Here's the NYT article, "When Toronto Suspect Said ‘Kill Me,’ an Officer Put Away His Gun."
“This is going to be a great training video in the future,” said Ronal Serpas, who led police departments in New Orleans and Nashville and is now a professor at Loyola University in New Orleans. “It almost gives you chills how well he handled himself.”...Obviously, I'm no expert, but I find it hard to believe that a police officer is supposed to take this much personal risk. The man, Alek Minassian, has just mowed down 10 people with his car, he's not responding to multiple commands, and he seems to be pointing a gun aggressively at the cosmically cool Constable Ken Lam.
“Clearly the guy driving the van was on the edge; he knows what he just did. But by the way the officer handled himself, he ends up becoming docile and submits to an arrest,” said Mr. Serpas, the former New Orleans police chief. “It was a great outcome in a horrible situation.”
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68 comments:
The officer was close enough to see the perp was holding a cell phone, not a gun.
If the perp shoots first it's not given that he hits the officer, which lowers the risk of waiting some.
The cop did the right thing. The endless parade of state sponsored killings of fellow citizens has become sickening.
The irony of their quoting a former police chief of the murder capital of the U.S. (New Orleans) doubtlessly sailed over the reporters heads
It is sad that the officer's sangfroid is a "man bites dog" story.
This is not going to be a training video. Even if the officer believed it was a "suicide by police" attempt, the proper procedure is to remain behind cover and be prepared to shoot. It is quite possible that once the perp realized he wasn't going to fire, he would change tactics and actually fire at the officer or a bystander.
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...
The endless parade of state sponsored killings of fellow citizens has become sickening.
Everyone loves a parade.
Pedestrians walked within a few feet of the perpetrator. Whether he was holding a gun or not, the danger to innocents is clear.
Wait, what? Apparently the big story here isn't that another mass murderer did it without a gun. It's that a policeman managed to avoid using one.
Blogger Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...
The cop did the right thing. The endless parade of state sponsored killings of fellow citizens has become sickening.
4/25/18, 7:18 AM
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That's why we need more progressives in law enforcement. But they don't seem to be
answering the call. Why is that?
Suicide by Cop is going to get harder and harder to get done. In Atlanta we have more useful police, who will shoot you dead the instant you raise a gun hand at them. Thems the rules.
Never drop your weapon in a confrontation with a killer in your sights. Move in with weapon trained on the subject until he/she is properly restrained and subdued. Above commentator has never been trained in "death by cop." It is not 'state sponsored' killings but suicide by a deranged human who is too cowardly to kill himself preferring the drama of being put out of his misery after the deed. In this case, the perp was arguably looking to add a few more virgins to his retinue in his version of paradise. What is sickening is how these deranged individuals who fall through the cracks of modern society that ignores signs of mental disorder.
Yeah, and the Broward County Sheriffs deputies were brave heroes too...
/sarc
"It almost gives you chills" that police did not hold their weapons against someone who has just committed mass murder.
These people are pornographic in their appetite for turning criminals into the only real victims and police into offenders.
They might as well leave the dead bodies on the streets, as they have obliterated the meaning of those lives so thoroughly with statements like this.
We are descending into the fascist stage of leftism. Quickly.
You would have to be there. What the officer saw and judged this particular situation to be is not repeatable from a cellphone video.
So no training video.
Kudos to the officer though.
LarsPorsena said...
Why is that?
They can get better paying jobs elsewhere? Market forces?
Good questions. I agree with Earnest Prole: the officer could probably see that it was a cell phone, not a gun, so the actual risk to the lives of the officer or anyone was smaller than you might think at first. That makes more sense of the whole sequence of events, including the officer actually holstering his weapon, and failing to wait for backup.
I was surprised to see the head of the police union show up on TV, at the crime scene, about three hours after the violence was over. What was he doing there? How did he get past the yellow crime scene tape? Does he have an essential role in the investigation? I'm now guessing that if any officer had shot or injured anyone--perpetrator or innocent bystander--there would have been an investigation by the Special Investigations Unit, and the union would have been there to protect the rights of the officers. As it was the union head has done a lot of the explaining about how great Constable Lam was. If the perpetrator had been killed, this would have been an obstacle to the investigation--trying to find out if he had accomplices, etc.
