Shoot until the threat stops

[HughScot]

I used to wonder why the police would continue to shoot someone a large number of times. After reading the following I no longer am curious, it can take a lot of lead to get someone on the ground.

http://shootingthebull.net/blog/shoo...-threat-stops/

[Frank Ettin]

One of my favorite stories is that of LAPD Officer Stacy Lim. She was shot in the chest with a .357 Magnum and still ran down her attacker, returned fire, killed him, survived, and ultimately was able to return to duty. She was off duty and heading home after a softball game and a brief stop at the station to check her work assignment. According to the article I linked to:

... The bullet ravaged her upper body when it nicked the lower portion of her heart, damaged her liver, destroyed her spleen, and exited through the center of her back, still with enough energy to penetrate her vehicle door, where it was later found....

[849ACSO]

If I'm not mistaken, and maybe Frank Ettin has some more insight into this particular story since I think he's from that part of the world, a bad guy in 1970's San Francisco took 6 full house 357 Magnums, center mass, and still took away the officer's revolver, and either got some more rounds in it and shot him or beat him with it, and killed him. I believe the bad guy later died.

More recently, and you can watch the video, of an armed man walking into a Detroit Police Precinct Stationhouse with a shotgun and shooting several folks. He was hit multiple times with handgun rounds, once through the heart, and he managed to jump the counter and fire more shots before collapsing. The saving grace there was his shotgun was loaded with birdshot and damage to those he shot was "minimal" as compared to buckshot.

During the "Miami Shootout" in 1985, either Platt or Mattix served as a "bullet sponge", soaking up numerous hits from handguns before stopping, but not before he was able to wreak a tremendous amount of havoc and damage to the FBI Agents that were trying to apprehend him.

There are numerous documented instances like this.

The human animal is not easily or quickly neutralized, unless CNS damage occurs.

[Brian Pfleuger]

I believe this is the tragic story you are referencing.

http://www.odmp.org/officer/420-troo...-hunter-coates

5 shots to the chest from a .357 magnum and the scum bag killed Trooper Coates with a single .22 bullet.

[Double Naught Spy]

I used to wonder why the police would continue to shoot someone a large number of times. After reading the following I no longer am curious, it can take a lot of lead to get someone on the ground.

Just because somebody is on the ground does not mean they have stopped being a threat, as noted by BP's story. That is a bad mistake to make.

Of course, officers sometimes shoot people a large number of times NOT because they are a continuing threat. Amadou Diallo was killed by NY cops while reaching for his wallet. He was shot 41 times. No convictions, but NY did pay out $3 million to Diallo's family and disbanded the unit responsible for his death. Sometimes under stress, there is the group-think of shooting where everyone is just pulling the trigger.

[shafter]

If I'm not mistaken, and maybe Frank Ettin has some more insight into this particular story since I think he's from that part of the world, a bad guy in 1970's San Francisco took 6 full house 357 Magnums, center mass, and still took away the officer's revolver, and either got some more rounds in it and shot him or beat him with it, and killed him. I believe the bad guy later died.

More recently, and you can watch the video, of an armed man walking into a Detroit Police Precinct Stationhouse with a shotgun and shooting several folks. He was hit multiple times with handgun rounds, once through the heart, and he managed to jump the counter and fire more shots before collapsing. The saving grace there was his shotgun was loaded with birdshot and damage to those he shot was "minimal" as compared to buckshot.

During the "Miami Shootout" in 1985, either Platt or Mattix served as a "bullet sponge", soaking up numerous hits from handguns before stopping, but not before he was able to wreak a tremendous amount of havoc and damage to the FBI Agents that were trying to apprehend him.

There are numerous documented instances like this.

Indeed there are, as well as the reverse where the good guy soaks up a bunch of lead. Which is why an individual should do everything they can do carry enough gun. It would be a terrifying feeling to fire all five 38's and have the bad guy keep on coming. You don't get to know ahead of time who you'll have to shoot; the guy who soaks up five 357's, or drops from a single 22.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

IIRC, Diallo was shot at 41 times and hit 17. There are two stories about it.

The official one was that when he reached for his wallet, this was misperceived as a gun and they opened fired. He reached for his wallet as in his native country, when stopped by the law - you reached for your papers and wallet. He didn't know. Officers ran up saying where's the gun, where's the gun? This was an interesting perceptual issue as we know that perception is constructive process and under stress they might have actually perceived a gun that wasn't there. This was going to be used by the defense and they had a perceptual psychologist lined up to testify but the psychologist wasn't called.

The other story is that when he reached for his wallet, an officer on the apartment steps, stepped back and tripped. Since the officer had his finger on the trigger, he squeezed it because of the trip and bang. Then the others thought something bad was happening and opened fire.

In both cases, the bullets come back at them from the concrete made some think they were in a gun fight and they kept shooting.

