Question-

You’re a cop in rural Eastern Kentucky. Several officers went to serve a domestic violence related warrant on a subject at a residence. He strikes the officers and a K9 as they are getting out of their vehicles and some while they are still in the vehicle with extremely accurate rifle fire. The next wave of responders he incapacitated but didn’t kill immediately, presumably as bait to lure in others in an attempted rescue.

Return fire is unsuccessful because he is constantly shooting several rooms deep in the house and is constantly moving. The house is fully barricaded, with man traps at virtually every entry point. He is in the house alone. He shoots a rifle until it gets too hot to handle. He drops it and grabs another and lays down nearly constant rifle fire.

Your closest armored vehicle is an hour and a half away. You may start seeing SWAT guys in the next hour. None of the victims that are critically wounded have an hour, and it’s unclear if the initial responding officers are alive or dead. It’s nearly impossible to keep civilians out of the scene and the suspect is accurately shooting everything that moves.

What do you do to stop the killing and dying?

Are we talking Harlan? Could always send in Raylan, he seemed to get down there from Lexington pretty quick.

How about a stick of dynamite from a local mine, light up a couple, toss them on the front and rear porch and boom, problem solved..

Maybe do the Gauntlet thing with all the Vegas police lighting the house up in a constant barrage of fire until the home collapses...

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
What do you do to stop the killing and dying?

Good scenario and question.
The (usual) standard is what is “objectively reasonable,” and that varies with the situation.

I still remember being at the range with a trainee when the “killdozer” was rampaging through Granby, Colorado. Being somewhat a student of military history, my immediate thought as soon as I started hearing details was mega Molotov cocktail: The officer on top of the vehicle should have had a 5-gallon can of gasoline and something like a flaming arrow (or small “cocktail” in a glass bottle) to ignite it from afar after getting off the vehicle. I don’t know enough about the construction of the ’dozer to know if that would have been effective, but I strongly suspect that it would have been.