Good Samaritan With a Gun Shot by Cop in Colorado

[DittoHead]

If I'm at the scene of an active shooter situation, I'm not hunting the shooter down.  I'm hiding/covering my family.

If you aren't under an immediate threat you should probably just escape safely.

This is in line with my thinking. Police have no duty to protect me, and the reverse is certainly true. I'm not getting mixed up in someone else's trouble.

[MillCreek]

^^^This has really gotten me thinking. As a former paramedic, I had always planned on rendering aid to those that need it, in the aftermath of an event like this.  Of course, when I was a training officer, we always taught 'scene safety' to the students so they don't become another casualty.  Maybe the smart thing to do is unass the area of operations and let the paid professionals deal with it.  Hmmm.

[cordex]

I don't like the idea that if I pull a gun to defend myself that I run the risk of being mistaken for the bad guy and killed either by police or another armed citizen but I'm not sure what the solution is.  You guys must have a better grasp on how the police should respond to active shooter scenarios, so speaking as someone who could actually - on a very local level - suggest a change in policies for a couple of departments, how should I recommend they modify their training?

[Ron]

I suspect all the proper procedures and training are there already.

The perception of what is actually going down when in the heat of the moment is where the breakdown probably happens.

It was probably obvious to the cop in this story that shooting the guy with the AR was the right course of action based on his information, active shooter with rifle, officer down.

[dogmush]

It's a simple dichotomy:

Do we expect our law enforcement to attempt to arrest people alive, even at a risk to themselves, or do we expect our law enforcement to stop the situation with as little risk to themselves as possible.

We used to say of trials "Better 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man convicted", well the pre trial corollary is "better 100 cops shot at than one innocent man shot by police.".  Currently our law enforcement is unwilling to risk themselves in an effort to decrease the odds of not killing someone innocent.  This good Samaritan is just the latest in a long line of dead civilians because "officer safety".  There's no indication the cop even attempted to make a positive target ID, or take the guy alive.  He saw a gun and killed someone, with (as far as we can tell) no indication that the person he was shooting was a threat to anyone.  Perhaps I'm wrong and there's bodycam footage of the officer yelling to drop the gun and the citizen not dropping it, but I suspect if it existed, we'd have seen it by now.

There's no training to overcome the decision that your life is more important than everyone else, so you will initiate violence at a perceived threat.  Which is law enforcement 's current SOP.  Make no mistake, despite "Protect and Serve" on the cars when you interact with Law Enforcement, they have already decided their life is the most important thing, and will shoot you for perceived threats.

[Ben]

Perhaps I'm wrong and there's bodycam footage of the officer yelling to drop the gun and the citizen not dropping it, but I suspect if it existed, we'd have seen it by now.

That nothing has been released makes me think this is no different than Ashley Babbitt being killed. It indicates to me that the cop likely shot first and asked questions later.

The Ashley Babbitt shooter is still being fully protected and she is being called a terrorist. The cop shop in this story is calling the citizen a hero, so I wonder if they at least internally recognize there was a screw up and they are working their PR. Body cam footage would certainly be interesting to see.

[cordex]

It's a simple dichotomy:

  Those are the only two options of which you can conceive?

Do we expect our law enforcement to attempt to arrest people alive, even at a risk to themselves, or do we expect our law enforcement to stop the situation with as little risk to themselves as possible.

Arresting an active shooter alive is not of paramount importance to me personally.  In an active shooter scenario I want them to stop the threat as quickly as possible with the minimum risk to innocents.

This good Samaritan is just the latest in a long line of dead civilians because "officer safety".

It certainly happens, but - as with the pearl clutching claims from BLM about police killing innocent black people - it happens a whole lot less than ideologues would have you believe.

There's no indication the cop even attempted to make a positive target ID, or take the guy alive.  He saw a gun and killed someone, with (as far as we can tell) no indication that the person he was shooting was a threat to anyone.  Perhaps I'm wrong and there's bodycam footage of the officer yelling to drop the gun and the citizen not dropping it, but I suspect if it existed, we'd have seen it by now.

