The Annoyed Man wrote: ↑Wed Feb 14, 2024 5:15 pm This video is deeply disturbing…
More comments on coming the door with a gun in your hand…
So many things that disturbed me watching this cringe -worthy event unfold...The Annoyed Man wrote: ↑Wed Feb 14, 2024 5:15 pm This video is deeply disturbing…
More comments on coming the door with a gun in your hand…
1. Judgment. Just wow. I'm not an LEO, and I wasn't there in these two officer's shoes. But tactical blunders as well as decision making that make me question the training program of HCSO in general, or at least with these two officers. Again, I wasn't there, and from the body cam footage WE don't know the demeanor or posture of the person approaching the door. She may have presented as an "objectively reasonable" threat to the officers, which may fully justify the use of deadly force. However, just as arguably the mere presence of a handgun in the hands of an unknown contact from within the apartment, at least in my mind, WOULDN'T immediately justify THREE mag dumps without a better articulation of an Immediate Necessity.
Some tactics used seemed sound, such as backing away from the door waiting for a response, & the covering officer using the stairs to get a lower & better vantage point to observe thru the open window, and once the shooting started the covering officer stepped forward to mitigate shooting right past her partner's head.
Buffoonery: Blond officer left her pistol -mounted light on while waiting for the occupants to answer the door highlighting her position, & used her pistol light to peek inside. At one point, she seems to lose situational awareness and leans down to peek under the window blinds, MASKING the covering officer's observation & sector of fire.
2. Panic Button. In Special Forces, we weren't averse to fully automatic fire WHEN IT MADE SENSE. However, every threat or situation had to be evaluated in a split second & the appropriate response meted out. From an outside-of-LEO observer, there seems to have been a generation of LEO that was institutionalized to dump a magazine at a threat until the threat was 'neutralized'; I would like to believe the 'mag dump' mentality has gone away, but obviously not.
I agree that we need to continue engaging WITH ACCURATE FIRE until the threat stops doing whatever gave us justification to use deadly force, but once our brains catch up & process that the justification has elapsed WE, as civilians, are expected to stop our application of deadly force. Handgun terminal ballistics aren't stellar, so multiple rounds may often be necessary, AND our brains need time to process the incoming data to recognize that its time to stop engaging. That data is also being filtered via tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, & time dilation. I preceded with that to provide a bit of grace to these two officers firing multiple times at what THEY perceived as an imminent threat. ((Not that I agree with their decision making, but they're also judged on what they reasonably perceived & NOT on perfect 20/20 hindsight)).
But two officers dumping an entire magazine, with one officer reloading & dumping a second magazine, at 10'? (10' was the distance given in the video; not sure where he got that, but till something more official is released I'll go with that for discussion's sake)) I say their tactics were flawed, which set them up for a very hasty judgment, then panic response took over.
I'll refer to the first body cam footage as the 'covering officer', as it was the other officer that approached & knocked on the door & was closest to the window. It appears to me that the both officers began firing nearly simultaneously, but without going frame by frame it seems the covering officer may have fired first. ((Not sure which officer yelled at the occupants, but almost simultaneously with that yell the guns began blazing at the woman inside the apartment; no time for compliance. But, again, we don't get to see what the officer or officers saw thru the open window; there may not have been time to wait for compliance IF she was actually presenting a deadly threat)). The covering officer dumped an entire magazine; reloaded, (forgetting to let the slide go forward...); makes a radio call of "Shots fired"; releases the slide; then appears to have dumped a second magazine before reloading again. Her first mag dump may have been "objectively reasonable" if she believed there was a deadly force justification (not saying she had justification for dumping an entire mag thru an apartment window, just that it could be argued she had a reasonable belief deadly force was immediately necessary)). However, what did she observe between mag changes that she can articulate was objectively reasonable to dump yet another magazine into the apartment window??
3. Atrocious Handgun Skills. If the video is correct, the woman inside the apartment was at a distance of about 10', and by the Grace of God was ONLY STRUCK 5x with three mag dumps by the officers. It appears the officers were carrying Glock 17's, so that was approx 50 rounds fired. Even using Common Core Math skills, that's an unfathomable hit:miss ratio at 10'. Even if it's found that the use of force was somehow justified, that's nearly a complete box of ammunition that went somewhere other than the intended target. How many rounds went through the neighbor's apartment??
As far as the other officer, watch closely how her support side thumb wraps around the back of the slide MORE THAN ONCE as she dumps her mag thru the apartment window... Watching the grip on the gun shift with each shot fired made me cringe, which also may explain why the occupant was only hit 5x. She grabs the baseplate of the spare magazine like a monkey grabbing a shiny object thru a bottle neck ((loss of fine motor skills, yes it's a thing, but can also be mitigated to an extent by conditioning the neural pathways for smooth technique)). I can't tell clearly from the video, but it appears that she also didn't release the slide after inserting the spare magazine. The audio sounds as if she doesn't close her slide until they've retreated all the way down to the grass, where the audio has a distinct sound like a slide closing while she's making a radio call for backup ((if this was the case, then she had an inoperable gun to cover her partner's movement down the stairs IF the occupant had been shooting back)). This officer stopped engaging after her first mag dump. What she observed & how she made her decisions would be judged somewhat independent from the covering officer, as each may have processed different data points from their vantage points.
Hopefully the Harris County Sheriff's Dept will be more transparent than Houston P.D.' s investigation of the botched Harding Street 'raid'.