This is good, but my favorite post-attack storyline is "We don't even notice these things! We heard the crash then went back to drinking our wine"
Let's give the PC some credit here. He's not a moron. I assume the officer did not see a real weapon, or see a real threat to his safety.
He correctly determined he was not in danger of getting shot.
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...
LarsPorsena said...
Why is that?
They can get better paying jobs elsewhere? Market forces?
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How about it's the kind of work 'those other people' do?
Are the police in Canada even allowed to have bullets?
For every crazy person with a gun, there are many, many more behind the wheel. For many reasons, not just craziness, I would outlaw cars, and greatly expand public transportation. Not just guns should be prohibited.
ARM: You get to claim market forces or your desire for single-decider health care.
But not both.
>>For every crazy person with a gun, there are many, many more behind the wheel.
Even more behind keyboards. And in your mirror.
Could've saved the taxpayers of Ontario a lot of loonies in terms of trial and incarceration, eh?
Broad daylight and open view. Wonder what would have happened if it were dark out.
Are most police shootings during the day?
The film of the incident will be shown in training - as an example of what not to do.
While I think many police are and even trained to be too risk adverse, offensively, this officer could have and should have taken more even defensive measures until back up arrived given the already demonstrated violence of the suspect. I do think he showed great restraint and bravery for not shooting first, which is commendable itself.
On several Canadian cop shows, the perps are almost always good people having a bad day. I wonder if the survivors of the dead agree with arresting mass murderers when other avenues beckon.
It would have been more interesting if the police constable had beaten the perp to death with his club. That's how we do it in Canada. Just ask the baby seals.
The perp wanted to take a bullet but was afraid to take a beating from the policeman’s baton.
>>For every crazy person with a gun, there are many, many more behind the wheel.
Even more behind keyboards. And in your mirror.
________________________________________________________________________So you propose outlawing keyboards, and mirrors? I don't see how it will stop crazy people from committing mass murder.
>>So you propose outlawing keyboards, and mirrors?
No, just stupid, artless trolls.
Yes, we are always to be impressed with our morally and intellectually superior neighbors to the north.
(Except for their mean, self-interested, selective, point-based immigration system that doesn't open the door to poor, low-skill, Spanish-speaking peasants from Mexico and Central America.)
They even have a better grade of perp up there: imagine, a mass murderer who wouldn't shoot at a cop! That'd never happen down here. Our mass murderers are stone-cold killers.
This will be a great training video if your goal is to have fewer live cops.
Canadian nice. Not sure it would work in Detroit.
"Unknown said...
This will be a great training video if your goal is to have fewer live cops."
And more dead bystanders.
The cop did the right thing. The endless parade of state sponsored killings of fellow citizens has become sickening
No doubt the sight of police officers waiting outside of Stoneman Douglas High School with guns holstered and refusing to go in was tonic to your soul.
Blogger Trumpit said...
For every crazy person with a gun, there are many, many more behind the wheel. For many reasons, not just craziness, I would outlaw cars, and greatly expand public transportation. Not just guns should be prohibited.
You're a piker. You need to get to the root of the problem. You have to outlaw thoughts. Fortunately that is part of the Progressive Platform.
Sorry, the asshole just killed ten people by running them down with a van. Two in the dome and call it a day.
If someone acts likes he's going to shoot me, what I would notice first are the threatening gestures and not the weapon in his hand. Congratulations to the cop. That's not the standard issue human reaction to a killer who mimes a shooter's stance........Now a crazy person has successfully mowed down a bunch of people by using a vehicle. Now the idea is out there and more crazy people will latch onto it. I don't know the proper response to this problem, but school suicides, school shootings, and vehicular mass murders seem to inspire copycats. My feeling is that we ought to downplay the publicity, but it's hard to see how.
The two cops shot and killed while eating lunch in a diner could not be reached for comment on ARM's bullshit remark.
I wonder which of this crop of mass murderers will get the most marriage proposals, This guy strikes me as unattractive and balding. I doubt if he'll get more than a dozen. The Waffle House shooter, however, has an intense, disheveled look that's bound to set a lot of female hearts aflutter. He strikes me as much more attractive than the Parkland shooter, but I'm no judge of these things. Maybe some of the women here could weigh in on who's the hunkiest.
