You say that but most cops still will go their whole career without firing their gun statistically.
you know the other part of that statistic, right? that those who do tend to get into substantially more situations that ‘require’ lethal force in the first place. Some of this has to do with where they happen to work… cops working in departments within large cities are much more likely than cops out in the burbs or sticks. Part of it is also their specific occupational specialty- SWAT for example is just put into more situations where it’s necessary, compared to state highway patrol vehicle inspectors. or the Federal Reserve Cops.
Plus hand guns are crazy hard to aim over any distance
Yeah, that’s true enough when your average cop has less than 15 hours of range time annually, and only quals out once a year. The vast majority of distance for police engagement is 3-6 feet. I can put a four inch grouping at fifty feet, a six inch grouping at thirty feet in stress simulations. And I am not some badass. I just get a lot of range time for work.
If you’re going to carry… you need to be able to hit what you’re aiming at. a miss isn’t just a miss. Its a chance to clip that kid playing ball a hundred yards a way, or the grandma poking her head out the curtains to see what the fuck is going on outside.
Cops need to be better- every round that misses it’s target is potentially some random kid caught in the crossfire. Personally, cops need way more training on not going to lethal force in the first place. but that’s a different topic.
cops need way more training on not going to lethal force in the first place. but that’s a different topic.
Yeah, that tends to be my response as well. I usually try not to second guess a stressful situation where I wasn’t there, but all too often it really seems like lethal force is the goto response in way too many cases.
The example above where a female cop killed a junkie approaching her …. The post was intended to demonstrate multiple shots may be necessary, but what I saw was that after telling the guy to stop, the cops only option was lethal force. I’d really like to see some of these anecdotes show cops trying other options, even if it eventually escalated to lethal force
So, like, there’s a lot to be learned from UK cops in how they handle knife-armed subjects.
In general, you tend to fight how you train; so when you spend a lot of the focus of your training on lethal force, that usually becomes where your focus is.
For example that lady that shot a guy, shouting ‘TAZER TAZER TAZER’, even though she drew her firearm. What I assume she meant to go for tazer, but in the stress of the moment, muscle memory took over and she spent hours practicing her pistol draw and not much at all practicing the taser draw. (she could have meant to do it, too, shouting tazer for the body camera, but while recognizing that… i wasn’t there and I don’t know her.)
Increasing training on less-lethal or non-lethal methods; and actually training soft skills in the same way as firearms is how you solve that. The other thing, personally, that we really need to ramp up recruitment for police. This gets you a lot of things. Enough bodies means you can now spend a few hours a week training something rather than one or two classes a year, spread it out; physical training, yes, but soft skills like negotiation, deescalation and the basics of EDP-stuffs. the other reason is, then you can start firing all the fucking assholes. (which this is how you get institutional change. you change the institution by changing the poeple that make it up.)
Police in Finland regularly stop suspects by shooting them into leg which according to many Americans is impossible due to how inaccurate pistols are. That apparently means the alternative is then to dump the entire mag into the torso.
you’ll note that they don’t say he was shot in the thigh intentionally. I suspect that they were aiming center mass and were just off. it happens. hitting a running target is… well here, the FBI tallies a ~47% chance to hit between 5-15 feet. (this is comparison to an 87% chance to be hit if you’re standing still.)
Shots to extremities happen, nobody is saying they don’t. But doing so on purpose is almost impossible. Especially on a running target. Even with a rifle. This is why you don’t use a weapon fundamentally designed to be lethal as “less lethal”. At best, you wing him and he’s still running. at worst, you miss, and clip a mom and her infant baby behind them.
There’s better tools to take some one down without lethal force. (see UK police tactics with Batons, for an example.)
Yeah, I’d think outside of movie-style moments it’s not something that makes sense 99.9% of the time, I just thought it was an interesting claim. It would have been more interesting if it were true. 😁
Situations where Finnish police result to using their firearm are rare to begin with but you can just google it and find several articles with examples of this. However I can’t find any source on how police are instructed to act when it comes to using deadly force.
