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.
Does anyone have the video that goes with the picture for this story? It happened in New Orleans, a mentally challenged man in a suit. I never got to see it.
#15
Sorry but you are the idiot if not at the very least because you read about half of my post and went off half cocked (no pun intended).
I said that cops should never need high capacity SIDEARMS. I have no problem with cops having semi-automatic rifles and shotguns in the trunk. Give me a situation where a cop has a high capacity rifle in the trunk and would need a high capacity sidearm. Learn something about firearms before you stick your foot in your mouth. If you are in a fire fight, a sidearm of any type is not the weapon of choice and without question the most effective weapon is the radio.
> If carjackers or home invaders happened
> to grab your loved one wouldn’t you want
> the first officer on the scene to be able to help them?
First there is issue of the officer actually showing up. Second, if a cop cannot handle the situation with a standard sidearm then a semi-auto that let’s him reload 1/2 as often isn’t going to make a difference. Having a gun that never jams however could make a huge difference.
Did that guy forget his college library card? People never learn. sigh
Come on. This type of thing is just wrong. Okay we all know what types of things happen in urban areas. But too shoot a guy because you think he may have a gun ? That just seems wrong. All of us black people dont have guns. And not all of us want to kill the white man. Cant this kinda of thinking end ?
I don’t disagree with your police should use .357 revolvers and there are 7 or 8 shot .357 revolvers. A .357 is still the best man stopper out there. I am a little concerned with reload time on one however, even with a speed loader, but training should take care of that. The other issue I see is with the high capacity rifle in the trunk. Rifles in urban settings can be dangerous with over penetration issues, as rifles are far more powerful than handguns. I think a better idea would be a shotgun with 00 or 000 buckshot. Most shootings happen in 7 yards or less and a shotgun will take down anyone (even in body armor) at that range and be less dangerous to bystanders than a rifle would be. SWAT teams should be issued the rifles more than the regular officers. And as for all the shots being fired and not many hitting, that is very common and stress shooting of a handgun is not a easy skill to acquire and if you wanted police to master it they would need to train nearly every day and would be able to spend far less time on the streets.
One stupid question: did the dog survive? I ask that because I think it’s pretty clumsy to release the dog just when you’re starting to shoot… The whole film is out of context and I don’t know anything about what was going on in there, and yes, cops go through a lot and really don’t have a death wish, so probably they were just being morbidly careful, but it really seems, to the non trained eye, a completely incompetent way of dealing with this problem…
Just my two cents…
#22 I read your post and you must be an idiot if you think just reducing the number of rounds a police officer can have in his gun is going to have any effect on anything. Six rounds in you or 22 I doubt you will notice the difference.
Another issue you do realize that the .357 Mag is a much more powerful round than the 9mm or .40 S&W most officers carry today. Being more powerful it does things like go through the person you are shooting at an hits bystanders.
I’ll bet you think that this gun is in some way more powerful and deadly than this gun.
#24 I assume you are talking about the video? If so the police thought he had a gun because he told them he did and was hiding his hands.
50 bullets fired versus 50 bullets hitting the target is not the same thing. The reporting on these stories is incomplete.
If you ever read FBI statistics on police gunfights, if I recollect correctly, something on the order of over 70% occur within a space of 8-10 FEET (as crazy as that sounds), yet the accuracy rate is typically only between 8-15%. That is a huge miss ratio, especially for people who are trained and practiced in shooting firearms, so realistically officers usually need to fire more shots simply to hit the target.
Still, that being said, so many officers shooting so many bullets at a single person begs the question as to whether the adrenaline (or anger at a suspect not complying with orders) made them lose complete control. As someone who shoots various caliber firearms, I find it hard to understand how so many cops could completely empty their magazines before assessing whether the suspect was contained.
I really hate to see a handful of lousy cops soil the reputation of ALL cops!