I haven't seen any video or reporting as to exactly what happened in this incident.  No matter the specifics the outcome sucked.  An innocent man was killed, and then an apparently heroic man who was willing to risk his life to stop the shooter was wrongly killed by someone who should have been there to help.  Bag of suck, no doubt.

That said, I'm not sure that making up stories out of whole cloth contributes much to the conversation.  Yes, maybe he saw a gun in the hands of a badgeless untermensch scum and started blasting.  Or maybe he saw the good guy standing over the dead cop while pointing the bad guy's rifle at the now dead bad guy and assumed that the dead bad guy was an innocent person who had just been shot and was trying to save that person's life.   Or maybe something completely different.

There's no training to overcome the decision that your life is more important than everyone else, so you will initiate violence at a perceived threat.  Which is law enforcement 's current SOP.  Make no mistake, despite "Protect and Serve" on the cars when you interact with Law Enforcement, they have already decided their life is the most important thing, and will shoot you for perceived threats.

In your opinion is there nothing to be done then? 

The departments which I interact with do train their officers to be more aggressive during an active shooter call.  The trade off as they see it is that the increased risk to innocents from police is overshadowed by the increased risk to innocents by allowing the situation to go on longer.  You can argue that they are wrong, but there is no free lunch.  In many active shooter scenarios, an attempt to arrest the shooter alive means a significantly greater chance not merely for dead cops (whether that matters or not), but more dead non-cops as well.  This scenario is definitely the outlier in that regard.

I do want to learn more about what actually happened because I think there are definitely lessons for me as someone without a badge or Kevlar who carries a gun every day.  Especially since I have family who relies on me.

[dogmush]

.....
In your opinion is there nothing to be done then? 

.....

In my opinion there is nothing that will be done, because the cops are pretty entrenched in their 1* mentality. 

What should be done (again IMO) is cops should realize, (and internalize)  that they have signed up for a job that entails risking their lives and persons, and it is their duty to make sure they don't harm someone they are sworn to protect, even if it means waiting and getting shot at (or shot).  I think that would require a huge paradigm shift in the culture of Law Enforcement in the US, and from my experience working with cops, there's no chance it will happen.

Cops like playing with their plate carriers, and M4s, and 5.11 pants and playing all military, but they missed the part where military folks all know that sometimes they die to accomplish the mission.  Being expendable is part of the gig, and while you hope not to be expended, sometimes it happens.  The "mission" for law enforcement is (or should be) foremost, preserving the lives of their fellow citizens.  If you buy it to accomplish that mission, you buy it.

But currently, the mission is to get the perp, and if innocents buy it to accomplish that mission so be it.  It's not just stuff like this, or Philando Castile, or that guy they capped while he was crawling down the hallway, it's basic culture.  NYPD shoots to slidelock damn near every time they pull a trigger.  What's their hit ratio?  Where do those bullets go? 

The departments which I interact with do train their officers to be more aggressive during an active shooter call.  The trade off as they see it is that the increased risk to innocents from police is overshadowed by the increased risk to innocents by allowing the situation to go on longer. 

The first part of that only works if you're good.  The SAS can be super aggressive during a door-kick, because they are good, and have good intel.  You don't get to be that aggressive if you are running in without a trained team and with no intel.  You can aggressively enter the active shooter area and make yourself known.  That is shown to help bad guys decide to cap themselves, but you can't be aggressive about shooting people with bad tactics and bad intel.  That's not acceptable, and the fact that some departments think it is shows they aren't as professional as they think they are.

The second part of that quote, about weighing the risk to innocents, isn't really the department's call.  It's the people being risked.  I think a growing number of the people being risked are starting to disagree with Law Enforcement's risk management decisions.

Not all cops are bad people, but Law Enforcement (in the US) is a culture that takes good people, and pretty efficiently turns them into bad cops.  What should be done?  I honestly don't know, but continuing as we have from about 1980 through 2019 is untenable.  Similarly just defunding departments and going all Lord of the Flies is a bad idea.

