Gunned Down in Vegas: What Really Happened to Erik Scott?
The fact that he was given conflicting instructions is proof alone that this is an incompetent police force, the rest is just tragedy.
Exactly!! Seriously, how can the “suspect” have any significant hope of surviving such an encounter if three different police officers (or groups of police officers) yell three mutually-contradictory sets of instructions at him at the same time? He can’t possibly obey all of those instructions simultaneously! “Drop your weapon” inevitably requires you to lower your arm(s) which is a direct violation of “Keep your hands up”. And I have no idea how you are supposed to “get down on the ground without lowering your hands either to brace you on the way down.
This was APPALLING police work. While I’d like to imagine that all police forces within a given country would approach such a situation in the exact same way – telling the suspect to keep his hands up OR to get on the ground OR to drop his weapon – that’s probably unrealistic. Different police forces may have evolved different methods that each feels is best for them. But surely a given police force should have a uniform approach to such a situation, even if it differs from the approach of a different city or state so that ALL officers on that force have exactly the same sequence that they use in stopping and disarming someone.
The Vegas police force is clearly in need of some major work in terms of standardizing its approaches to such routine actions as disarming suspects. The shooting of Erik Scott was inexcusable under the circumstances described in this article