#26
RE: “Going through people”
This is a strawman argument. A .357 has far more stopping power than 9MM which means a person will be stopped in their tracks with fewer rounds. The reverse strawman against the 9MM is that it has a greater tendency to ricochet and thus hit more bystanders. I believe a .357 also has more stopping power than a .40 but I’m not sure. A .40 has more mass but less powder. Further, don’t tell me that firing 14 rounds with a given miss ratio is better than firing fewer rounds in terms of innocent bystanders.
RE: Your gun comparison.
The LOOK of the gun makes absolutely, positively no difference. It was this kind of idiotic thinking that brought us the assault weapons ban. The first gun might be a .22 for all I know. To answer the question accurately, I would need to know what each shoots and whether the first gun is fully automatic.
RE: Fewer rounds
Certainly having fewer rounds would prevent officers from emptying 14 rounds from a sidearm into a person. Again, an officer should not need 14 rounds in a SIDEARM. If there really is a situation requiring heavy artillery, they should be carrying that in their trunk and they should be calling for backup.
Of course, you have completely ignored the greatest reason for a revolver which is that it cannot jam. There are many stories of cops that fired off a round and the cartrige jammed in the slide of their semi-automatic.
#27, If a cop’s hit ratio is 8% that is pretty scary. Part of that might be explained by a comfort factor in having many rounds and thus being less disciplined in their shooting.
I think they pepper the person with bullets because it’s cheaper to deal with a dead person than an injured person because it can sue.
#25
I completely agree in terms of a rifle vs. a shotgun. A shotgun is by far the best close quarter fire fight weapon along with the radio. Either way, an officer’s sidearm should mostly be for self-defense rather than used to overwhelm someone in a fire fight.
Thomas, I mostly agree with your point.
I would add though that in cases like the above video, the police had a lot of time to obtain their stun guns, tasers, bean guns, wooden block shotguns, or whatever non lethal weaponry they needed. What was missing was the will.
There will be those times when an officer just can not take the time to retrieve more guns from his trunk. Though I have seen certain police departments that keep a short shot gun mounted to the dash and an automatic rifle in the trunk, the cop is usually out of the car when an emergency situation happens.
Gig,
Man, do you have issues? It seems everyone that isn’t a blatantly blind police supporter is an idiot. I am very sure, and several have already pointed this out, it isn’t a case of being police haters. It is a matter of being unwilling to weed out the bad police. It is the idiots that are unwilling to question.
Your comment about a loved one being taken hostage is complete bull. The chances of a regular citizen being roughed up or abused by the police is much greater then someone being kidnapped at gunpoint. The odds of a cop being within hailing distance of such an incident is even more remote.
The police work for us. We do not answer to the police. Much to your disappointment, this is not yet a Police State.
This story, as well as the one about the moron UCLA student who was tasered, has compelled me to comment.
Do you know any “rich” cops? Or how about even moderately wealthy ones? Me neither. These are men and women who, for very meager pay (when you think about it), risk their lives every day dealing with people on the fringe of society/ sanity. What would YOU do- wait a few extra moments “just to make sure” the person you are confronted by isn’t going to kill you before opening fire? Some do; and, sometimes, we read about those poor folks in stories with headlines like “Officer Slain in Shooting”.
The number of instances where cops shoot down citizens with absolutely no provocation are extremely rare, and when they do occur, BOY do we hear about it (as we should). No amount of training or practice can guarantee your safety when your life is on the line, which is what some cops face every time they pull over a speeder or confront someone in the process of committing a crime. Never seen a story about a cop who pulled over a seemingly innocuous motorist and gets shot and killed? Go rent “The Thin Blue Line” by Errol Morris and then get back to me with your righteous indignation.
Not all cops are saints, but MAN O MAN do they have a dangerous job to do. Maybe not in your hometown, but I have travelled through some downright frightening areas in several American cities. So why is it so hard for some people to understand how situations like these can occur? It sure is easy to sit there on your fat ass in your executive office chair in front of your PC and spout off about how police in the US are running amok with unneccessary violence when you have never seen/ experienced situations like these in person. I would love for some of these loudmouths to go on a ride-along through Oakland or East St. Louis and THEN tell me about all these rotten cops.