The 2nd story, if true, was worse for them than the first. Thus, they went for the first.

Who knows?

Another view of the emptying the magazine effect even when obviously not necessary comes from a theory of violent action.

People have a natural affinity not to want to hurt something else. It is hard to pass a threshold to act. This is documented in cases where police and soldiers should have opened fire but didn't. However, if the threshold is passed, the emotional response may be something called a 'forward' panic and the violence becomes extreme as compared to controlled.

This can be controlled by training in stressful situations such that you have perceptual and cognitive programming to control the violent responses.

[riverratt]

When I was first getting my CC permit my mom, who is a paramedic, told me a story where one of her good friends on the small town police force (who we'll call Bob) had such an incident. She was on standby for medical treatment Bob and a team of other officers went in to bust a known local meth lab.

As the story goes the officers went into the building and broke up into 2 man teams to "clear" the house. Bob took point into a room where there were several people, 8 if I recall correctly, he then identified himself as police and gave the order for everyone to get on the ground. All but one person did, that one man stood up and drew a gun. Bob fired on the attacker with his 357 mag loaded with 125 gr defensive ammunition striking the attacker 5 out of 6 rounds. 4 C.O.M hits and one in the arm. The round in the arm made the attacker drop his weapon. The attacker then bent down and picked up his weapon and Bob's partner ended the situation with a payload of 00 buck.

Moral of the story.... Shoot until the threat stops

[Frank Ettin]

Originally Posted by 849ACSO

....bad guy in 1970's San Francisco took 6 full house 357 Magnums, center mass, and still took away the officer's revolver,...

I'm actually not familiar with that incident. But as we can see, there's no shortage of of incidents in which someone has continued to fight after being seriously wounded.

In the FBI Miami Shootout, which you mentioned, the criminal Platt was effectively "killed" by the first bullet that hit him. It was a mortal wound. But he still managed to live long enough to survive several more wounds, to kill at least two FBI agents, and to wound a few more.

[Double Naught Spy]

IIRC, Diallo was shot at 41 times and hit 17. There are two stories about it.

Good catch! Which brings up another point. It isn't just that people sometimes have to be shot a lot, but that a lot of the shots don't actually connect.

[K_Mac]

People have a natural affinity not to want to hurt something else. It is hard to pass a threshold to act. This is documented in cases where police and soldiers should have opened fire but didn't. However, if the threshold is passed, the emotional response may be something called a 'forward' panic and the violence becomes extreme as compared to controlled.

This can be controlled by training in stressful situations such that you have perceptual and cognitive programming to control the violent responses.

I think this is a central point in this discussion. The line between shoot/don't shoot is not always clear, and neither is how much is enough. It is the reason why being competent with a handgun is not enough.

[johnwilliamson062]

I think most people in the general population do not realize how quickly a magazine can be emptied.
I forget how many officers were involved in the Diallo shooting, but I remember it being more than a couple. When you are talking 5-8 shots per shooter, it is very possible those shots were sent before there was any perception of the targets condition. 41 shots is not much more than two officers dumping their mags. In several of the above scenarios it is possible to imagine an officer dumping their mag, especially if they think ricochets are return fire.

It is very easy and simple to train how to draw and fire quickly. It is much more difficult to train how to observe, process, and react to the targets response.

Think about how often a deer is shot and people think they hit but didn't. Usually a single shot, at a static target, through a scope, with a limited amount of stress on the shooter. Still regularly don't know what happened to the target.

If one moves to cover there may be a delay long enough to analyze.

If one stands "on the X" and fires the first chance may very well be the second or two it takes to reload.

[g.willikers]

Think of all the conversations about caliber choices and knock down power of small arms on this and most other forums.
All to no useful purpose, it seems.
Shooting until the threat is no longer a threat is the only way to hopefully survive a deadly encounter.
Small arms, especially handguns of the sort usually carried, are apparently just not as effective as we expect or imagine.
And then having to deal with prosecutors, judges and jurors who don't know.

[P5 Guy]

Florida LEOs had a suspect surrounded in a brush pile and he refused to come out. Over one hundred rounds were sent into the brush pile where the suspect was hiding. When a reporter why they fired one hundred shots the police spokes person remarked they ran out of ammo.
Also check out the photo of Bonnie and Clyde's car.

[Bluestarlizzard]

g.willikers,

There is still merit to the discussion of better "stopping power", because hopefully, the more "stopping power", the sooner the threat stops.

Most of our whole thing with self defense is "hopefully"

Hopefully, I never am in a position where I have to shoot someone.
Hopefully, I have the best firearm and ammunition for me to stop the threat.
Hopefully, I don't hesitate and my training gets me out alive.
Hopefully, I don't get hurt or killed.
Hopefully, I don't end up in a legal mess for protecting myself or family.

Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully.

