Student President of Georgia Tech's Pride Alliance shot and killed by Campus Police

[Deleted]

Why not shoot his leg?

As a police officer, you are explicitly told and trained to try to shoot at the body part that's easiest to hit in a stressful/dangerous situation - which would be the torso - and not try to aim at other parts that are much easier to miss. Plus, like Trollhammer said, there is no guarantee that a shot in the leg will actually take the attacker down. In situations where an attacker might come at you with a knife, you don't take unnecessary risks.

And no, this is not only happening in the US. Just last year, for example, a police officer in Austria shot someone who threatened them with a knife.

[OrcsRLame]

Why not shoot his leg?

I know I shouldn't get mad when I see posts like this but I do. You are so critically uninformed about this topic you are like someone that has never heard of video games trying to comment on mythic Kil'jaeden tactics after seeing a single screenshot of KJ and then reading a few pages of other people arguing about mythic KJ. It's difficult to put into words how ignorant you and people like you are on this topic. You're so ignorant you're incapable of comprehending how ignorant you are. You're like the people from the past in Star Trek: First Contact that meet the Enterprise crew and they don't even know that they don't know about things like Phasers, Replicators and Photon Torpedoes.

And that's not an insult to your intelligence. I'm sure you're quite smart. You just don't know a thing about violence.

To address all the stupid arguments and questions in short form.

1. You don't shoot the leg because shooting the leg is difficult, if you hit the leg they will probably die anyway due to blood loss because bullets expand inside the body and can leave an exit wound bigger than your fist, if they don't die there's a fair chance that they will still be able to walk and even run and if you miss the bullet could ricochet and kill an innocent bystander.

2. You don't use tasers because tasers suck cock. You'd be more likely to disable someone by throwing a fucking baseball at them. Tasers are a magical fantasy weapon that don't work as well in real life as they do in the movies. All our less-lethal options suck cock.

3. Knives are better than guns at a distance of 21 feet. An attacker with a knife can rush you and give you a poke before you have time to react, aim and fire. Looked to me Scout got to within about 10 feet of the officers a few times. The cops should have shot him sooner.

4. Small knives are dangerous. Humans are not invincible; in fact we are the opposite of invincible. We die if we get tapped or poked in the wrong spot by the wrong thing, even at low velocity.

Fucking Christ I need to stop posting on these forums. I should ask a mod to permaban me because I'm going to have a fucking heart attack and die one of these days.

[Themius]

Learn to read then we might have something to discuss... until then you are dismissed.

So you didn't say this:

And they should have an 'Us vs Them' mentality when every Tom, Dick and Harry is gunning for them or taking a shit on them.

?

[ohiostate124]

Why not shoot his leg?

I honestly can't believe how many people ask this. That's not how police officers are trained. You don't shoot to wound.

[shadowmatrix]

Is he black? Do we need to riot?

You brought up race so you tell us.

[Seranthor]

So you didn't say this:



?

I did... and you clearly ignored the 'or taking a shit on them'... now... begone.

[ezgeze]

This non-binary, intersex, they/them person wrote 3 suicide notes and then called the cops on himself in order to initiate a confrontation. Suicide by cop. HIS parents are now seeking to sue. Did I mention that he had past suicidal attempts? This guy needed a mental evaluation.

Tort reform please.

[Shalidor]

Americans by their own admission are not like other people, they are more violent, dangerous, and able to kill with simple tools more readily than people from across the globe. Which is why so many are seeing this as a reasonable outcome.

I would ask, do police in these situations not have *any* other available tools for handling?

Good question. I can see why someone might ask it, given all the bad information out there. The short answer is no. We really don't. Stick around for the long answer if you like.

Rubber bullets: Rubber bullets do not magically make firearms less than lethal. If you were to shoot someone in the chest from 30 yards using a rubber bullet from a firearm chambered in .40S&W, the most common handgun caliber for police officers in the US, that rubber bullet will go through and through. In the 1990s, American cops were using them by shooting at the ground in front of suspects, trying to bounce them into targets' knees. This worked, but not always. Sometimes, the bullet bounced in a way they didn't want it to, and it his innocent bystanders. Other times, it would bounce up at a steeper angle and literally tear the throat out of a suspect. Rubber bullets are perhaps the worst out of all the suggested less-than-lethal options suggested in this thread.

