Back in March 2014, a police officer in Greensboro, NC was involved in an on-duty shooting. The officer shot and killed a woman who was armed with a very large knife, a woman who he was responding to the area for because she had been involved in a fight. Prior to this news story on the Miami Herald website, I was totally unaware of this incident.
I am not sharing this incident in order to discuss the actual shooting, but rather to discuss the plentiful, ignorant statements made by folks who do not have a freaking clue what they are talking about that have been made in response to the article. It is not just the sheer volume of moronic comments that bothers me, but it is the fact that the plethora of comments based on anything but reality are the top ranked comments on the website and have garnered the most “likes.”
Here is the news story video that contains the rather short footage from the body cam.
So, what are the ignorant, uninformed comments that I am talking about?
Really Patrick, when? I’ve been a cop a long time, I and I know people who have been cops since the 1960’s, and none of them were trained how to magically disarm a knife wielding offender. In fact, we have been trained, since the 1970’s, that someone with a knife, who is within 21 feet (actually, new studies say it is even further) can be a lethal threat and to treat them as such.
We aren’t trained in “hand to hand combat,” but the military is. Also, “hand to hand” indicates no weapon. A big ass knife is most definitely a deadly weapon. No self-defense instructor on the planet, law enforcement or civilian, is going to teach a student to fight an attacker who is armed with a knife, while unarmed unless that is their only option.
Joe Smith makes a rational comment. Mark McClure on the other hand pulls a bunch of stuff out of thin air (makes wild guesses without basis), and is better received.
Ah ha! The good old “shoot them in the leg” idiocy. How many times does this moronic idea have to be dismantled? Getting beyond that, the level of stupid displayed by Eric here is tough to fathom, yet 20 people agreed: “Lucky he didn’t miss her torso and accidentally shoot the person behind her, instead he should have aimed for a far smaller, faster moving, harder to hit target because that would increase the likelihood that he would not miss…”
No Pat, cops had “night sticks” (batons) to use on unarmed suspects. Cops are trained to always use one level of force higher. If bad guy is armed with a knife, go to gun. This is not a schoolyard fight. We are not trained to “fight fair,” we are trained to win.
And this dipshit, I’m not even going to bother address this cop block bullshit.
Anyway, she “only had a knife…”
On a side note, the officer who was involved in this incident was cleared of any wrong doing and has since resigned his position. As with most folks in law enforcement, and despite what the idiots at Cop Block like to scream, we do not want to take someone’s life and some of those who are forced to do just that, it does not sit well. Add on top of that lack of support from the community and you find a number of officers leave this profession after a shooting. I’m not saying that is why this officer resigned, but I personally know someone, a former trainee of mine, who shortly after he finalized training was involved in a shooting, a totally justified shooting, and the emotional aftermath of that incident ended his career.
