Chicago police officer says she feared using gun while being beaten

[hufnagel]

I totally think you did the right thing, but there are two sides to that approach. One is that the AMA political machine is clearly anti-gun, at least from what I can see as a non-member. The other side is that some medications, particularly the widely-prescribed SSRIs, do in many patients lead to new or increased tendencies toward violence and suicide, so a responsible physician should want to consider whether firearms are available before prescribing them.

(Drift) In the specific case you list, I think it would be better that rather than a doc ask "you got GUNS in your house?" formulate the question along the lines of:
This specific medication I want to prescribe for you to treat your condition, is known to have new or increased tendencies toward violence and suicide in certain patients. People who own firearms, operate heavy machinery, or <insert other factors here. i'm not a med pro with the latest list of things that are 'bad for ya'> can have a higher risk of incident. Given that information should I prescribe this medication? Or should we look for alternatives.

[Josh Runkle]

What you have said is correct in that, if you don't like it then your power is to change the law. If your representatives create a law and you then get pissed that officers enforce it. Well, that says more about you than the officers...

Asking an officer to take on more danger cannot be separated from asking the officer to allow the public to take on more danger. i.e. I waited too long and he started shooting. He hit me and the citizens behind me. Ooops. Total failure on all parts.

i.e. Bad guy won the fight. I'm in the hospital with permanent and/or substantial disfigurement/wounds and the bad guy got away. Anything the bad guy did after he got away is on me.

The second issue that comes to mind is related to the first. Your EMS analogy is logically flawed. You don't need to be an expert to advocate, work toward and vote to change the laws. But we get judges and lawyers to opine on the veracity of those laws and in the end the judges enforce them. In most of these officer involved shootings the judges agree with the officer. Once the laws are made, you don't get to complain to the officers. Complain to your elected officials that made them.

If you change the laws to say an officer can do x, y or z to save their life but not a, b or c and I as an officer believe that your new laws will get me killed if I follow them or jailed if I chose to survive, well then good luck to you because I will chose not to become an officer. I'll take my marbles and go home.

We In our society are not upfront with the police and we are certainly not upfront with the poor communities. We talk a good game. We pass laws for them to enforce. They enforce those laws and then we complain that society is going to hell in a hand basket. We blame the cops. Never mind that we have treated the black community differently by allowing them to slide on some laws. Never mind that we as a society have passed laws that destroyed their family base, destroyed their religious base. No we as a society certainly can't take that blame for that. No, it must be the police that are racist and are not enforcing the laws correctly.

Ultimately that's the problem. You have a small minority of the community controlling the narrative (that's why they call it the Minority Rule.) And you want the police to fix the problem. Which of course they cannot. Basically we are answering your frustration with what's going on by telling you, "You're bitching to the wrong people."

My original point is simply that I dislike on P-F when someone says something regarding LE/Gov and then someone else tells them to STFU unless they've worked in LE.

-Obviously P-F members don't appear to be trying to make their point through illegal means.

-I believe that P-F members should be able to politely and legally voice their opinion and then have someone shoot them down through rational argument, rather than just telling them to do the job and come back.

- I believe that P-F members should have this right because they are citizens, and the government belongs to the citizens, and citizens should be able to voice their opinions on an Internet forum. (Obvious caveat that the forum is privately owned and that the owner has full say over what he allows)

-I believe that having an opinion good, bad or indifferent, about something related to policing or government doesn't mean that you are automatically stupid, a member of BLM, or that you want the terrorists to win.

That's the full extent of what I'm saying.

[AMC]

I agree with everything Josh posted there. And I still call on my fellow citizens to become educated and engage in this debate. It's too important to leave to the radicals and activists....who are the only ones being listened to in public policy circles right now. Silence is acquiescence.

[Hambo]

My original point is simply that I dislike on P-F when someone says something regarding LE/Gov and then someone else tells them to STFU unless they've worked in LE.

