Originally Posted by
TCinVA
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?
Reply With Quote