The dog did not survive, which was the big tragedy. The dog should never have been turned loose.
The sound is way out of sync with the action. If you listen to the sound, it appears as though Deandre was shot *before* he raised his arm as though he were holding a gun. If you turn the sound off and judge when he was shot based on the impact of the bullets (which move faster than sound), it is apparent he was shot *after* he raised his arm.
Did someone monkey with the soundtrack to make the shooting appear more egregious?
#34: Having posted a number of vids from YouTube and other sources here, it’s not uncommon for the video and audio to get out of sync, especially if it got converted from one format to another as often happens on these sites.
Face it…there aren’t many smart people who become police officers these days. Not many intelligent people want $30,000 a year to put their life on the line. You get a lot of bullies and rejects going through the system. Only a small percentage of our police force has any common sense. It’s not too brave to gun down one person with all your buddies there or pop someone in the eye when all your fellow officers are standing behind you watching you do it. Look how many “toy cops” it took for them to taser that guy and drag him around that library. And for what? Forgetting his ID?
Our security forces need to get a grip and start raising their academy standards some. Better pay might be an incentive.
Wow! What an interesting defense/angle. Let me see if I’ve got it right…
It’s not my fault. I heard a shot, which triggered my disease. I just shot the people in front of me. So you see – it’s not my fault they’re dead.
But I guess the same argument would work for criminals. After all it’s not their fault they shot some innocent kids playing. It’s the symptom of the highly contagious shooting disease. Here’s what’s interesting…
Does anyone remember the American soldier who got in trouble for shooting an unarmed Iraq civilian? It didn’t matter that unarmed man was in shadows and made a sudden move. It didn’t matter that the soldier had the real fear of being blown to pieces by booby-traps, bombs, or suicide bombers. Even though he was at war against real terrorists, his actions were considered inexcusable. Please…
Tell me how anyone could see this as anything but what it was…A killing. The reasons why they killed this unarmed man don’t change the fact. He’s dead. His family, kids, and wife-to-be will never see him again.
In this case, the cops should be tried as gang members – because that’s how they acted. Like a gang protecting their turf. Bottom line…
What they did was murder. It’s no different from what crooks and gang members do. Murder is murder.
What you all need to remember is thaty being a cop is an extremely dangerous job, and that, because of the trial-by-media afterwards, their job is constantly getting harder.
As for the number of shots fired, it is natural to lose track of the number fired under a high-stress situation. Furthermore, the average officer only fires once every six months to a year at a range to qualify, as compared to the far more controlled SWAT teams who fire 100 rounds from each of their weapons every day.
And it is very easy to blame an officer after the fact if you look at it from your own perspective. The fact is, because of the commonality of trial-by-media of police actions, officers are afraid of using physical force, of being accused of illicit activity by criminals and being de facto convicted before the full investigation, that things like mass shootings and the tasering incidents are going to increase rather than decrease. And the blame goes to all of you who call the police officers involved guilty of criminal actions well before their internal affairs reviews are completed.
@steelcobra: Last I checked, no one forced anyone to be a cop. If it’s too tough a job for some people, so much so that they can no longer use their power to kill in the line of duty responsibly, then those people should voluntarily quit or be fired. After all; there’s plenty of other jobs they can do for the same/better pay that’ll be easier on their nerves.
What it all comes down to is this: As a citizen whose own safety may depend on these officers doing their jobs correctly one day, I frankly don’t give a damn how stressed out they get – I don’t pay taxes to employ murderers.
Period.
I do not know if there are any other gun owners on this blob but I can tell you this anyone who needs more then two shots to hit his target does not have any business owning let alone carrying firearm. So said my grandfather and father two men who carryed a firearm all there working lives.