Dunno, but like society as a whole I have come to believe even if there was a solution that will avoid violence, folks are too entrenched in their sides to take it.

[kgbsquirrel]

+1 to Dogmush.

[Ben]

The first part of that only works if you're good.  The SAS can be super aggressive during a door-kick, because they are good, and have good intel.  You don't get to be that aggressive if you are running in without a trained team and with no intel.  You can aggressively enter the active shooter area and make yourself known.  That is shown to help bad guys decide to cap themselves, but you can't be aggressive about shooting people with bad tactics and bad intel.  That's not acceptable, and the fact that some departments think it is shows they aren't as professional as they think they are.

I think the above is definitely a point for discussion. The responding LE agency can have teams that are top notch trained. That training only helps if those trained teams are the ones who respond. I have no knowledge, but assume that when a call like the OP goes out, while a trained team may be dispatched, it's likely the closest cops to the scene will be there first, whether they have advanced training or not, and whether the full current situation has been communicated to them or not.

Sometimes I wonder how much of this, currently at least, can be attributed to Scott Peterson and Parkland. Maybe upon further reflection, he wasn't the coward everyone made him out to be. Much of it depends on just who is dead at the end.

[Hawkmoon]

Perhaps I'm wrong and there's bodycam footage of the officer yelling to drop the gun and the citizen not dropping it, but I suspect if it existed, we'd have seen it by now.

Even if he did yell out to drop the gun, the good Samaritan had just fired a handgun without ear protection. More than likely his hearing was compromised.

[Hawkmoon]

It certainly happens, but - as with the pearl clutching claims from BLM about police killing innocent black people - it happens a whole lot less than ideologues would have you believe.

Assuming -- hypothetically -- that cops killing innocents happens "a whole lot" less than idealogues believe, that still leaves us that some happen. How many innocent people killed by the police do you think is an acceptable number?

[Hawkmoon]

The second part of that quote, about weighing the risk to innocents, isn't really the department's call.  It's the people being risked.  I think a growing number of the people being risked are starting to disagree with Law Enforcement's risk management decisions.

Not all cops are bad people, but Law Enforcement (in the US) is a culture that takes good people, and pretty efficiently turns them into bad cops.  What should be done?  I honestly don't know, but continuing as we have from about 1980 through 2019 is untenable.  Similarly just defunding departments and going all Lord of the Flies is a bad idea.

Dunno, but like society as a whole I have come to believe even if there was a solution that will avoid violence, folks are too entrenched in their sides to take it.

IMHO, a good start would be to absolutely prohibit any police academy instructor or PD training officer from ever saying or even implying that "The first priority is that I get to go home at the end of my shift." Because that's the mindset that creates cops who are willing to accept "collateral damage" (death of innocents) as all in a day's work. This ties right in with your analysis -- the current crop of police in general aren't willing to accept that by being the "thin blue line" it's their job to put themselves at risk in oder to protect the lives of the people who pay their salaries.

[Hawkmoon]

Sometimes I wonder how much of this, currently at least, can be attributed to Scott Peterson and Parkland. Maybe upon further reflection, he wasn't the coward everyone made him out to be. Much of it depends on just who is dead at the end.

Scott Peterson was very definitely a coward. So were the other officers from his department.

If you remember, nobody from the Sheriff's Office made a move to enter the building until after officers from the adjoining jurisdiction ran past them and into the building.

[just Warren]

So the question is what can be done to stop friendly fire incidents?

How about we ask of any military force of any type in any time period that engaged in combat operations that avoided it how they managed not to have blue-on-blue incidents?

Then take what is applicable to street-level situations as we have here and build from there.

[dogmush]

Don't shoot until PID even if taking incoming fire is one of the most common  ROE's.  Try telling a big city PD that.

[Hawkmoon]

Don't shoot until PID even if taking incoming fire is one of the most common  ROE's.  Try telling a big city PD that.

