Originally Posted by AMC
I wonder if it's worth it for a non-leo to yell this to keep himself from getting shot by first responders? Yes it's a crime to impersonate a police officer but fighting that charge pointing back at incidents like this is a better option than dying IMO. :shrug:
This might be stupid but to avoid such 'charges', it was suggested (somewhere, who remembers), that you yell: Help, police, police, police, Help, police, police!
From the FOG civilian viewpoint, in a few FOF hobbyist classes (LOL, HCM) and the NTI - scenarios were run that continued beyond the fun shootout to police arriving and dealing with you. Explicit instruction on such was part of the classes. Also, in Caleb's first aid class - the points were made about the risk of aiding a downed someone (even a bad guy), if the scene was not FOG safe. For example, one downed someone had a surprise backup who shot us Samaritans. That was John Daub, btw. I knew that might happen but went in anyway. Stupid. Then one of the downed guys had a surprise gun under him as we 'treated'.
I am pretty sure @Mas teaches that, as did I, although we arrive at it independantly.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
That's it, most likely. I took Mas' class in another century, another millennium. I recall him showing a guy with a pistol grip shotgun in a training film. The guy was not facing you and the question was what to do. You were ordering him to drop it and he said some blather that he would (I think) but was turning around towards you. What to do? Folks had all kinds of verbalisms. My opinion was to shoot him before he finished the turn. I think Mas said that was the right response.
I also recall Tom Givens showing how quickly a person putting down the gun even when it wasn't held in a shooting position, could shoot you.
John Holschen mentioned that civilians tend to tell the bad guy to do this or that. When the bad guy doesn't, the person increases the volume and approaching, to perhaps achieve dominance. Too close, oops. John was of the opinion that we should be backing up and getting out of dodge to a place of safety. We are not the police with backup.
Thus convincing this hobbyist that playing police by giving commands wasn't a good idea.
Actually, I recommend that they tell bystanders to CALL the police. Just shouting "Police" can be misconstrued as impersonating an officer.
Has there ever been an instance that you know of, where armed non-LE yelled "Police" during their response to a violent felony, and then they were later prosecuted for impersonation? Being prosecuted for impersonation seems like it would be pretty far down the list of things to be worried about.
And if you mean "misconstrued" just in the sense of "the perpetrator and any bystanders might confuse you for a police officer" and not in a prosecutable legal sense, I really don't see the problem. On balance, any such potential confusion would probably result in better outcomes for you in the short term (e.g. while the crime is still occurring), wouldn't it?
Last edited by CleverNickname; 06-28-2021 at 05:32 PM.
Not off the top of my head, but what does "Police!" do that "Call the police!" doesn't in terms of establishing the good guy? We've all seen bystanders fibrillate and stand there like zombies at crisis scenes; "Call the police" gives a specific, positive instruction that can more quickly galvanize a bystander into useful action. After seeing even shooters on gun forums refer to citizen intervenors as "wanna-be cops" and how that appellation stuck (falsely) to George Zimmerman after his incident, it's not something I want to offer fuel for. Most LE on here would preface commands with "Police!" and the negative image of an armed citizen doing so seems obvious.
I think I am a little uncomfortable with suggesting non-cops make statements that are intended to suggest / imply / mislead that they are LEOs. It could lead to legal problems or credibility issues during the ensuing investigation and in the current climate could even put one at risk from bystanders. Beyond that, and from what I deal with fairly often, I think responding officers are going to respond more to visual cues than verbal ones. Between the radio, sirens, general scene confusion, them shouting commands, their partner and backup shouting commands, etc., there is a good chance you won't be heard or at least won't be understood no matter what you say. Holster or dump the gun before the troops get to you, face the responding cops with arms far out from body with hands open and fingers open, comply immediately with all commands, expect to get handcuffed, etc.
For cops it is just slightly different and will vary somewhat by jurisdiction. Empty hands, not a badge wallet, consider a badge on a neck chain that you can pull out and have hanging on your chest when the cavalry shows up, announce who you are, but plan on nobody believing you at first.
Just my thoughts on the subject
Here is some related info from FLETC via PoliceOne: https://www.fletc.gov/sites/default/...etter-2016.pdf
A few thoughts:
(1.) What a tragedy
(2.) Most cops never respond to an incident where a private citizen uses deadly force to defend themselves, either in or out of the home. They might not have ever thought about that situation, and they probably have never received any training on how to respond to that kind of situation.
(3.) If you are a witness or a participant in an incident, you may be on the phone to somebody at the comm center reporting this incident, but in a bigger metro area you'll probably be talking to a call taker who then forwards that information to the dispatcher working the radio. For the information to get all the way along the chain takes time, and often gets garbled in transmission. If the incident happens in a smaller jurisdiction, you may have a single dispatcher who is getting bombarded with calls about the incident and radio calls about the incident and also with radio traffic and phone calls about everything else going on in that jurisdiction at that time. There are lots of things that can go wrong.
I'm not an admirer of several people in my former agency's firearms training group, but we did address the issue of dealing with CCW permit holders who are few and far between in Maryland.
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