For accurate pistol shooting, there are so many things wrong with the posture (stance) and grip the Perp is using. Right off, suggests the guy is going for suicide by cop. Officer moves, Perp does not track movements. Perp says "I've got a gun in my pocket." adding credence to object in hand not being gun.
As a resident of the greater Nashville area, the only thing Ronal Serpas brings to mind is the 3 hour commutes imposed by his department when he decided enforcing the various HOV lanes around town were the MNPD's highest priority and traffic ground to a halt. There's a reason he is the former police chief of Nashville.
"Suicide by Cop is going to get harder and harder to get done. In Atlanta we have more useful police, who will shoot you dead the instant you raise a gun hand at them. Thems the rules."
Or even if you don't raise a gun hand at them, but are the wrong color, or are disrespectful to them, or their adrenaline is pumping and they just have to cum.
I'm thinking the cop could see that what the guy was holding wasn't a gun, so that was why he was willing to holster his.
If the cop saw the object was NOT a gun he acted properly. If he thought it was a gun he was a fool and put both his and bystanders lives in peril.
And I just love the idiots who claim the cops are too risk averse. Yeah, right, you walk up to a blacked out van at 3 am. You face a guy that appears angry and reaching for a gun. You... sit behind your keyboard and type crap.
JAORE--"If the cop saw the object was NOT a gun he acted properly. If he thought it was a gun he was a fool and put both his and bystanders lives in peril."
Yup
So this cop took a risk (a big one) and it turned out OK for him and the perp. But one outlier does not a standard make.
If confronted by a violent capital crime, my advice is to kill the person responsible.
The reason you kill them, is because nations can no longer tolerate the inbreeding and low breeding that fills our prisons.
Take the body to the electric generation plant.
JAORE said...
Yeah, right, you walk up to a blacked out van at 3 am.
They have there tense moments, but "policing" is not a relatively dangerous job. Logging has almost 10X the death rate.
Fatal injuries in 2016: per 100,000 people
14 Police and sheriff’s patrol officers: 14.6
13 Construction laborers: 15.1
11. Grounds maintenance workers 17.4
8. Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers: 23.1
7. Driver/sales workers and truck drivers: 24.7
3. Aircraft pilots and flight engineers: 55.5
1. Logging workers: 135.9
You... sit behind your keyboard and type crap.
Or drive a cab or delivery van. Or work on a farm. Or trim shrubbery. Or fly a plane. Etc...
When the perp says "I have a gun in my pocket," it sure suggests that whatever he was waving around was NOT a gun. From the video, even if it was a gun it had almost no barrel and wouldn't have been accurate at more than a few feet. But my guess is it wasn't a gun
I would like to hear from the officer exactly what he was seeing and thinking at the time, before running off half-cocked with silly guesses and telling people that the police should disarm themselves when confronting a homicidal maniac with a gun.
So the story here is that the officer, probably foolishly, put his life on the line to avoid harming a guy who just ran down 10 people.
I’m glad this turned out well for the officer, but people stupid enough to believe this is exemplary police behavior should be prepared to increase dramatically police salaries and to provide, at taxpayers’ expense, huge life insurance policies to provide for officers’ families.
There is some kind of bizarre moral equivalence going with NYT mediaswine and their buffoonish commenters.
Logging has almost 10X the death rate.
Never been a logger, but I've worked in a couple of the other jobs you describe. Two thoughts;
1 - These jobs are heavily slanted towards male workers, and 2 (to the point of this article) no one ever told a logger he should stand still while the tree falls towards him. Yet I read all the time how cops are to delay taking a shot when they believe they are about to be shot or (really stupid) can't they shoot to wound.
Only a cell phone? Good, shoot him twice in the pelvis. Still able to talk and give info, but hopefully fucked up for life for murder and mayhem.
Apparently in Canada the police can recognize a cell phone and keep their cool doing the job of making an arrest? That said I think the idea of making an arrest in a country where we can presume that almost everyone has a gun permitted or not, makes keeping one's cool in making an arrest a huge challenge--that was not the case fifer years ago.
Richard Dolan said...
So this cop took a risk (a big one) and it turned out OK for him and the perp. But one outlier does not a standard make.
