Cop Fired for not shooting at man with Gun

[SkullKing]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/po...-a7245681.html

So apparently cops are called to a domestic dispute, first cop at the scene says that he had training to deal with mentally ill people and he recognized that the man didn´t want to shoot, it was a "suicide by cop", so refuses to shoot.

More cops come and shoot the man.

Afterwards the first cop is fired under the allegation that by not eliminating a possible threat caused the other officers to be in unnecessary danger when they arrived.

The man´s gun was unloaded but nobody new that.

Honestly I can see both sides. If the unstable man had shot the second wave of cops the first one would be partially responsible.

But I think firing might be too much.

What do you guys think?

[jackfaire]

I think the fact that it's harder to fire a cop for killing an unarmed suspect than to fire him for making a judgement call that could have saved a life is horrifying.

Hell I get lecturing him that "You didn't know for sure" but still instead of firing him. Figure out how he was right.

He recognized the situation for exactly what it was and realized that the victim was carrying an unloaded weapon. Instead of firing him why don't we promote him to detective and handle some cold cases seriously.

This actually lowers my respect for that police department. The whole argument is "We put these officers in the line of fire and expect them to make split second decisions" and that's why we shouldn't judge them harshly when it means needless death right?

Except this officer did make a split second decision, the after action report proved that his decision was the right one and that every single other officer that arrived on the scene made the wrong one.

So what this tells me is that the reality is more like "We put these officers in the line of fire and expect them to shoot you without even thinking about it"

Which is much different and scarier policy. To be fair I get arriving on the scene man with gun and shooting. But if there is already an officer on scene that isn't shooting and the victim hasn't shot at that officer then it's pretty obvious the victim isn't going to shoot.

If you're trained to make split second decisions then they wouldn't have shot either. after all why shoot at someone whose clearly not trying to shoot at you.

[SkullKing]

I agree with you, the more I think the worse this looks to me.

If bad cops were routinely fired than I could see this as an unfortunate consequence of being really strict with cop requirements. But so many bad copies keep their job.

and the guy demonstrated he had a usefull skill. It is wasteful to fire him.

[Estil]

It's exactly what I thought regarding that teacher who got fired for posting funny/silly pics of her students with duct taped mouths (one borrowed some from her and some playfully taped their mouths shut with it and she thought it was a eh, "Kodak moment"...it was not her doing or her idea whatsoever to tape their mouths shut) and all it took was one busybody snitch to report it to the local school board and they fired her (so much for tenure!!).

In both that case and this one, my main concern is that there are going to be many fine young people who would otherwise make great teachers/cops/whatever, they are going to take one look at incidents like this one and feel like it's not worth risking years or even decades worth of your life only for it all to go up in flames over one incident...and you didn't even do anything wrong! And that would be a real shame.

Not to mention the OP reminds me of the opening scene from Robocop 2...in both cases the cop in the OP and Robo did indeed disobey standard protocol. In both cases the only reason he did so was because...he didn't agree with it. In Robo's case, his partner was in danger and in the OP's case the cop saw that the guy with the gun was not really a bad person, just needed help. In both cases, they made a judgement call.

It's never any fun to lose your job over doing what you know to be morally/ethically right, but the fact is, jobs will come and go, but you gotta live with your self respect and conscience no matter what.

[mjr]

In both that case and this one, my main concern is that there are going to be many fine young people who would otherwise make great teachers/cops/whatever, they are going to take one look at incidents like this one and feel like it's not worth risking years or even decades worth of your life only for it all to go up in flames over one incident...and you didn't even do anything wrong! And that would be a real shame.

This is also the issue with regular people possibly running for office. It goes beyond having the ability to campaign (i.e. take time off work, etc), raise money against "the machine", and so forth. Running for political office can almost literally ruin your career and your life, if you run for the wrong office, run with the wrong party, and say/do the wrong thing. People look at what politicians go through, and say, "I would, but I don't want to go through that/put my family through that". And many of them who would run are good, honest, hardworking people who may have good ideas for the country.

[wolfie]

So the first cop on the scene had specialized training in dealing with the mentally ill, recognized that the person was mentally ill, and de-escalated the situation. Cops arriving later merely saw a guy with a gun, and killed him.

Why the hell is he fired FOR USING HIS SPECIALIZED TRAINING?

[jackfaire]

Why the hell is he fired FOR USING HIS SPECIALIZED TRAINING?

Because apparently Serve and Protect is a lie. So is "We train them to make split second decisions" both things said when asking cops "why did you shoot that clearly unarmed kid with an obviously toy gun

Which means that they aren't training their officers to make a decision they are training their officers to pull the trigger period.