Another Killing By Police

[Rainman]

I haven't seen these news on any of the Main Stream Media sites. Probably they haven't heard of it or it won't be sensational enough. According to the news story I read, a teenager walked into a police station . . .

A 17-year-old girl walked into the Longview, Texas police station. Then, only minutes later, police say they were “forced†to shoot and kill her, Thursday night.

Police . . . say that she “pulled a weapon†and “threatened†them.

She was armed, as were the cops. So why not just shoot to disable her?

 

[Mackmax]

I want to know what the "weapon" she used was. If it was something like a broken bottle, then this is another reason why we really need to start re-evaluating our policemen. The girl was only 17. Not only was she a female, but she was a child, so she most likely had a smaller frame than the cops and therefore pretty easy to take down without shooting her. I don't know why they didn't just shoot to disable her instead of shooting her to death, perhaps she was moving violently and quickly, so it would be hard to put a target on her? I doubt this, though. I would love to read more into this story.

 

[mrsbright]

From the explanations I heard from cops about shooting to disable vs shooting right in the chest, they say that shooting is usually a last resort and that you shoot to stop the threat and that the abdomen/chest is the most sensible target, since it's hard to shoot a moving subject and even more hard to shoot moving limbs.

Though I am curious about the origin of the weapon. If she had pulled a gun, or a knife, wouldn't it be mentioned more specifically? Can they write "she pulled a weapon" for anything that could be used as a weapon?

 

[missbishi]

What a sad story - why on earth couldn't they have tasered her or shot her in the leg? I would like to know what kind of weapon she produced too!

 

[Kittyworker]

Police don't "shoot to disable" as aiming for the limb is much harder and you are far less likely to hit the target. Don't be fooled by cop shows where they will shoot a suspects gun out of his hand or will shoot a fleeing suspect in the thigh. That kind of stuff doesn't happen. Police are taught to shoot in the center of a target which is usually somewhere in the intestines.

I applaud the police here for not even attempting to be heroic and putting more lives at risk when confronting the ARMED individual.

 

[ninespoons]

The cynic in me asks why phrase it as "pulled a weapon" if it's a firearm, and if it wasn't a firearm then why were they so quick to pull the trigger? The story raises a lot of questions. One thing to remember though is that it could just be deliberately vague from the news publication just to generate a bit of buzz. No way of knowing, really.

 

[mrsbright]

The cynic in me asks why phrase it as "pulled a weapon" if it's a firearm, and if it wasn't a firearm then why were they so quick to pull the trigger? The story raises a lot of questions. One thing to remember though is that it could just be deliberately vague from the news publication just to generate a bit of buzz. No way of knowing, really.

The police might make it vague. Though when the media gets wind of something truly "not fitting" and then find out the weapon, they have a field trip with it. "Woman attacks police with a banana: Police shoots her dead!"

To be honest, I've read of such incident and the cops are a bit annoyed because they mention that when stuff like this happens, sometimes it's in the dark and you don't know it's a banana instead of a gun and you don't take risks and shoot.