Yep. I guess everyone's forgotten about Kevin Vickers, Sergeant-At-Arms of the Canadian House of Commons and retired RCMP officer, dumping most of a 9mm magazine into that jihadi who shot those two soldiers standing guard in Ottawa in 2014.
Robert Cook said...
"Suicide by Cop is going to get harder and harder to get done. In Atlanta we have more useful police, who will shoot you dead the instant you raise a gun hand at them. Thems the rules."
Or even if you don't raise a gun hand at them, but are the wrong color, or are disrespectful to them, or their adrenaline is pumpin
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That's why we need more enlightened leftists on the police.
Why don't they show up?
Let’s see, the cop holsters his weapon and approaches a perp who has just run down a crowd with his car. If the perp’s claim is true and he has a gun in his pocket and shoots the cop he now has his gun and the cop’s. What happens to the other citizens nearby who he didn’t get with his van? You know, like the ones walking in the background of the video.
What say you, libs? Would the cop be remembered as a hero if the perp upped his dead to 15? 20?
"You know, like the ones walking in the background of the video."
I think the ones walking in the background are key to the context of this whole thing. Those ambling, mildly curious bystanders. In a country that has virtually no gun culture in its cities there is very little automatic fear of that kind of sudden violence baked in. It gives time and space to the right cop with the right psychological makeup and training to observe, to weigh options and to make choices. This is a 100% happy ending. They have a perpetrator to question, to hold accountable and an oppotunity to send the message to other people who might like to act out of rage and inadequacy that they don't get an automatic ticket to the blaze of glory movie running in their heads.
The only gun you should use to wound someone, and not try to kill them, is a shotgun with rock salt.
Otherwise, if you shoot your gun at a human, shoot to kill. A head shot being the most efficient in the age of Kevlar.
That's what I learned over the years at gun training sessions.
[Caldwell Titcomb the Whatever said:] They have there tense moments, but "policing" is not a relatively dangerous job. Logging has almost 10X the death rate.
That is probably the most glaringly obvious example of both situational and moral equivalence I have ever seen.
"Congratulations".
(Speaking as a pilot with lots of dead friends, you idiot.)
I love how the three people (Asians?) go strolling by and don't seem to understand they easily could've been shot. They just turn around and gawk.
And the police guy obviously saw it was a cell phone and NOT a gun. If the perp wanted "Suicide by Cop" he should have gotten a real gun or charged the cop with a knife.
Speaking of guns, I have a new hero: Kyle Kashuv, a student at the Stoneman Douglas HS in Broward Co., FL. This young man went to a rifle range with his father and learned to shoot a rifle at paper targets, as well as the fundamentals of fire arms safety (and the 2d Amendment). He posted a video on Twitter. As a result, he was dragged into an office by the "school resource officer" (apparently a successor to the one who cowered outside while the kids were being murdered inside) and interrogated by him and later by a Sheriff's officer, who tried to intimidate him for exercising his rights. Kyle stood his ground. https://pjmedia.com/video/kyle-kashuv-school-security-officers-used-harsh-intimidation-tactics/
@Lars Porcena: in Atlanta, there are a lot of police who are black; the Chief has been a black man or woman for decades; the DA is black, has been for decades; command is predominantly minority. There are videos of black police being abused by dumb white "cop-watch" idiots as the police try to make arrests to protect people who deserve protecting. The videos are quite educational: they show how anti-cop activists have so little respect for the humanity of police that they are willing to endanger officers and the public just to stage their tantrum-protests.
How do you not know these things, given your fascination with police and race?
Ends always justifies the means. If not, then what does?
Tina Trent said...
These people are pornographic in their appetite for turning criminals into the only real victims and police into offenders.
They might as well leave the dead bodies on the streets, as they have obliterated the meaning of those lives so thoroughly with statements like this.
We are descending into the fascist stage of leftism. Quickly.
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The Left is about gaining power by owning their government-defined factions (Protected Identity-Groups) based upon government doling out money and socioeconomic privilege based upon membership in said PIGs - not as individual American citizens.
Operative leftist ideology is a model of Big Hyper-Government doling out "rights" they see necessary to their "protected identity-groups" to own and control the PIGs in the elected tyranny kabuki they are creating.
You see this behavior repeated in matters where leftist media shape the narrative as one/more of their "protected identity-groups" being 'oppressed' by their designated "Others".
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Revolution.
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