Since 2000, ten people have died as a result of use of force by law enforcement officers in Finland. This includes a prison guard shot by accident during a training exercise, and a detainee who died of undetermined causes after being fired at with a taser.
Poliisi ampuu ihmistä kohti vain noin viidessä tehtävässä vuosittain / Police shoot towards people only about 5 times a year.
Miljoonasta hälytystehtävästä ampuma-asetta on käytetty vuosittain vain noin kymmenessä tehtävässä, ja niissäkin kohdistettu laukaus ihmistä kohti on ammuttu vain puolessa tapauksista / Out of a million emergency calls, a firearm has been used in only about ten incidents annually, and even in those cases, a shot aimed at a person has been fired in only half of the situations.
not to be a stickler, but the source makes no mention of it being on purpose. I suspect you won’t find a source that makes that claim.
Also, as for the general use of force in Finland vs America, it’s two different scenarios. Vast cultural differences in general… but for some perspective… there’s 2 national and 11 local agencies in finland, comprising ~7.5k cops. (per statista), all of which have direct over sight form the Ministry of the Interior.
For comparison, in the US there are 17,985 agencies, ranging from the federal government to local police to sherifs and state police. All of whom have their own oversight systems. we have more agencies than you have cops. and all of those agencies have their own, unique requirements for training and qualifications. hell, some states, they don’t even have to have any education outside of highschool or GED. (actually in many places… that’s preferred. for reasons.)
Americans are also rather more violent than Fins. Just saying.
Police in Finland regularly stop suspects by shooting them into leg which according to many Americans is impossible due to how inaccurate pistols are. That apparently means the alternative is then to dump the entire mag into the torso.
I’m reading that assertion as saying they’re doing it on purpose. perhaps there was some misunderstanding on my part.
Well either they’re doing it on purpose or then they just are really bad at shooting and despite massive amount of training compared to american police they for some reason seem to keep hitting the extremities despite aiming for the torso. Watch this video for example. You can see the bullets hitting the ground because the police was intentionally aiming for the legs.
Very rare. You can usually count the annual deaths by law enforcement on your fingers. Same goes for the amount of times a police officer has to use deadly force in a graduation-to-retirement career
you know the other part of that statistic, right? that those who do tend to get into substantially more situations that ‘require’ lethal force in the first place. Some of this has to do with where they happen to work… cops working in departments within large cities are much more likely than cops out in the burbs or sticks. Part of it is also their specific occupational specialty- SWAT for example is just put into more situations where it’s necessary, compared to state highway patrol vehicle inspectors. or the Federal Reserve Cops.
Yeah, that’s true enough when your average cop has less than 15 hours of range time annually, and only quals out once a year. The vast majority of distance for police engagement is 3-6 feet. I can put a four inch grouping at fifty feet, a six inch grouping at thirty feet in stress simulations. And I am not some badass. I just get a lot of range time for work.
If you’re going to carry… you need to be able to hit what you’re aiming at. a miss isn’t just a miss. Its a chance to clip that kid playing ball a hundred yards a way, or the grandma poking her head out the curtains to see what the fuck is going on outside.
Cops need to be better- every round that misses it’s target is potentially some random kid caught in the crossfire. Personally, cops need way more training on not going to lethal force in the first place. but that’s a different topic.
Yeah, that tends to be my response as well. I usually try not to second guess a stressful situation where I wasn’t there, but all too often it really seems like lethal force is the goto response in way too many cases.
The example above where a female cop killed a junkie approaching her …. The post was intended to demonstrate multiple shots may be necessary, but what I saw was that after telling the guy to stop, the cops only option was lethal force. I’d really like to see some of these anecdotes show cops trying other options, even if it eventually escalated to lethal force
So, like, there’s a lot to be learned from UK cops in how they handle knife-armed subjects. In general, you tend to fight how you train; so when you spend a lot of the focus of your training on lethal force, that usually becomes where your focus is.
For example that lady that shot a guy, shouting ‘TAZER TAZER TAZER’, even though she drew her firearm. What I assume she meant to go for tazer, but in the stress of the moment, muscle memory took over and she spent hours practicing her pistol draw and not much at all practicing the taser draw. (she could have meant to do it, too, shouting tazer for the body camera, but while recognizing that… i wasn’t there and I don’t know her.)
Increasing training on less-lethal or non-lethal methods; and actually training soft skills in the same way as firearms is how you solve that. The other thing, personally, that we really need to ramp up recruitment for police. This gets you a lot of things. Enough bodies means you can now spend a few hours a week training something rather than one or two classes a year, spread it out; physical training, yes, but soft skills like negotiation, deescalation and the basics of EDP-stuffs. the other reason is, then you can start firing all the fucking assholes. (which this is how you get institutional change. you change the institution by changing the poeple that make it up.)
Police in Finland regularly stop suspects by shooting them into leg which according to many Americans is impossible due to how inaccurate pistols are. That apparently means the alternative is then to dump the entire mag into the torso.
Got a proper source on that claim there? Cuz… yeah.
I did find a great many links to articles about this one event, but so far nothing to support that they do it regularly.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/world-news/finland-stabbing-suspect-shot-in-leg
you’ll note that they don’t say he was shot in the thigh intentionally. I suspect that they were aiming center mass and were just off. it happens. hitting a running target is… well here, the FBI tallies a ~47% chance to hit between 5-15 feet. (this is comparison to an 87% chance to be hit if you’re standing still.)
Shots to extremities happen, nobody is saying they don’t. But doing so on purpose is almost impossible. Especially on a running target. Even with a rifle. This is why you don’t use a weapon fundamentally designed to be lethal as “less lethal”. At best, you wing him and he’s still running. at worst, you miss, and clip a mom and her infant baby behind them.
There’s better tools to take some one down without lethal force. (see UK police tactics with Batons, for an example.)
Yeah, I’d think outside of movie-style moments it’s not something that makes sense 99.9% of the time, I just thought it was an interesting claim. It would have been more interesting if it were true. 😁
(to be clear I’m not the guy who made the claim)
Situations where Finnish police result to using their firearm are rare to begin with but you can just google it and find several articles with examples of this. However I can’t find any source on how police are instructed to act when it comes to using deadly force.
Source
Source
EDIT: Another example
EDIT2: And another
EDIT3: One more
not to be a stickler, but the source makes no mention of it being on purpose. I suspect you won’t find a source that makes that claim.
Also, as for the general use of force in Finland vs America, it’s two different scenarios. Vast cultural differences in general… but for some perspective… there’s 2 national and 11 local agencies in finland, comprising ~7.5k cops. (per statista), all of which have direct over sight form the Ministry of the Interior.
For comparison, in the US there are 17,985 agencies, ranging from the federal government to local police to sherifs and state police. All of whom have their own oversight systems. we have more agencies than you have cops. and all of those agencies have their own, unique requirements for training and qualifications. hell, some states, they don’t even have to have any education outside of highschool or GED. (actually in many places… that’s preferred. for reasons.)
Americans are also rather more violent than Fins. Just saying.
At no point have I claimed that they’re instructed to do so. That’s just moving the goalposts.
I’m reading that assertion as saying they’re doing it on purpose. perhaps there was some misunderstanding on my part.
Well either they’re doing it on purpose or then they just are really bad at shooting and despite massive amount of training compared to american police they for some reason seem to keep hitting the extremities despite aiming for the torso. Watch this video for example. You can see the bullets hitting the ground because the police was intentionally aiming for the legs.
How regularly?
Very rare. You can usually count the annual deaths by law enforcement on your fingers. Same goes for the amount of times a police officer has to use deadly force in a graduation-to-retirement career
I hope you can move to somewhere safer.