So, it has been reported that NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has stated that all 9 bystanders, who were injured by gunfire, near the Empire State Building during a police shoot out with an armed man, were injured by police bullets or bullet fragments. (Source: just heard it on Fox News as I was writing this and have read it in various online news agency articles and blogs). These are just some of my thoughts on it all (bear in mind I do not know all of the facts and I am surmising on some of this based upon what I do know about the incident and about law enforcement firearms training):
It has been reported that 9 bystanders were wounded by police gunfire, none by shots from the bad guy. Many other bloggers and folks are saying that the officers missed with 9 shots. They probably did not miss nine times if I got the math right. They reportedly fired a total of 16 shots. The bad guy was reportedly hit 10 times. That means they likely missed with 6 shots.
Working on those reported facts, either the facts are wrong or these things happened:
A bullet or bullets (or bullet fragment[s]) passed through the perpetrator and hit bystander(s).
Likewise a bullet or bullets could have grazed or gone through one bystander and hit another.
A bullet or bullets hit something and ricocheted, maybe fragmenting, and hit bystander(s).
Other bullets may have also hit bystanders directly. (I removed statement that one bystander was deceased, brain fart on my part to have said so).
The police should indeed have drawn their weapons, there is no doubt about it.
A law enforcement officer does not respond to an armed felon who just reportedly shot another man in cold blood with his her pistol holstered unless the officers are the hands on officers with ample back-up who have their weapons drawn at the ready.
The two police officers, involved in the shooting, quite possibly did not act properly once first informed of the info about the bad guy.
Given the location, the time, the crowds, I believe they should have assessed, drawn their weapons and immediately taken cover while ordering bad guy to comply with their first command to not move. Of course that depends on whether or not cover was available. For all I know, maybe they did do that but it does not sound as if they took cover, I believe I read they approached the suspect.
As to whether or not the police or any LEO should ever shoot when there is a possibility of injuring an innocent, the police would likely not be able to shoot in about 90% of the shooting situations in which they may find themselves; that is especially so in a crowded urban area like NYC. Please do not quote the 4 rules of Jeff Cooper, especially the one about knowing your target and what is beyond, if you reply. In many cases, there virtually is no way to know what is beyond your target, within range of a bullet you fire, within the confines of Manhattan - yet, shooting at a bad guy is often appropriate in those instances. The absolute rules, as given by Cooper, are for absolutists and in real life the only absolute we know, of with absoluteness, is death.
In addition, sometimes police will be faced with the decision 'Is it better to take a shot or shots, even when bystander safety is at high risk, from law enforcement fire, or not take the shot(s)'. Sometimes the answer could be yes, it is better to take the shot(s) but I do not believe this was the case here, at least not for all of the shots they took. If you can not imagine when, then you ought to give it some long and serious thought because sometimes the risk to bystanders from LE bullets is outweighed by other risks to the bystanders. Such could be immediate risks posed by bad guy randomly shooting into a crowd or the imminent risk of a bad guy chewing off another man's face. Should they take a shot, if it poses a risk to a bystander but less of a risk than that caused by the bad guy? Maybe yes, under some circumstances. (I don't believe it the case here but it may have been so as I am unaware of all the facts.)
There are a lot of factors that could have caused the officers to miss that many times. Six out of 16 shots is a high percentage of misses and I am making no excuses for the misses just giving reasons as to why they may have been misses (note I said may have
Through all of this though, it was up to the officers to shoot or not shoot. The decision was theirs for each and every shot they fired. They are responsible for each shot they took. Those statements are based on 32 years of firearms training I received as a LEO and on 14 years of instructing other LEO in firearms training. Yet, to anyone who says they sprayed and prayed, while it may well have been the case, I am not all that sure such was the case. It seems that it took 10 rounds to stop the bad guy. There were many possible reasons for their missing with 6 shots. We do not know which shots missed. They could have been the first 6. The officers' assessment, that more shots needed to be fired, could well have been correct or it could have been a case of spray and pray. I think it less likely a case of spray and pray because neither officer likely fired all the rounds in his pistol. They most probably were carrying semi-automatic pistols with at least a 15 round capacity and possibly were carrying MP-5 submachine
The officers, in my estimation, or at least one of the officers made a poor assessment of when it was okay to shoot and one or both were ill prepared mentally (at least at the moment) to face such a situation. (Bear in mind, one of them may have hit the bad guy with every shot he fired and the other may have missed almost every time he fired - one fired 9 shots the other 7 shots, thus the reason I say ' officers or at least one of them.) Being somewhat ill prepared mentally, to face a life threatening situation, in which you may have to take some one's life in order to survive, is not a fault of the officers. In fact, it is probably a sign of their morality. No matter how much we think we would be able to do it if called upon, it goes against the grain of us to do so (unless we are psychos or unless we have been taught, since childhood, that killing is very acceptable). There is no way to train yourself as to absolutely prepare you to be fully ready for such a situation, to train you how you will react and then act in such a situation. Of course, training does help prepare you, it is just not an absolute guarantee of how you will act. These officers probably had a lot of tactical training, at least they should have had such training being assigned, as they were, to an anti-terrorist detail. Again, these are not excuses, just being objective based on my training and my limited knowledge of the facts as presented to the public on this incident.
As I said above, I believe the officers were, or at least one of the officers was, at fault for hitting civilians because I do not think they approached handling the situation from the best way it could have been handled from the beginning. I do not think they assessed the situation properly. I think there were other ways to have handled it that would have been much less likely to have resulted in injury to bystanders by gunshots. Then again, I do not know all the facts and it is easy to criticize when not wearing the shoes of the person being criticized. I would love to be able to review all the reports, witness statements, ballistic evidence reports, possible video of the shooting (it may be out there, lot of people make videos at the Empire State Building) and so on. Then I could make a truly informed decision. So, when it comes right down to it, as I have done in the past for LEOs as well as for accused dirtbags and everyone in between, I will not condemn them without much of or all of the evidence before me (if you know me at all, from this blog or from firearms forums, you know that despite being a retired LEO, I will readily condemn law enforcement when I have become convinced they have screwed up badly and that is not necessarily an uncommon thing for me to do). For now though, I will leave that to the investigators and to the courts because you can bet your bottom dollar this will wind up investigated to the max and will wind up at least in civil courts. These officers are almost sure to face tort claims filed by the wounded bystanders and may face criminal and or will face departmental charges too before all is said and done. They may also be praised as heroes.
I will go as far as to express my opinion, for what it is worth or not, based on my training and experience, on what evidence I have seen or heard reported, and will say that my guess is that these two officers, or at least one of them, screwed up pretty badly at least with regard to 9 non-life threatening to the bystanders. Although, as I have pointed out, there could have been some reasons for the stray bullets that might vindicate the officers of any wrong doing.
I hope you understand, what I just tried to do was give an objective outlook of the incident as opposed to an emotional or biased one. If you are going to leave a comment, please be respectful, be objective, don't get all sorts of emotional or show any obvious bias.
All the best,
Glenn B
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