I read though the last few pages and frankly whatever your point is, I think you've made it poorly. I don't tell my electrician how to do his job because I know fuck all about electricity. That's the point some of us make here. If you have a reasonable understanding (you don't need to have been in LE) of how LE functions, the justice system, and the laws that guide them, I'm all ears. If you scream for legally impossible solutions (not to be confused with illegal activities) as some BLM folks do, I would consider you ignorant and assign little to no value to your argument. Fair enough?

[GardoneVT]

I agree with everything Josh posted there. And I still call on my fellow citizens to become educated and engage in this debate. It's too important to leave to the radicals and activists....who are the only ones being listened to in public policy circles right now. Silence is acquiescence.

Informed folks are speaking up.

Problem is , the press is a for-profit business. BLM and Race Baiters Inc bring in more ad revenue then the Good Guys. Network exec lives matter .......

[El Cid]

Damn, this thread boarded the drama train in a hurry.

I see this drift topic as a fine line. Many of us in LE are constantly being told by non-LE how we should have done something. When there is a shooting - even one that's cut and dry - there will be pages of comments at the bottom of the article. People will debate the merits on FB. I can't recall seeing that for other professions. I haven't heard people complain about which hose/truck/nozzle firefighters used on a structure fire. There seems to be something about LE that brings out the "experts" who know how we should've responded. That doesn't justify us being more sensitive to criticism or even discussion. But please understand why we can sometimes feel that way. For those in LE working for an agency that is controlled by politics instead of leadership, the problem is exacerbated.

I suspect most of us want a public that is more educated about our jobs. I know I do as it would go a long way towards more constructive discussions. If I was a betting man I'd guess that many of our critics are tainted by their limited exposure to LE. Most often it's a traffic stop. That can often set their perception of LEO's such that they are less sympathetic or worse. Many also have their ideas about our jobs formed by movies and TV.

In my case, I tend to welcome discussion with non-LEO's because I want to open their minds to why we do what we do. Still, it shouldn't surprise anyone when LEO's get upset at someone judging one of us who was involved in an encounter such as the one that started this thread. I'm not directing this at any one person here - just trying to throw some water on the flames. None of us in LE are perfect and situations like the incident in Chicago remind us we are mortal. We are human and even the most seasoned of us can freeze, make a poor decision, etc. Well, except for McNamara and Defoor... I suspect they could dominate a gunfight while sleep walking. Lol!

I think all of us - LEO and non - could be more appreciative of each other's views. We all need to start building bridges with each other because there are countless people out there in our country trying to drive a wedge between us. Sadly, watching the news it appears they succeed too often.

[Willard]

Problem with Monday morning QBs is they have no frame of reference. They've never been through a police academy, many have likely never even been in a fist fight, and hate violence because it is ugly and brutal. So, they condemn police officers who use violence. I know many of you have no use for the "sheepdog" analogy, but it is really pretty accurate in that the sheep see the sheepdog as almost analogous to the wolf and recently have begun to see the wolf as less dangerous. They both have teeth and can bite. They forget that mostly the sheepdog actually cares about the sheep (who knows why), while the wolf really wants to eat them while convincing them otherwise. Seems like the wolf is having pretty good success these days. Sheepdog not so much.

[Erick Gelhaus]

Your argument sounds to me (and I could be wrong) like you are saying that an educated public that is wise enough to know what is in their best interest should be able to make decisions for themselves, but because the public is stupid, they should lose the right to self-governance.

Josh, YOU are reading what you WANT to read. I wrote about the public needing a base of knowledge rather than feelings. I do not opine on a number of things because I lack sufficient knowledge to opine on them.

[Mike C]

I'd like to point out if one wants to be educated as to what LE does and how difficult shit can be go find a dept. in your area that has a reserve program. Join and try it. It's not the same as being full time, but I can say it's a fucking eye opening experience.

I am speaking from personal experience and you really don't get it until you've sat through a fuck ton of training on state and federal laws governing: search and seizure, penal code, family code, traffic code, code of criminal procedures and then actually go out and deal with shit while wearing a badge and a gun.

I am not speaking from a wealth of experience as most of these guys who do this shit day in and day out, nor do I hold anyone on a pedestal.