Tasers: These are the second-worst option for less-than-lethal firepower. Simple heavy (or loose) clothing can trap an electrode, making the taser utterly useless, and for all you people going on about European cops, this happens to European cops all the time and then they have to start relying on other methods. Now, if you miss, or the taser doesn't find purchase on skin, then you have to reload. Tasers can shoot once before reloading, and that's it. They take a very long time to reload too. They are also extremely short-range weapons, making them much more dangerous to use against a knife-wielder. It's not like video games or movies where less-than-lethal options are actually better than the lethal options. Assuming everything else goes right with a taser, it's possible to simply fight through the pain. Easy, even if you're in an altered mental state, and most of the time, the cops deal with people who are.

Telescopic Batons: Have you ever seen what one of those things can do to a person? Those are about as "less-than-lethal" as a historically accurate mace or warhammer. Also, anyone who closes with a knife-wielder using one of those weapons, when both parties are unarmored, is a fucking idiot. A knife is better against an unarmored opponent than a telescopic baton, by far. It's why knights, when they went to war in the late middle ages, relied primarily on blunt weapons and polearms.

Beanbag rounds: You're going to break some ribs with these, but that's no guarantee you will stop an assailant. It's one of those cases where if you hit the leg, you might break a leg which would impede their mobility, but there are a thousand different extremely valid reasons why you're not supposed to shoot for the leg, as others have covered here. These also have the problem of being short-range weapons, like a taser, and they are even less accurate.

Disk rounds: Same problems as beanbag rounds.

"Sick" fluid rounds: There's this thing they can put in shell casings, these little capsules that basically pop and release a fluid that can smell so bad it can make a person dizzy and sick to the point of vomiting. Again, extremely short range, inaccurate, and not all that likely to stop an amped-up person. It's great for dispersing rioters, and not much else. It can also cause other complications that I would think are obvious to anyone who understands the science of inducing vomiting.

Tear gas: Same basic problems, only those mainly come in grenades, and using gas grenades to neutralize a single threat when he's already that close, is, well, insane and stupid. You're going to catch yourself in that, and your friend, assuming you don't get charged and knifed before the grenade actually goes off and has time to cover the area.

Pepper spray: The least effective option among the chemical-based less-than-lethal weapons. Unlikely to do anything more than annoy a determined and armed assailant, and so short-range that your chances of being stabbed are extremely high. This is also the chemical weapon among our list that is most likely to affect the wielder through the blowback principle.

There was another poster here who said something like the police shouldn't be killing anyone, and that if criminals were armed with AKs, then they should put on powerful body armor and swarm them. To that I have two things to say; the police carry the weapons they do, and deal with the criminals that they deal with, to keep other people safe, at least ideally. If the criminal kills them, there is no one to stand between me and the criminal. Whether you're a collectivist or an individualist, you can't rationally be against the police using deadly force to protect a populace from a violent threat. As for that "powerful body armor," no body armor in the world, not even the stuff rated IIIA by the NIJ can withstand more than a couple rounds of high-powered rifle caliber at close range. The super quick-and-dirty of the functionality of body armor is that it puts powerful and flexible stuff between you and the bullet that will break and shatter so your body doesn't have to. For this reason, body armor must be replaced after it has sustained bullet damage. It is not like video games where your body armor can take hit after hit, once it's shattered, it needs replacing. Not only that, you can't get that kind of protection over your entire body, and any civilian nearby is going to be at extreme risk of getting shot. The safest option for everyone is a speedy neutralization of the assailant. It's not about the cops, it's about everyone else and the people a criminal chose to endanger.

I get that there are people that don't like the way this went down, and are horrified at the tragedy that took place, but this is not the fault of the police. What we've seen here is the outcome of one more person not having the appropriate mental healthcare necessary, and that is something that the US has a problem with. If you want to get outraged about something, get outraged at the way we treat mental illness in this country, because that was the real source of the problem here.

