PJ Media

I will state right up front I’m a 22 year L.E.O. and have been a firearms, Use of Force and tactical trainer for 10 years. I’ve only been involved in one shooting incident (he knocks on wood) so I speak from more from a trainer’s perspective in regards to how shootings evolve. Most of you will smirk at my comments and dismiss them out of hand because of my admittedly biased perspective but I would like to add some observations that are founded in 20+ years of interviewing witnesses and an ever changing paradigm in Use of Force / Firearms training.

First off – eye witness accounts are notoriously unreliable, especially in high stress incidents such as a shooting.

- well trained officers are taught when dealing with a potentially armed individual IDEALLY only one officer issues short, clear and concise commands. This is to help prevent confusion of the suspect(s) and the officers involved. Unfortunately when adrenaline kicks in, Murphy’s Law, stressor factors such as auditory exclusion and the inevitable confusion that most calls tend to generate we commonly find several officers talking at once.

- current deadly force training teaches officers to shoot until they perceive the threat has been stopped. Once a deadly threat has been recognized it is no longer shoot once, maybe twice and then assess. Officers are taught to rapidly inflict as much damage as he/she can until the suspect ceases to be a threat. There are many reasons for this seemingly overly aggressive mindset. In many cases officers are reacting to a deadly force encounter so he/she is already 2 steps behind the suspect. ( Although not so in this case) Invariably his/hers initial accuracy has historically been very poor. Something around a 33% hit ratio. A determined suspect, contrary to Hollywood’s distortions, does not die or even slow down much until the spinal column or brain pan is disrupted, or they bleed out. There are numerous cases of bad guys being hit 20+ times and still fighting / shooting. Many suspects are wearing body armor, self explanatory.

- a fairly common phenomenon in multiple officer shooting calls is called sympathetic shots fired. An officer may shout out Gun! and engage the suspect and fellow officers react in same. The overwhelming majority of police officers are very conscientious and well trained so his brother and sister officers trust their judgement and will do what it takes to protect his life. Unfortunately if the primary officer makes a poor judgement call then others may unwittingly follow their lead.

- I don’t want to besmirch Mr. Scott in anyway and I like the author and fellow posters do not have all the facts, but common sense should dictate that if a cop is pointing a gun at you you do not make any furtive moves, especially reach for a weapon. A year doesn’t go by when an undercover officer is killed because he/she was holding a gun and was misidentified by fellow LEO’s.

- and lastly I’ll add that in my state there have been approximately 70 police involved shootings in the past 10 years and the Attorney General’s office declared each one a clean shoot. There is only one reason for this ‘perfect’ record, excellent, up to date Use of Force training. There is no cover-up, or a wink and a nod from the AG investigators. I’ve sat on the other side of their interview and even though my shoot was absolutely clean I was an uncomfortable feeling. If the shoot was unjustified, they would find out and bury you. Totally professional. The lead investigator lectures at every academy class and while I was an instructor there I heard him tell each class that we (the police) do not shoot quick enough. We actually put ourselves unnecessarily in harms way long after a call has risen to the deadly force threshold because we don’t want to potentially kill another person.

I hope the facts of this case are made public so we can come to an informed position. Mr. Scott, his family and friends, the involved officers and most importantly society deserves this.