What really gets us no where is spending all our time talking about the oddball cases, weird but true events and rare situations when we can discuss perfecting the basics that work the majority of the time and, hopefully, be applied in the oddball, weird and rare moments should we find ourselves in it.

So, carry the biggest thing you reasonably can AND shoot to stop the threat.

[fastbolt]

One of my favorite stories is that of LAPD Officer Stacy Lim.

Yep, listening to her recount the incident is worthwhile, too. I met her at a CNOA annual training conference where she was a speaker during one of the seminars, and went into great detail about her incident. I don't know if she's still making the rounds of the training circuit, but she's a very interesting speaker if you ever get the chance to hear her.

LE members who are able to attend LE-Only seminars would probably find it very interesting to attend some of the annual CNOA training conferences when the schedule includes training by speakers as Dr Lawrence Blum, who offers the "I'm Shot!" 8-hr seminar. He typically has 2-3 LE guest speakers who have survived deadly force incidents, having been themselves seriously wounded during the incidents.

While it's laudable to discuss tactical and legal issues surrounding the use of a gun as deadly force in stopping a deadly force attack, it's sometimes all too easy for people, especially outside LE, to bring up ideas like "shooting someone to the ground", as if that were the only way to measure a successful "stop" of an attacker using deadly force.

I suspect that the dissemination of training & discussions within LE probably has some influence on this, even going back to earlier statements lifted from LE training discussions, such as the statements written in the '89 Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness, Special Agent UREY W. PATRICK

To judge a caliber’s effectiveness, consider how many people hit with it failed to fall down and look at where they were hit. Of the successes and failures, analyze how many were hit in vital organs, rather than how many were killed or not, and correlate that with an account of exactly what they did when they were hit. Did they fall down, or did they run, fight, shoot, hide, crawl, stare, shrug, give up and surrender? ONLY falling down is good. All other reactions are failures to incapacitate, evidencing the ability to act with volition, and thus able to choose to continue to try to inflict harm.

It's best to read the entire article, so those statements have some context, and remember they were written in '89.

Here's the thing, though. In each unique shooting incident where deadly force is used against an attacker, there's going to come a moment when the further use of deadly force is no longer going to be reasonable and lawful. That's going to have to be determined in each unique incident by the totality of the circumstances in how the incident unfolds.

Notwithstanding the possibility of the observed phenomena of a particular defender not being able to process the events of the incident quickly enough to stop pressing the trigger once the threat is over - (as has been examined and discussed by experts, and is a complex discussion, usually involving when an attacker has started turning away from the cop as the cop is shooting) - at some point the imminent threat of continuing deadly force presented by an attacker is going to stop being present, and it may be before the attacker has either fallen down, or has been "shot to the ground".

As a trainer, I wouldn't want to find myself on the witness stand trying to justify why I'd taught someone to "shoot someone to the ground". Not only do I have to remain within agency policy, but teaching someone to only use deadly force until the threat has stopped can be a completely different thing than continuing to use it until the attacker has been "shot to the ground".

Yes, the attacker may be capable of continued volitional movement, and able to continue his/her unlawful deadly actions, even if having fallen to the ground, wounded. Or not. That has to be recognized by the defender, and any continued, reasonable use of deadly force will have to be articulated and justified at some later time.

An example.

I remember when a team was making a forcible entry into a house. (I wasn't part of the incident, although it involved my agency and I knew the team members.) A suspect, inside the room that was immediately inside the door where the entry was being made, was seen to pick up a handgun and swing it toward the team members.

Due to the way the entry was being done, there was a "constriction" of team members in a doorway, and only one of them was able to fire his weapon, getting off a single round at the observed suspect. The suspect was hit in his "gun arm" before he was able to fire his gun, and immediately dropped his gun.

The threat was "over" at that moment. No other suspects were present who threatened deadly force against the team. Sure, it could be hypothesized that the wounded suspect could've tried to pick up the gun with his other hand, and again threaten the team. That didn't happen, though, so the wounded suspect, who remained standing, was taken into custody.

These are the sorts of things that may be covered in various training venues offered to private citizens, to help give them exposure to some degree of the training that's usually part of LE training (both initial, and ongoing in-service updates). It might really benefit many non-LE folks to try and find some good quality training where such legal issues are discussed by trainers having both knowledge and experience, and preferably some background in the application of such knowledge and experience.

Knowing when it lawful and reasonable to use deadly force (shoot) may help keep someone (as a victim) alive, but knowing when it's not lawful and reasonable may help keep someone out of jail and/or prison. (The transition going from a victim to a suspect may be swift.)

[armedleo]

Many of the cases cited involving multiple officers discharging multiple rounds is a result of a phenomenon called contagion firing. One officer fires setting off a fusillade from the other officers. It is reflexive and there is no known cure. We do train against it but to no avail.