Sunday, April 17, 2016

You Have Got To Select Your Robbery Victims Better...

...than did the alleged robber wearing the white hat. When you walk into a place to rob it, pull a handgun and then announce you are committing a robbery, you had best hope that the guy to whom you are closest is not an off duty police officer with a survivor's mindset. Witnesses inside the store stated that the suspect had announced a robbery (source).

In this instance, the officer did everything right from what I could tell (with that big whited out circle obscuring the view). The greater part of the video shows the suspect walking around outside the business, then finally entering a about 2 minutes and 13 seconds of the video. It takes a little while after that to get to the action because they then cut to what is going on inside before he enters the store.



There was no hesitation on the officer's part to defend himself and everyone else in the store; he had the right mindset. Trying to draw on the guy and say "Police don't move, drop your gun" would only give the bad guy the time to point his weapon and fire. For all I know though, the officer may have even said something as he drew and brought his own weapon to bear on the suspect but as I said - he did not hesitate and fired. The alleged bad guy was still holding his gun, his hands were not raised in surrender or anything like that - shooting him was the right thing to do as far as I can tell. Why detectives supposedly said they are trying to determine if the guy pointed his gun at the officer is confusing - the threat was there and imminent regardless.

A follow-up article on the shooting says the suspect not only drew a pistol (which has reportedly been confirmed as a replica) but also drew a knife and opened it. That only made the threat even worse and considering the fighting stance that the guy took, the officer made the only decision he should have and could have made to assure every potential victim in the store survived unharmed.

You can bet though, that Black Lives Matter, the ACLU or some other group of anti-cop and bigoted arsehats is going to whine and moan that the alleged robber did not have his pistol pointed at anyone and thus he did not pose a threat. Let's get real here for a moment - when a guy walks in, draws a pistol, pulls out and opens a knife, and announces he is robbing the place that makes the threat to life or of serious bodily harm both real and imminent. The fact that he is holding the gun and knife at the moment he announced the robbery would or should give any REASONABLE person probable cause to believe that they imminently are about to be either killed or suffer serious bodily harm. In my opinion, if the facts are as reported in the article, that was a good shoot - plain sand simple.

All the best,
Glenn B

No comments: