http://imgur.com/gallery/hQwmrA lot of what I want to be said can be said by this guy in the link above this line.
Judging by the comments here, a lot of people's knowledge of police seems to come from news, tv, and movies which isn't all that good. time to dissect this thread.
I too am supportive of more non-violent measures of police conduct, such as mandatory martial arts training, rather than just beating people to subdue them if violent. But LA is notorious for violence, and when people don't obey commands at gunpoint and instead continue to reach into locations where a gun could be concealed, the officers had reasonable suspicion that their lives were in danger. Multiple times they reached down towards their waists.
It is without a shadow of a doubt depressing that these men were shot while unarmed. But don't demonize the police over it. They acted lawfully. Also, a taser might make them seize up and fire a weapon if they have a grip on it, not to mention it sometimes doesn't work anyway.
Training, martial arts, etc: Unfortunately practices and standards from department to department aren't all that standard or in common. For example you go to say Oakland PD, they teach how to baton and how to defend your self Oakland style. You go to San Francisco they teach something completely different from Oakland, you go to Los Angeles and again something completely different. Plus different departments have different rules of engagement and procedures. A good example being the chokehold. If done right, the person should go unconscious unharmed. However if executed poorly, you risk injuring the person. Because of that, some departments forbid performing it, some states have gone out there way to make it illegal.
Plus not all cities can afford to pay their departments for the best training. So the length and quality of the training may vary wherever you go. You might not even learn everything other departments teach. You might get a very basic run down on how to do a certain type of take down.
In addition to training, procedures and rules of engagement are not standard and are mostly tailored to the city or era. For example take a quiet community consisting of mostly retirees, having your hand over your holster might be considered excessive or ridiculous. Whereas as you mentioned,in LA which is a pretty violent place, having your gun ready is normal when dealing with suspicious people.
Unfortunately one size does not fit all in this career field.
2) which is a perfect reason to shoot somebody, apparently.
1) again it'd be great if they had tasers. the things that are supposed to provide a non-lethal option.
Starting off with item 1. Tasers and stun guns are becoming more common place. Many officers have them. Although again standards aren't really a thing in the police world. For most departments you'll get a pair handcuffs, a baton, and a can of OC spray and that is pretty much standard issue for a lot of places, for many departments you have you buy your own handgun, your own bullets, and your own taser. The was a police academy I was looking at required that I buy my own uniform, my own shoes, my own vest(level 2A), my own gun, my own magazines for the gun, my own bullets to load into the magazines, my own holster, and my own belt. Were looking at looking at lot of money here to buy all this. So training on how to use all those items will vary, plus it would be coming out of my own pocket. However they are tools you can use in the job, the more the better.
some problems with 2 that I am going to tie in with item one. This is the use of force continuum, some examples may vary:
I like this tiny last one, it's pretty simple and easy to understand and the force continuum is great in the perfect world, key word perfect world. It's much more than just hitting and killing people, just standing around and looking like a cop is a use of force, talking to people and giving them orders is a use force. Generally officers work from 1 to 5 when dealing with a situation. Depending on the officers skill, experience, and knowledge they might be able to defuse a situation with just words. Dealing with a guy who wants to brawl with his or her fists and their willingness to fight they will most likely be met with level 3 or level 4 use of force. If they have a weapon of kind or attempt to kill someone they should be prepared to meet level 5 use of force. Now this the perfect world we are talking about, in the not black and white world a real life situation can go from 1 to 5 in a second.
Most of the time people will go quietly and peacefully, but there is always that one percenter who is going to fight. Most of the time you will deal with the complainant ones, however a lot of officers will get too comfortable and complacent that they will let their guard down. If you let your guard down or become that complacent, you are going to die soon and that is what gets many officers killed. The moment you get bored and assume every situation is a milk run is when you will mostly get killed. This type of also job requires many split second decisions, and because that this creates problems of it's own. You could become too alert, too twitchy and more likely to overreact. You might mistake a man scratching his back as a motion that he reaching for a weapon. Here the guy that got shot was told to keep his hands up, he kept lowering his hands over and over, kept moving. These guys could just be some punk kids or street thugs or just wannabe gangsters, who knows what they are. Generally street thugs are pretty good at concealing and quickly drawing out weapons and if they are young chances are they aren't good decision makers. Say that guy who got shot was thinking in his mind that he was going to be tough and be that one percenter who was going to fight instead of stand down and say the cops didn't react to his motions. Not a good outcome if you ask me.
Now lets say they shot him with a taser instead of a gun. Like others have said, they don't work all the time, nor are they guaranteed to penetrate clothing and skin all the time. You shoot them, but your taser fails and he happens to have a weapon. Chances are you will end up either getting shot or stabbed within a second after hitting them with a failed taser. He also has two buddies on both sides of him and there are only two cops. If it works you on incapacitated one of them, the other two are still able to attack you. In order to shot them you have to hook them with the darts which are connected to wires. You can't retract them and use them again, plus that would a biohazard since you are sticking something that has already been inside of them into someone else. So while your reloading your single shot taser, you are vunerable to attack and if your friend gets the other one you still both venerable to attack from the 3rd person. The imgur link I posted even goes over this a bit.
The officers also value their safety, so yes using their guns in this guy is pretty justifiable given the circumstances provided.
Cops aren't capable of seeing who's wearing a bulletproof vest? Do you know how forgetin bulky even a light one is?
very few people go around with a vest on, especially common people. However to prove a point that slim concealable vests are thing here is a picture:
