Long rant, fastforward to the last paragraphs if you just want to know why the officer’s taser excuse is so pathetic. Even if it proves to be true, it’s still no excuse; the mistake was completely avoidable.
 
But first, a word on the sillyness….
 

It surprises me that there are so many “anti-cop” people on HotAir…

 
What surprises me is that such intelligent people can totally lose sight of an issue and allow themselves to be hijacked by all the BS. You’re all blinded by your insistence to turn everything into a political issue of red or blue. On the one hand, you’ve got the “I don’t trust cops” people that use the actions of a few morons to judge an entire profession that has seen hundreds of thousands of honorable men and women wear the badge throughout history. Then you’ve got the people that want to prove how intolerant of crime they are, they like to believe that there’s no such thing as a bad cop; everyone’s guilty, and clearly, cops don’t make mistakes; every officer got a 1600 on their SATs and whatever decisions he or she had to make at the time, it was a logical, rational, well-thought out process that took careful deliberation and had nothing to do with adrenaline. Frankly, you’re all nuts.
 
First, if any of you want to say that this is evidence of racism in the police department, then you, yourself, are guilty of stereotyping, and you’re no better than those you accuse of being racist. Second, this is more about the proper handling of weapons than it is about racist and corrupt police. Third, you’ll be hard pressed to find an officer in this country that hasn’t encountered at least one or two fellow officers in their lifetimes that they knew probably shouldn’t be wearing the badge. These guys are human, and yes, it’s no secret, some of them are great at being total assholes, but lets not pretend that being an asshole is exclusive to the Police. My neighbor’s a real douchebag, that doesn’t mean that all CPA’s are douchebags. Cops face the same stresses, the same bills, the same problems that you do, only when they go out every day, they don’t know if they’re coming home. In so many situations, there’s a level of adrenaline with the job that you likely can’t understand because you won’t experience anything near it with most civilian jobs. But it is how one reacts in those circumstances that is critical to ensuring that lives are not lost; as any officer or combat vet will tell you, when it hits the fan, when your heart is beating through your chest and the protective instincts have kicked in, it takes a great deal of strength and experience to keep a level head and remember your training. A cop has the same fearful, protective instincts that you do, the hope is that he’s been provided with the training necessary to diffuse the situation safely. Now there isn’t an officer on the planet that doesn’t sympathize with an accidental shooting, especially in a volatile situation that could have turned at any moment…. but there are very few cops that don’t get angry and shake their heads in dissappointment when they see a homicide that could have been avoided if the officer had adequate, comprehensive weapons (not just firearms) training.
 
A man lost his life. He didn’t deserve to die, but he did. Take a moment to think about that before you self-righteous nitwits want to start preaching that he should have known better. This could have happened to anyone, a drunk at an NFL game, in a crowded bar or even a high school gym. The officers responded to a fight, not some shootout in the street. This is an absolute tragedy. Any Police Officer worth his soul is ashamed when something like this happens. Absolutely ashamed. I sympathize with the officer, but he screwed up bigtime. This kid didn’t deserve to die. This could have been your son, your brother, your father.
 
This has nothing to do with liberal or conservative, or whether you’re tough on crime/soft on crime. A man lost his life here, and no matter which way you slice it, it’s clear that this officer didn’t follow protocol or else this would not have happened. Was this an accident in the heat of the moment? I’m inclined to believe that it was and he didn’t mean to use his pistol… but is it excusable? Absolutely not. He’s done, he’s not qualified to handle a firearm, or a taser for that matter. Find another profession. Any officer reading this knows that when you draw your weapon, that finger isn’t on that trigger until your’re certain that you need to fire your weapon and kill whatever is on the other end of the barrel. That’s right: Kill. When you shoot, you do so with the expectation that you will end the life of what you’re shooting at. That’s why there are rules regarding the use of deadly force. You definitely don’t walk around with a round in the chamber unless you have a proper safety mechanism. That round didn’t leave the magazine and hop into the chamber all by itself, it got there because this officer understandably doesn’t want to take the extra step of chambering a round when he needs to shoot. Those are precious seconds that can save your life when caught by surprise – and there’s nothing wrong with that, so long as you to take precautions to prevent an accidental discharge. Whether that’s using a pistol with a proper safety mechanism that cannot be accidentally disengaged, a double action trigger, or whether you’re willing to spend the extra $200 on a pistol with a decocking lever. Of course, if you’re too inept to figure out which side of the belt you put your taser on, there’s not much hope for you. One’s lethal, one’s not, I understand that that the design of the Glock happens to resemble your taser, but I know for certain that the safety mechanisms on the taser doesn’t match any pistol, and if you can’t figure out the difference when the walls are coming down around you, find another profession. I have no sympathy for mistakes that could have been avoided with effective training.
 
And on the question of “should he have noticed the difference between how a taser felt in his hand and a pistol?” The answer is absolutely. This isn’t the first time he handled his weapon. If you have firearms experience, you’re already aware of how different each pistol can feel in your hand. Unless he was borrowing someone else’s weapon for the day, he’s clearly not qualified enough to carry one. In total darkness (or say, perhaps, with your eyes on a hostile target), the officer can immediately tell what is in his hand if by nothing else than noting the grip. If this was a 9mm, then it’s doubtful that the officer had anything less than 15 rounds in it. That’s a weight, a balance, and a bulk, that’s unmistakable to anyone that carries the same firearm day in and day out. You notice the weight, and considering the rounds are stored in a magazine inside your grip, you can feel the bulk. With a .45 caliber pistol, the rounds are bigger and are stacked differently, thus, you have an entirely different feel on the grips. Two different 9mms by the same manufacturer will feel different -even pistols of the same model can have aftermarket grips, accessories, sights, etc. Unless the pistols are perfectly identical, it’s hard not to notice a difference in the way they feel in your hands. The same most certainly goes for a taser. I understand the officer’s excuse and I sympathize, I just think it’s pathetic. No one wearing the badge should be inexperienced enough with his or her weapons not to be able to tell the difference between a firearm and and a taser. You shoot and carry what you’re trained and comfortable with, and if you can’t figure out that you’ve got your pistol in your hand and not your taser, clearly you haven’t trained enough with your taser to be the least bit familiar as to how it feels, and therefore, you shouldn’t have it on your hip in the first place.
 
Someone needs to explain to me the logic behind all this extensive firearms training, but this willingness to just hand out tasers with little to no education on their proper handling. If you carry both, yet aren’t at the range with both on your hips, practicing drawing both weapons in different scenarios, then quite frankly, you shouldn’t be carrying both weapons. When an officer is practicing drawing his weapon from the holster and firing at a range, instructors go so far as to instruct the officer to make sure he snaps the weapon into the holster between rounds, since this is likely the way in which he would draw his weapon in a real life conflict. Those that skip this critical step are prone to fumbling when the adrenaline is going, when every second counts. You prepare for so many scenarios with firearms, but yet we just hand these guys tasers, show them a video, and they pop it on their belts like it’s a can of mace. It’s no wonder he had his finger on the trigger, he assumed he had a non-lethal weapon but had likely handled it so infrequently that no alarms went off when he had this thing in his hand that felt the same as his pistol. If had he practiced training with both, alternating drawing different weapons, then it would be nearly impossible not to able to immediately notice the distinction. Again, I sympathize, but the officer is not excused. Civilian with no weapons training make these mistakes, not trained Police Officers. Find another line of work.

Medicated on January 9, 2009 at 4:39 PM