAIT come out for high profile or really extreme crashes, but otherwise we handle our own things.
By processing I mean things on scene like having someone take measurements for the vehicle resting points and debris for the diagram, someone scribing everyone who is on scene (fire, medics etc), someone doing traffic control, someone doing vehicle inventories before they’re towed, someone taking photographs if necessary, and then whoever is handling to talk to people on scene who were involved, or witnesses etc. For us, the more people we get there quickly for major incidents, the quicker we can try and get things done and opened up again.
As for PD’s or SO departments handling scenes in the city, they may have different policies and protocols for responding officers etc.
Sounds reasonable. I knew there was a lot goes on after an incident. Day-to-day stuff is interesting so it's good to have you around to fill us in.
wonder how that bullet got out of the gun. guess we'll never know
He owned his mistake, at least. Seemed very apologetic. Still, could have gone much worse.
Peculiar, MO?
Show me what's not strange about that.
Show me what's not strange about that.
If you’re into that sorta thing.