Great story Gadfly. The same uncertainty you felt is what I try and underscore my Experiential Learning Labs with. That kind of ambiguity is VERY real.
Great story Gadfly. The same uncertainty you felt is what I try and underscore my Experiential Learning Labs with. That kind of ambiguity is VERY real.
Reminds me of a former client who had been shot several times and dragged by a car...but was really upset by people who were rude to him. The whole "almost getting dead" was just his life.Originally Posted by Lon
Gadfly -- Just to be clear, I wasn't criticizing your decision at all. And while your story specifics make it very clear why you handled it the way you did, I'm sure we both know plenty of LEOs who have been in the "could have but didn't" seat when it comes to lethal UOF. I'm sincerely amazed at the restraint they use. And of course I'm saddened on those occasions when their restraint ends badly for them. But then again, all too often their decision to use lethal force legitimately can still get them into ruinous circumstances.
It's almost as if being a LEO is a hard job. Which is weird, because it always looked like fun when I watched CHiPs and TJ Hooker growing up.
This thread just confirms that I really don't want to be a !SHEEPDOG!!1.
Goat, maybe...
Indeed. Great thread though. Very compelling reading.
So here's a question I have for the people who have some level of experience with this sort of thing:
Knowing that the verbal interaction is only 1 part of a much larger picture that a bad guy assesses when sizing up what kind of threat you are, what sort of language would be sensible to use to try and convince a guy who is unimpressed by the muzzle of your gun?
As an example, I did Craig's ELL at the Conference and when interacting with the male role player I stated "If you touch that gun I will fucking kill you." as I maneuvered away from the side of his body where the gun was. The goal was to leave him with no doubt that I had every intention to shoot him in the face the instant he tried to pick up that pistol.
Craig was the outside observer so he could tell you if my recollection is accurate or not, but it seemed to me like the role player actually paused for a second and I thought my attempt at verbal intimidation was going to work. After the "pause" (and that may have just been adrenaline-induced distortion of time in my own head) he did move for the gun and I put three sims rounds in his facemask.
Was this too much, just right, or not enough? My goal was to convince this guy that screwing with me would result in certain death and so what came out of my mouth was a guarantee of certain death and it seemed for a second there that he got the point. An external observer, however, might have heard me tell a guy on his knees that I was going to fucking kill him and then shoot him in the face...which I'm guessing wouldn't give investigators a warm fuzzy.
I know of real life incidents where that sort of verbalization (at least two occasions where almost the exact same sentence I threw out there was used) did a good enough job of convincing the bad guy that death was certain for him to stop hostile actions. I also know that at least one of the people who said something along those lines got questioned about it in court and matter-of-factly explained that he had every intention of shooting the drug dealer the instant he became a threat to the officer making the statement and his teammates in the hopes that the bad guy would understand certain doom and refrain from being an idiot and getting himself killed.
Looking at the whole of the situation, what's advisable to say in that kind of moment? What's aggressive enough to make the bad guy understand his mortality without being so aggressive that you're explaining it to investigators in the aftermath?
3/15/2016
I wonder about the done correctly part.
I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but I regularly encounter people who have been through some level of training who react as if every stranger that approaches them is doing so solely for the purposes of cutting their head off and putting it on a stick. I'm forced to wonder if bad training is turning otherwise sane people into panicky dum-dums who react wholly inappropriately to any stimulus.
Maybe that's a conversation for a different thread.
3/15/2016
TC,
This may be a point of contention with some others here, but I try not to say that i will kill someone. I know they'll die. I want them to know they'll die, but my legal goal is never their death. I might rephrase what you said to: "I will shoot you in the fucking face." I think that is necessary to protect me in the aftermath (unfortunately) but also makes the consequences more clear to the BG. He's used to people threatening to kill him, but when a determined looking cop is pointing a gun at his head and specifies where he will be shot, I think it makes it a bit more real. I may be wrong. If it doesn't work, you always revert to what you did. As an aside, I usually don't swear when pointing my gun at a BG. I'm not against it, and I understand why others do it. I just don't find it best for me. So far, it's worked very well.
Can you elaborate?
As in how many instructors are out there making a deliberate effort to familiarize their students with the level of ambiguity that they are likely to encounter in real life.
3/15/2016
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