I am not saying that one can't have an opinion about things or be educated on how things work to an extent. Though working the job and actually going though standardized police training actually gives an individual context which all here seem to know is important. I would encourage others to go out and give it a shot behind a badge even if it's just a reserve spot.

I promise you it will completely alter your perspective.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Dagga Boy]

Threads like this are why I usually don't even read this sub section that often, and why my ignore list grows exponentially.

First, on the cop side. I am medically retired because I made a choice to not use the level of force I should have when dealing with an "unarmed" (except for the fist loaded crescent wrench that got punched into my left eye) black guy overdosed on crack cocaine on a busy SoCal freeway at 3:00 PM on a Sunday afternoon. That choice was strictly based on "public perception" and not anything I normally did as a regular practice, and was due to being placed in a horrible situation by a executive staff member, and another LE organization not willing to handle their own calls. With that said, I also made a choice not to shoot the idiot when I got the opportunity due to a back stop issue involving two small children immediately behind the threat. The last time I was in a police uniform was being wheeled out of an ambulance into an ER where I was treated and released in two hours. The crook spent three days being fed through a tube in ICU. If that makes me a pussy to other cops, have the stones to say that to me personally and be prepared to take the ride.
Additionally...in my study of officer involved shootings, use of force and interviewing hundreds of officers on these issues, many LEO's have not fired at suspects for fear of the process within their own agencies. So we are clear, well before today's current situation, officer's have made a choice to not shoot when they were legally, morally, and ethically able to because of a greater fear of their own organization than that of injury or death. That should be telling. Now take today's environment where the fear is now of your own agency, the FBI, the city government, the media, the citizenry you are supposed to be protecting, the crooks, the media, and civil and criminal attorney's who all,want you as a trophy, and one should not be remotely shocked that officers are rolling the dice of hoping they just get hurt instead of killed rather than save themselves. Start thinking about who's fault that is. Society as a whole can look in the mirror and point, because that is where the fault lies, and that is who will suffer the consequences.
One of the things I addressed in my place was to make part of my training was to demystify the post shooting investigative process, and we had a culture of treating officers as victims first, and suspects only if the evidence pointed that way. This is not the process in a vast majority of places. For all the folks reading and posting about how much these officers owe them, and their rights to be involved.....I wish you applied the same standard to your self. Officers are treated as presumed guilty first. They are not afforded a right to remain silent, not given the same expectations of a right to basic self defense, and expected to be okay with being hurt of killed. It is why 8 officers have been killed in almost as many days and we have not seen jack crap from the White House, or the media decrying this. It is expected that you just get killed and tough crap. And do not get me started on getting hurt......getting hurt makes you a simply disposable piece of trash NOBODY, and I mean NOBODY gives two fucks about. They simply hang a uniform on a replacement. When officers get killed, society pretends to care. When they get hurt, they don't even have to pretend.

My partner on bikes (who I was in more crap than any other person on this planet with) had a case where he did not shoot a firearm armed suspect he really should have. REALLY should have. One of the toughest, little bad asses around and fearless with crooks. He later in his career did an on demand failure drill on a guy trying to shoot officers on an ambush when we were partners...agin, not afraid of crooks or danger. When I talked to him prior to us being partners about the incident where he didn't shoot the crook, he was brutally honest as to why...he said flat out that the fear of what would happen if he did shoot the guy with the gun totally overwhelmed his thought process in dealing with the fear of being killed. That incident was what drove me to change training and how we were preparing our people. LE has always expended FAR more effort in establishing a mindset to fear using lethal force than saving their own lives. It is a massive failure in LE training, and it is not getting any better. It is getting horrific. If this is happening to totally squared away good people, imagine what is happening to the marginal and generally suck ones. I also noted a huge difference in officers who used lethal force, and then later events. This included myself. The first shooting was very difficult to make the decision....not based on facts, but based on emotional fear instilled in the act. The second was easy after the first went well and the process dealt with. I found the more shootings officers were in, the better they were on decision making and action after the first one.

Basically......society made this mess, live with it. Because it isn't going to be getting better and we will be left with a lot of the folks who should be cops doing other things, and those who should not be filling the vacancies.