The perils of “contagious shooting.”
Fifty bullets fired at three unarmed men last Saturday. Forty-three fired at an armed man last year. Forty-one fired at Amadou Diallo. All by New York police; all cases fatal.
Why so many bullets? “Contagious shooting,” proposed the New York Times in a front-page story on Monday. “An officer fires, so his colleagues do, too.”
It’s natural to grope for a rational or mechanical explanation in cases like these. But it’s not clear which kind of explanation this contagion is. If it’s rational, it should be judged like any rational process, and cops should be culpable for it. If it’s mechanical, it should be controlled like any mechanical process, starting with the guns supplied to police. We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing: giving cops high-round semiautomatic weapons because we trust them not to blast away like robots, then excusing them like robots when they blast away.
What makes contagious shooting a handy legal defense is its mechanical portrayal of behavior. You’re not choosing to kill; you’re catching a disease. In the Diallo era, the NYPD patrol guide explained that the first shot “sets off a chain reaction of shooting by other personnel.” Officers “join in as a kind of contagion,” said the Times.
How can you control a contagion of police overreaction? By controlling the crucial mechanism: guns. The key number in the Diallo case wasn’t 41; it was 16. Two of the four officers accounted for 32 of the 41 bullets, because each of them emptied his weapon.
To see an example of this in action, here’s a video of a guy being shot 81 times by cops. Although he continually verbally threatened them and therefore, rightly thought dangerous, turns out he had a flip flop in his hand, not a gun. On the other hand, they had bullet proof shields and plenty of time to get all bystanders away. When he raised his hand, they could have waited before firing to see he had nothing. But he wanted to die and knew the cops would shoot first. Warning, very graphic.
So, what does everyone else feel about the quality of police officers going through the system these days? I think most of them are unintelligent rejects who only choose the career so they can bully and legally abuse others.
When I went to watch the video of this I noticed that the whole incident took over 8 minutes so from this we can assume that some efforts were made by the police to resolve the matter peacefully.
For those people talking about shooting people in the arms and legs to simply disarm the threat need to understand that the risk of taking a shot like that and missing (due to the target area being smaller than the chest area and the person moving around) leave the officer open to being killed. In training police are trained to aim for the largest area and the chest is the best area. People shot in arms and legs can still attack as there is no guarentee to shot/s will be effective.
For those who are commenting on the mentality of the police involved should understand that they do not know the people involved and unless they are treating these officers for the Post Traumatic Stress they will suffer, they will never know the ins and outs of the situation so in my opinion are making ill informed comments based on little facts and seem to be doing so to vent their agner on Police in general which is a childish approach to the matter.
I really think that people should not comment unless they
HAVE BEEN IN A SIMILAR SITUATION AND
UNDERSTAND FULLY POLICE TRAINING, POLICIES AND PROCEEDURES AND
PERSONALLY KNOW THE POLICE AND SUBJECT INVOLVED AND
KNOW ALL THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE MATTER.
Of course my comments are based on 24 years of Policing in Australia but I shudder when I read some of the venomous comments directed towards Police and it seems to me that some people commenting would rather have Police killed or injured in the line of duty than have the threat removed.
Ron
personally i dont trust cops at all. yea they suppose to protect and serve. but how do u know which ones r actually doing that. how do u shoot a guy 41 times with a handgun? one or two shots should have been enough! and their caucasion cops. DIALLO DIALLO!
It’ bothers me that with all this so called training a cop gets,and they do get a lot of training shooting in scenarios and at the range,but they are also told in trianing off cuff of course that if you have to shoot,shoot to kill not to wound because of potential lawsuits.But what i don’t get is with all that training,why do it take so many officers to kill one target.They don’t even overkill like that in iraq.And of course you will never hear a cop or excop say slaughter was not justified so why do the media and public exspect something diferent.YOU WOULD’NT SHOOT A DANGEROUS ANIMAL 50 OR 81 TIMES EVEN IF IT LUNGES AT YOU.
How many of you mr. proud to be and officer grow up hoping for the chance one day to shoot a black or hispanic or asian man legally and get paid to do it.we may not know what you go through everyday but we see and hear about what you do on tv and thats nothing to act like you deserve some compassion.And you wonder why cases don’t get solved in the comunity because at the end of the day you’re more concerned about making it home than protecting the public.A fireman goes into a burning house to save a life because he’s not so afraid of not going home he relies on his training to get him through a situation,he does’nt let people burn because he is worried about making it home so why do the police justify overkill with that crap.They know when to stop shooting but they don’t because they know that it’s a stress reliever to fire your weapon in public legally and thats why they are always high five’n after a shootout cause they enjoyed the rush.Is’nt that so Mr. Officer?