...because, in my opinion, he did way too much wrong and did not take immediate action to end the threat once the threat presented itself. In this instance a police officer pulls over a man driving a car with an expired inspection sticker. The guy tells the cop he is armed and almost immediately becomes confrontational with the officer who is calm and polite. The thing is, as I see it, the officer is also very faulty at best when it comes to his tactics in handling that driver.
First of all, note the officer is evidently right handed, his pistol is on the right side of his belt. Note in which hand he hold his walkie-talkie; yes in his right hand. The guy just told him he is armed and begins to rant and rave yet the officer continued to hold the radio in his right hand, switched it to his left hand for a moment then back to his right. It seems obvious that the guy he stopped is having some sort of mental or emotional problems by the nature of his rant and that he is aggressive. He is apparently so unhinged he asks the officer why the officer is trying to kill him. I can hear it screaming in my head: th robot saying 'Danger - danger Wil Robinson' yet the officer continues to occupy his strong hand with the radio and he calls in that the subject is armed and is refusing to give ID. He makes no mention that the subject is evidently being aggressively argumentative and irrational. In fact the subject is apparently totally unhinged.
A moment or two after the subject asked why the officer is trying to kill him, the guy reaches for his pistol. What did the officer do, he merely told the guy do not reach for it. I was gobsmacked to see and hear that. The officer then switched the radio to his left hand but a moment later put it back in his right hand, the one with which he would evidently draw his pistol. Remember - that is moments at most after the guy had reached for his pistol. While you can never predict with 100% reliability what you would do in a given situation, I can say with about 99% certainty, I probably would have drawn my pistol and shot the guy when I saw him reaching for his weapon. With the other 1%, I can say if I did not shoot him, I'd either being trying to get him out of the car to control him or I'd at least move to make it harder for him to shoot me. Instead the officer just told him don't reach for anything and simply keeps evidently talking to the guy nonchalantly and making zero effort to physically control the subject or to take his gun away from him. Wake up already is what I was thinking, as I watched this unfold.
The officer then called in that "the subject keeps reaching for his weapon". How many times should he have allowed the guy to reach for it without taking action to stop the threat? What did he think would be the outcome if the guy actually drew it! Watch as the officer's right hand is seen leaning (evidently with his weight behind it) on the guy's car as if relaxed. Again, I was amazed at this officer's actions or should I say inaction; to me it seems as like he was asking to be injured. Just a little bit later, other officers arrive on the scene and one walks up on the passenger side of the car, maybe unseen by the subject. Then the guy pulled something out of his wallet and I saw it as him luring the officer closer to the driver's side window. What did the officer do - he leaned over and reached inside the car. That is an absolute no-no in police work. As the bent over to get whatever the guy just pulled out of his wallet, the subject draws and opens fire striking the first officer and a second backup officer who was also on the driver's side of the vehicle. The backup officer, on the right side of the vehicle, immediately opened fire, fired at least three rounds, fatally striking the subject and made distance between himself and the subject. He then called in shots fired.
Both officers who were shot are lucky to be alive. My guess is that the videos: the officers' body cam videos, what appears to be a patrol car video and the subject's Go-Pro video (yes the subject made his own video), will be used for years to come as a training video of what not to do in such a situation. In my opinion, based on 32 years in federal law enforcement, on a lot of firearms and tactical training I received, on about 16 years of collateral duties as a firearms instructor and several years as a confrontational safety instructor, I think the first officer on the scene made so many blatant errors, in his handling of the situation, that those mistakes, at least in great part, resulted in the subject being able to shoot wound two of the responding officers. It seems to me to be a case of an officer either with his head in the clouds or of an officer who simply was not willing to deploy deadly force. Deadly force that I believe should have been deployed at the first moment when the subject threatened the officer with potentially deadly force, meaning the first time the subject reached for his pistol. Remember, the officer already had called in that the subject had reached for his pistol more than once. Bear in mind also that the subject evidently was irrational and aggressive and seemingly totally unhinged. One can only hope that the first officer will learn from this experience.
All the best,
Glenn B
