A Typical Police Officer (3)

Welcome to my 3rd article of "A Typical Police Officer"  For those who have taken the time to read the first article I do thank you and also please do share with your community.  For this article I decided to write about police shootings.  Or more precisely, what goes on in a police officer's head when confronted with a person that has a weapon that could kill you or a person of the public.  This is not only a complicated subject but also a sensitive one as well.  About the only people that know what goes on in a person's mind when confronted with a life and death situation is anyone that has faced a life or death situation.  And unfortunately, this includes police officers more times than the public is actually aware of.  Let's start with training again.  When a police recruit goes through training, one of the skills he/she needs to acquire is how to handle their service pistols and rifles/carbines(or whatever other firearms the police dept. issues).  When we say handle, this includes how to fire the weapon safely and accordingly when faced with a situation that requires the officer to use their service pistol.  One thing that a lot of the public is not aware of is that most (if not all) police force train their recruits to aim for the body center mass.  Which means the area where the torso and stomach is located.  Now anyone that hasn't gone through a life and death situation would probably be tempted to ask: "why don't they teach them to shoot to just injure, like in the arm or hands if they are carrying let's say a knife or an axe."  Well the simple reason is that when faced with a highly stressful situation, the easiest target to hit on a moving target is the bigger target...so the body center mass.  Here is a comparison that would simulate what I mean by this.  Let's say you are playing paint ball war games.  But every time you miss your target, you get a shock that feels like a thousand baseball bats hitting you at once(which is what it feels like when you get tasered).  You wouldn't aim for arms and hands or even legs on a moving target, you would aim for the torso area.  Well it's no different for police officers, except they would just get a shock if they would aim for arms or legs and miss, there is a chance that they would get shot because you can bet your life that the subject faced by police will not aim to injure.  That's is one thing the majority of the public do not see or understand.  That the majority of the subjects police officers have to arrest, will harm a police officer if they get a chance.  These are not nice people that you meet at work on a day to day basis.  But that's a subject that I will write about later down the road.  Another thing that needs to be brought to light is that a knife, an axe, an even a sharp screwdrivers, are all weapons that can kill another human being.  It is a known fact that police officers carry intermediate weapons with them as well and the most common ones are the OC Spray (pepper spray) and the taser.  Here is a fact that maybe the public is not aware of.  Although these 2 types of weapons can be very useful, especially when faced with a combatant suspect who does not carry a weapon, they are not to be used when faced with a person with a weapon that could cause death to another human being including police officers unless there is at least another officer as an overwatch in case the intermediate weapon is unsuccessful.  But if that happens, the subject would still end up getting shot.  Another fact, and this I am speaking from experience, sometimes, these 2 intermediate weapons do not work even if they are deployed correctly, meaning they do hit the subject being dealt with but do not have effect.  This would usually happen when the subjects were on some type of drugs that would be stimulants(Meth for example).  The subjects would feel almost no pain to not feeling pain at all.  I remember going to a call about a subject that was going from houses to houses in a rural area, threatening people, getting in front of moving vehicles...just really out of it.  Well we responded with 3 officers including myself.  When we met face to face with the subject, who was about 5'9" and maybe 140lbs soaking wet, of course we could not reason with him by talking to him as he was on a drug that made his mind not reason accordingly.  So as police officers, we needed to act towards the next step, and that was to use our intermediate weapons as this subject did not carry any weapons on him.  Well the OC Spray and taser were used and none were having effect.  We rushed him soon after he had been tasered a second time and he buckle a bit.  Once we had him on the ground, he was stronger than his frame indicated...again because of the drugs he had in his body.  We finally got control of him enough to handcuff him but only after using the extendable baton on him.  Now imagine if this guy would have had a weapon of any sort on him or in his hands.  If we would of used the same tools/weapons on him, probably all 3 of us would have gotten hurt severely or even killed.  In other words, if someone would enter into your house, threaten you and/or your family with a weapon that you know could severely hurt you and/or your family and that you had a firearm....would you use it or try to reason with the subject knowing he/she is not in their right state of mind?  And if you would decide to shoot at this subject, would you try to injure him by aiming at their arms or legs?  or aim for the bigger target which would be the torso area?  Only you can answer this honestly.  Police Officers in a sense are no different than you in this scenario.  They want to go home alive at the end of the shift.  I will close this article with this.  I find this very important to mention.  It is very said what is going on in the States for the past year to 2 years.  Police officers getting gunned down.  Police officers getting criticized immensely whenever they shoot a suspect and the suspect dies.  The unfortunate part is that the more police officers are gunned down, the more the police officers get very nervous when confronted with hostile subjects.  That's a normal reaction even for police officers.  I can guarantee you that if the same thing would happen in Canada, police officers in this country would also become very nervous and be more apt at pulling the trigger quicker.  Cause at the end, everyone wants to go home safe.

Thank you again for those that will take the time to read this.  To all my police officers out there, stay safe.

Norm