Sounds a lot like something out of the NRA course guides. Something about "Know your target and what is beyond. Be absolutely sure you have identified your target beyond any doubt. Equally important, be aware of the area beyond your target. This means observing your prospective area of fire before you shoot. Never fire in a direction in which there are people or any other potential for mishap. Think first. Shoot second."

Colonel Cooper said the same thing. "Be sure of your target and what lies beyond it."

[cordex]

Cops like playing with their plate carriers, and M4s, and 5.11 pants and playing all military, but they missed the part where military folks all know that sometimes they die to accomplish the mission.  Being expendable is part of the gig, and while you hope not to be expended, sometimes it happens.  The "mission" for law enforcement is (or should be) foremost, preserving the lives of their fellow citizens.  If you buy it to accomplish that mission, you buy it.

I don't completely disagree.  To nitpick, I think ensuring public safety should be very important, but not their ultimate mission.  If it were they'd never get into a car chase, among other things, because car crashes are dangerous and can kill innocent people.  However, if they make it policy to never get in car chases, then criminals are free to rape, rob, and murder so long as they have access to a car.  You seem to be indicating that in your opinion the acceptable risk of police action should be zero, without being willing to recognize the not inconsiderable risks of police inaction ... which is the inevitable result of setting acceptable risk to zero.

The first part of that only works if you're good.  The SAS can be super aggressive during a door-kick, because they are good, and have good intel.  You don't get to be that aggressive if you are running in without a trained team and with no intel.  You can aggressively enter the active shooter area and make yourself known.  That is shown to help bad guys decide to cap themselves, but you can't be aggressive about shooting people with bad tactics and bad intel.  That's not acceptable, and the fact that some departments think it is shows they aren't as professional as they think they are.

Eh, good as they are, and good as their intel is the SAS are no strangers to collateral damage.  Nor are the US military, strict ROE notwithstanding.

When it comes to how to handle an active shooter I don't think there is a perfect universal solution, and that is true regardless of whether cops have the temerity to value their own lives or not.  Everything has consequences, and while you think you can simplify the math of police enforcement to arrive at a perfect outcome by setting the value of police life to zero, it's rarely that simple.  Especially in the case of an active shooter.  Unfortunately, the very decisions that would have served to absolutely prevent the shooting of Johnny Hurley would also likely result in more dead people at any mass shooting not stopped by a passing hero.

The second part of that quote, about weighing the risk to innocents, isn't really the department's call.  It's the people being risked.  I think a growing number of the people being risked are starting to disagree with Law Enforcement's risk management decisions.

They don't make these decisions in a vacuum.  With the likely exception of federal cops, Americans have a relatively large amount of say in police procedure, both formally (through directly voting for CLEOs directly or directly voting for the people in charge of appointing the CLEOs) and informally (through driving negative publicity for both real and imagined abuses of power by police).  That results in some departments having very strict rules about vehicular pursuits, while neighboring departments have very lax rules.  On the informal side, what I've seen when it comes to police response to active shooter incidents is almost universally a frustration that they don't respond more quickly or aggressively.  My observation is that changes in police procedure regularly occur in direct response to public opinion - both for the better, and for the worse.

Of course here at APS, if they are less aggressive, they are cowards who don't understand that their lives are expendable and if they are more aggressive, then they are selfish cowards who don't understand that their lives are expendable.

I absolutely hate that Johnny Hurley was killed.  I respect what he is reported to have done and wish that the cop had acted differently so that he would have been able to go home to .  It is entirely possible that his death was due to cowardice, a bad cop, bad cop culture, evil motives, heartless disregard, or whatever else.  My crystal ball is still in the shop, so I'll have to defer to yours.  That said, it is not impossible to imagine a scenario where the officer who shot Hurley was acting in good faith to preserve innocent life, making rational, considered decisions based on imperfect information and still end up doing the wrong thing.

[cordex]

Assuming -- hypothetically -- that cops killing innocents happens "a whole lot" less than idealogues believe, that still leaves us that some happen. How many innocent people killed by the police do you think is an acceptable number?

Fewer.

[MechAg94]

It certainly isn't all cops.  There was that recent incident in Florida where a couple of kids got hold of guns and decided to play Grand Theft Auto.  The officers seemed very reluctant to shoot the kids, but finally did shoot one.  Also, they didn't just start shooting immediately at whatever was a threat.  That doesn't seem to be universal behavior at least.

Probably the biggest concern for me is the way departments go out of their way to protect officers that screw up and automatically try to keeps things out of the news.  If it was another armed citizen who did this, I believe he would have been arrested and his name plastered all over these news stories.  IMO, one of the best ways to correct this behavior and training issues is to prosecute the cops who deserve it.  They may not always get a guilty verdict, but that puts all the evidence on the table and gets the attention of the police trainers around the country. 

I wish someone hadn't brought up the kids who was shot while crawling toward the police after they told him to do so.  Gets me upset all over again. 

[Ben]

I wish someone hadn't brought up the kids who was shot while crawling toward the police after they told him to do so.  Gets me upset all over again.

Yes, that was one of the worst cases I have ever seen. IIRC, the cop either got away scot free or else just a wrist slap, and if I further recall correctly, he had a history of itchy trigger finger / "I am the law" mentality.

[MechAg94]

Yes, that was one of the worst cases I have ever seen. IIRC, the cop either got away scot free or else just a wrist slap, and if I further recall correctly, he had a history of itchy trigger finger / "I am the law" mentality.

The officer who fired the shot was found not guilty at trial.  The media was making a big deal about a Punisher logo on his AR dust cover.

I just remember the excuse was a moved his hand toward his waist in an effort to crawl toward the officers as ordered.  No gun or weapon was ever seen, just the hand movement. 

[Cliffh]

IMHO, a good start would be to absolutely prohibit any police academy instructor or PD training officer from ever saying or even implying that "The first priority is that I get to go home at the end of my shift." Because that's the mindset that creates cops who are willing to accept "collateral damage" (death of innocents) as all in a day's work. This ties right in with your analysis -- the current crop of police in general aren't willing to accept that by being the "thin blue line" it's their job to put themselves at risk in oder to protect the lives of the people who pay their salaries.

That's exactly what I've been thinking since I started reading this thread.

[Ben]

Interesting tangent: A short James Yeager video I coincidentally ran across today. Yeah, I know, but people like John Lovell will tell you pretty much the same thing, and I bet old-timers like Clint Smith, and maybe Colonel Cooper, were he still alive to see today's society, would too.

0:20 - Yeager talks about a youtube commenter who said his CCW instructor told him to mind his own business in an active shooter situation. At 2:05, Yeager tells armed citizens to get involved.

I bring this up not to start a James Yeager debate, but wonder how many people, like the dead armed citizen in the OP, might have trained with the philosophy that you "protect the innocent". I give Yeager credit for, at the end of the video, saying, "You have to do what you can live with."

Thinking about "what I could live with" in the OP situation, I might be inclined to follow Dogmush's advice earlier to shoot the bad guy and get out of Dodge. Post-shooting legal ramifications not withstanding.

https://youtu.be/DxNS6CuzYbw

NSFW language in the video, of course. 

[MechAg94]

I would recommend moving a distance away and calling 911.  I really doubt you would face legal issues if you just said you didn't feel safe staying.  That happens a lot with self defense stories I hear about.  If they have to track you down, I don't know what would happen.

Other possible negatives:
1.  There may be wounded people who need help.  Might be different for different people.
2.  Depending on the location, you may not want to leave the shooters gun laying around.   Not saying you need to pick it up, but sometimes evidence disappears. 

Only other option I can think of is to move a ways away within site of the shooter, holster your gun, and find a quiet spot to sit and watch where you don't appear to be a threat.  Once the police show up in force and feel they are in control, you can contact them.

Of course, all this assumes you will have the time and freedom to do something.