The Shooting of Killers

[Guest fountainhall]

The recent murder of a British serviceman on the streets of London has thrown up one incident which I find interesting.

 

When police in the US shoot at the perpetrators of crimes, we almost invariably read they are shot dead. When the two men responsible for the killing in London charged the police armed with knives and, as we have seen in a video, a gun, they were shot. However, instead of being shot dead, they were merely wounded and disabled. Both will therefore be available for extensive interrogation to find out how many others, if any, may be involved. A dead criminal takes his information to the grave.

 

Why, I wonder, do US police forces generally shoot to kill, rather than to maim?

[ceejay]

I think that the short answer to this is that both US and UK police shoot, if not exactly "to kill" but in a way that is likely to cause death. In an emergency situation, with police or public lives at imminent risk, they will shoot at the torso, because it is the biggest target. Surviving a 9mm bullet wound in the chest is largely a matter of luck.

So were the Woolwich murderers lucky? Perhaps not. I was intrigued by the questions raised by FH's post and looked up the Metropolitan Police's policy on the use of firearms. Apparently (google "Operation Kratos") Metropolitan Police Firearms officers are trained not to shoot at the torso, but at the head or legs, if they suspect they are dealing with a suicide bomder. This is to avoid detonating explosives.

So, it rather depends on where they were shot. If in the torso, then they were lucky to survive. If in the legs, then it wasn't out of concern for their survival, but for the safety of others.

[ceejay]

Update: it seems they are lucky to be alive. One of them nearly got to a police car and was shot at very close range in the upper body, according to a short video on the Daily Mirror website.

[Guest Devint6669]

where can i find the video that you are talking about is it possible to give me a link

[Guest scottishguy]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/woolwich-attack-watch-shocking-video-1907772

[kokopelli]

The simplest explanation is the best explanation; the police were poor shoots and missed the torso?

[Bob]

Why, I wonder, do US police forces generally shoot to kill, rather than to maim?

 

I'm not so sure that's accurate - or at least I wouldn't suggest one arrive at that conclusion from a few publicized cases.

 

Everything depends on the situation that the cops confront.  If it's a sudden situation, there's no doubt that the cops in the US are trained to kill - the notion being that they shouldn't shoot at all unless it's necessary to stop somebody from killing or maiming themselves or others. There are other situations where the cops have more time to analyze the situation and then choose to use bean bags, tasers, or other non-lethal means of stopping a suspect. But....anybody that raises, points, or shoots a gun at a US cop is more than likely heading to the morgue with multiple wounds (as ceejay suggests, a 9 millimeter bullet does a lot of damage) presuming the cop has any reasonable ability to aim his weapon (often he/she doesn't which is sometimes why too many bystanders are hit by "friendly" fire).

[NIrishGuy]

As has been said I believe there generally is no such thing as being trained to shoot to maim, it's shoot to hit and stop i=s the order of the day if you need to take them down with the officer (generally) aiming for the largest surface area i.e the torso and ideally the heart area as it's simply the biggest spread to aim at and "should" result in your target dropping if hit ( but not always)  and generally the best chance of stopping the assailant in their tracks.  

 

It's also a fallacy that most armed officers can hit what they are actually aiming at and in the heat of the moment and whilst on the street most I believe would be happy just to HIT the target and anything better such as a head shot etc would just be an added bonus.

 

There is also the issue of the number of shots being fired where here in the UK each and every shot has to be accounted for and proved to be required and measured in it's response to the situation, leading to UK police officers being trained to fire in burst of two shots at a time, whereas in the US there seems to be a slightly less strict approach to this leading to the police perhaps emptying their magazines at someone rather than the two or four shots that would perhaps be fired here, which again depending on just how accurate ( or otherwise) the officers shots were would of course have an effect on whether or not the person shot was lucky (or not) to survive the encounter.

 

And as for watching the video above huge kudos to the first response officers who fired on the gunman before even being able to get out of their car to assess the situation, the immediate follow up response after that by the other emergency services / police that arrived may be something that needs looked into as without going into details without too much more planning on the terrorists part the end result could have been very different  - but well done to the police, they performed their duty admirably and its just a terrible thing that that poor soldier was so brutally murdered in the first place.

[Guest Enchanter]

I have an issue with the "shoot to kill" phrase. I don't think any cop shoots to kill, whether American or British. Killing is not the objective. They shoot to stop the threat. Sometimes, killing is an unfortunate but necessary consequence of stopping the threat when other options are unavailable or too risky.