I can't even imagine any more of a justified shooting.
I'm not going to say it wasn't justified, because it was.
But I will say, I think that if this guy had been doing this in, let's say, the UK (And he had a bolt-action rifle, so it would have been perfectly possible for a law abiding UK citizen to have such a weapon), he might, and I stress, might have lived.
They're mostly just yelling 'drop the weapon' while he's lying on the floor with his gun to his head. No action is taken to try and disable this guy, nobody moves to get to the closer wall (for the taser shot that one officer wanted to try) whilst he is obviously unable to immediately shoot and covered by half a dozen officers. Nobody tries to appeal to him with any statement like 'How are your family going to feel?' or 'There is a better way out of it than this' or 'we can help you'.
I think it's worth saying that there was considerable potential to take his guy in alive, but I wouldn't 'condemn' the police over it.
I'd say 'I am satisfied but I still think you could have done better'.
The police didn't have the context of what the guy was shooting at, just that he was an active shooter. Trying to approach him would very likely have been suicide. They dealt with this exactly as they should have.
I didn't hear about this until this thread, so they have about as much context as I have, seeing a guy lying down on the ground holding a rifle to his own head.
Approaching him was not suicide, as demonsrated by the car pulling up right infront of him with a clear line of fire. (Imo they pulled up too close and too visibly and freaked him out, and that's why he chose that moment to get up.)
He was in a situation where pointing the gun the wrong way would equate to an instant hail of bullets cutting him up from both above and infront of him. It was pretty safe for an officer to approach him from the empty flank, as that car did.
A deranged person is reported as an active shooter and is holding a gun to his head, but won't pull the trigger. approaching him may be safe, or he might spaz out and shoot himself, you, or someone else. Nobody should be compelled to flip that coin.
The cops here contained the danger and prevented a crazed gunman from harming anyone else at an already big enough risk to their own lives. That is A+ work.
I'm not going to say it wasn't justified, because it was.
But I will say, I think that if this guy had been doing this in, let's say, the UK (And he had a bolt-action rifle, so it would have been perfectly possible for a law abiding UK citizen to have such a weapon), he might, and I stress, might have lived.
They're mostly just yelling 'drop the weapon' while he's lying on the floor with his gun to his head. No action is taken to try and disable this guy, nobody moves to get to the closer wall (for the taser shot that one officer wanted to try) whilst he is obviously unable to immediately shoot and covered by half a dozen officers. Nobody tries to appeal to him with any statement like 'How are your family going to feel?' or 'There is a better way out of it than this' or 'we can help you'.
I think it's worth saying that there was considerable potential to take his guy in alive, but I wouldn't 'condemn' the police over it.
I'd say 'I am satisfied but I still think you could have done better'.
The police didn't have the context of what the guy was shooting at, just that he was an active shooter. Trying to approach him would very likely have been suicide. They dealt with this exactly as they should have.
I didn't hear about this until this thread, so they have about as much context as I have, seeing a guy lying down on the ground holding a rifle to his own head.
Approaching him was not suicide, as demonsrated by the car pulling up right infront of him with a clear line of fire. (Imo they pulled up too close and too visibly and freaked him out, and that's why he chose that moment to get up.)
He was in a situation where pointing the gun the wrong way would equate to an instant hail of bullets cutting him up from both above and infront of him. It was pretty safe for an officer to approach him from the empty flank, as that car did.
A deranged person is reported as an active shooter and is holding a gun to his head, but won't pull the trigger. approaching him may be safe, or he might spaz out and shoot himself, you, or someone else. Nobody should be compelled to flip that coin.
The cops here contained the danger and prevented a crazed gunman from harming anyone else at an already big enough risk to their own lives. That is A+ work.