Maybe... just maybe... US cops are simply insufficiently trained and notoriously incompetent?

[DetlefK]

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/san-francisco-cop-who-shot-homeless-man-dead-moved-to-internal-reform-board/

On the morning of the shooting, the two officers responded to a call about Gongora waving a knife and shot him with multiple bean bag rounds before opening fire with their handguns.

Why not shoot him in the leg? Because bad training.





http://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/cop-who-killed-philandocastile-took-for-profit-course-accused-of-making-officers-paranoid/

Records show that Jeronimo Yanez attended the 20-hour “Bulletproof Warrior” seminar in May 2014. Calibre Press, which hosts the course, recently changed the name of it to “Interaction and Influence” after complaints from local departments.

...

“Everything they were doing made the police officers very paranoid,” he said. “At some point they wouldn’t even stop a car without three backups.”

...

Glennon responded by calling that account “totally inaccurate,” saying that the course was designed to teach officers how to switch “from guardian mode to warrior mode” when needed.


So, a company is making money by hosting seminars that are known to make cops violent and paranoid and switch to "warrior-mode"???

[mythology]

1. You watch too many movies

Shooting to wound isn't a thing as it doesn't really work. Also shooting in the leg has a good chance of hitting the femoral artery which is more or less means death unless it happens in an ER.

Yes cops should be better trained, but people need to get over this fantasy of shooting to wound.

[DetlefK]

3. 4 examples where it worked:

http://www.e110.de/schuss-ins-bein-polizei-stoppt-verwirrten-in-bahnhof/
German cop stops knife-wielding robber with a shot to the leg.

http://www.pnp.de/region_und_lokal/landkreis_altoetting/neuoetting_toeging/1567544_Macheten-Mann-ab-Montag-vor-Gericht.html
A drunk, irate guy attacked german cops with a machete and a sword. One cop fired three shots: Two missed and a third hit the guy in the leg. He was arrested and taken to hospital.

http://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/polizei-vor-ort-schiesserei-in-muenchen-mindestens-ein-verletzter_id_5451117.html
An active shooter in Munich is taken out with a shot to the leg and arrested.

http://www.rp-online.de/nrw/panorama/hattingen-polizei-stoppt-betrunkenen-mit-schuss-ins-bein-aid-1.5763208
Again, Germany. The cops were called because a drunk, gun-wielding man was walking down the street. He ignored commands. The cops fired warning-shots, but he ignored them as well. Then he pointed his guns at the cops and they took him out with one shot to the thigh. The man was arrested and taken to hospital, but the wound wasn't severe. It later turned out that his guns weren't operational.

[ProfessorGAC]

4. My Bigger Issue Is The Latter Part

Warrior mode? Do we really pay cops to be warriors, or is that why we have a military?

To me, "protect and serve" and "warrior" are not compatible concepts. Self-defense and warrior aren't synonyms.

[jmg257]

2. Caliber Press has been offering "Street Survival" seminar for decades....I took it in '90.

Don't know any course - department or private, that teaches 'shooting in the leg'.

You should try that with a handgun, under the extreme duress of a life and death situation, of a guy coming after you with a knife...see how many hits you score before he stabs you. It would be interesting.

Oh and account for where all the rounds go that miss.

[DetlefK]

5. see comment #3

[jmg257]

6. Very interesting...certainly trained different there. Nt

[Darb]

7. Or maybe, just maybe............

they are steroid raged, racist, authoritarian, PTSD addled assholes who couldn't find work doing anything else that would feed their desire to beat the shit out of black folks. That is, now that the wars are winding down and the military don't need them to kill brown folks.

[lindysalsagal]

8. Wish I could disagree with you

Wasn't there a twilight zone episode about how policemen have to be mentally passive enough to sit around in patrol cars all day doing nothing? If they score too high cognitively, they aren't allowed to be cops because the boredom would drive them nuts?

It would drive me nuts, I can tell you that. 99.9% of the time, you're doing nothing but waiting in case something happens.

When I get to school early in the morning there is often a cop in the school parkinglot, just sitting there ,and I wonder if he was there all night doing nothing.

Ok, ok, in cities cops are busy and the violence and drugs and domestic calls wear you down. But in the burbs and countryside, nothing happens....

[applegrove]

9. Private enterprise does not help the public good necessarily. Some

things should come from experts not Cowboys out to make a buzz and then $$$$.