[AeneasBK]

I get that there are people that don't like the way this went down, and are horrified at the tragedy that took place, but this is not the fault of the police. What we've seen here is the outcome of one more person not having the appropriate mental healthcare necessary, and that is something that the US has a problem with. If you want to get outraged about something, get outraged at the way we treat mental illness in this country, because that was the real source of the problem here.

Thank you for taking the time to write out that response.

[Post]

Actually, the fastest way to stop a knife armed person is to hit them in the femur. It is literally impossible to continue to walk/run with a shattered femur, even if you are higher than a kite.

And that's even harder to hit than just the general leg area... "shoot them in that 1 bone!"

[Shalidor]

Thank you for taking the time to write out that response.

You're welcome. It was the least I could do, as I know there's a lot of misinformation and noninformation out there about the subject. I even forgot one, the Dazzler. It's pretty nice in theory, as it disorientates a target by basically blasting them in the face with a super-powered flashlight. It's bulky, unwieldy, extremely hard to aim as it requires you get the target in the eye, and even then, someone can fight through it like most other less-than-lethal options. If they're clever and quick, they can just turn around.

And it's not like I don't see the other side to this. I've done work within my own State regarding passing laws for deescalation and mental health training for police officers, so they can better handle situations like this, though I do think the cops in this situation handled things as well as can be expected. I do certainly think we need better less-than-lethal options though. As things stand now, we just don't have a reliable means of bringing someone down short of doing grievous bodily harm. It sucks. It really really sucks.

[Dystemper]

Why not shoot his leg?

Very very difficult to do with a handgun, And a shot to the leg has about a 75% chance to actually kill you. if it hist a femoral artery you bleed out in seconds . Leg shots have been proven to not reliably stop a person who is threatening

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Unless you have been schooled in the art of violence, dont question those of us who Have .

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And that's even harder to hit than just the general leg area... "shoot them in that 1 bone!"

I have seen people who have had shattered femurs, still be able to engage you as a threat. people on here really need to stop watching movies, TV and video games and think they are real life

[Dreknar20]

And that's even harder to hit than just the general leg area... "shoot them in that 1 bone!"

well why not shoot the knife out of their hand?

happened in a Western movie I saw once so clearly a simple police officer can do the same!!!!

[Themius]

I did... and you clearly ignored the 'or taking a shit on them'... now... begone.

Because taking a shit is so fucking benign it doesn’t warrant deadly force. Or an us versus them mentality if you think it does then you clearly have issues.

[Seranthor]

Because taking a shit is so fucking benign it doesn’t warrant deadly force. Or an us versus them mentality if you think it does then you clearly have issues.

I support the cops unless they are wrong, then I'm first in the line to call them out. I dont go in hating the cops like some.

[Deleted]

Says the ignorant European who doesn't know secondary language education is a requirement. There is apparently a lot of things you don't know.

Apparently not as much as you, the person who thinks that the police can't shot on legs.

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stupid rant

And yet shooting people in the legs by the police happens all the time in Europe....

[Seranthor]

Apparently not as much as you, the person who thinks that the police can't shot on legs.

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And yet shooting people in the legs by the police happens all the time in Europe....

All the time you say? So you wouldn't have a problem showing us... say 10 in the last week?

[Deleted]

All the time you say? So you wouldn't have a problem showing us... say 10 in the last week?

In my country there hardly are 10 police shootings in a week, but feel free to google Germany or the Netherlands or Norway or Denmark and look how things go over here.

[Seranthor]

In my country there hardly are 10 police shootings in a week, but feel free to google Germany or the Netherlands or Norway or Denmark and look how things go over here.

No, I'm not going to do your work for you. You made the claim, either you back it up or its bullshit.

[Deleted]

No, I'm not going to do your work for you. You made the claim, either you back it up or its bullshit.

https://www.google.nl/search?q=in+be...NtTG8Aev25GADQ


Doing my work for me!?!?!?? If you want to learn stuff you google it, not accuse other people of lying, but here you go.

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Americans by their own admission are not like other people, they are more violent, dangerous, and able to kill with simple tools more readily than people from across the globe. Which is why so many are seeing this as a reasonable outcome.

I would ask, do police in these situations not have *any* other available tools for handling?

Of course they have, it just is more off a hassle and might be more dangerous to them. Killing someone is far more easy.