I thought the video was essentially useless. Too far away and poorly lit to determine anything. And I saw what appears to be a marked unit backed into the driveway beside the house. If so, where was the driver of that unit?
Could it be a bad shoot? Possibly. It was certainly sketchy, circumstances wise. I want to have more info before I judge anyone.
There is the one almost universal law enforcement truth that factors into many of these tragic events; Dammed if you do, damned if you don't.

Because the media is using the Swatting term, are just assuming it was an actual Swat team with the long guns? As Chongo stated, Swat doesn’t appear out of thin air.

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
That video is spectacularly shitty.

Having a rifle gives one distance. Having distance gives one time. I don’t know what kind of training that agency has before an officer can carry a rifle (I HIGHLY doubt that was a SWAT officer, until otherwise proven) but I know that scenario violates the training I’ve had to carry a patrol rifle.

We specifically train with the naked eye in low light at distance with our rifles, with role players at the end of the range with the objective of identifying whether they are presenting weapons in scenarios or not. To show us to be damn sure before we pull that trigger. We are not left confused about what will happen to us if we shoot without being sure, at distance with a rifle.

Thanks, Chongo. You're one of the LEO's I like to hear from about stuff like this.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
I thought the video was essentially useless.

Watch it a few more times. You're seeing what the cops saw. /shrug

Sunk your own argument.

I may be sinking but still have my life preserver on. There are two cops in the body cam video. Looks like one shot and the other did not. Were they the only ones on scene? Who drove the unit up beside the house? Did they drive right up to the house (if they did, way stupid) and then run across the street? Again, I want to know more.

I listened to the 911 call.

Then I thought, what would "radio traffic" sound like, and what would be the "heat of the moment" and thought processes in the minds of the officers and the guy in the house?

Officers are hearing that the "suspect" has killed one person, has a woman and a child in a closet with a gun trained on them and has claimed to have poured gasoline in the area and is threatening to set fire, and that if cops are coming he is not going to put the gun down.

Now, the other side. A guy in his house who has no fucking idea that all that other shit is going down, and comes out to the commotion of people yelling and lights in his eyes, and likely he does not read the SIGforum, so he does not have all the super intelligent speed of light processes of what the fuck to do.


Then we add the last 8 years of the Obama American hating mindset, BLM and all the rest of the anti-cop/anti-gun/anti-fill-in-th-blank bullshit, and we have a perfect storm.

Lots of cops killed and ambushed.

And I am about as fucking sick and tired as anyone can be about people getting their little girl panties in a wad over cops wanting to go home.

Nobody wants to die on the job. No GI (and I was one early on, AC-130 gunship Illuminator Operator and I wanted to fucking go home after every mission, so Fuck Me.) no cop, no EMT or Fireman, and certainly, no kid in the convenience store, nor the little old lady selling booze in the liquor store or the hooker on a street corner.

We have a problem because bad people do bad shit, and our society makes excuses for them, while excoriating those on the edge that are there because "We the People...." handed off the protection and defense of our lives and our living spaces to other agencies.

And then we want to second guess and dissect and analyze in the comfort of non-stressful and all-the-time-in-the-world environments and then summarily judge and convict them.

While we opine and boast that we would waste a motherfucker in a New York minute of they pose any threat in most any situation.

The reason this happened at all is because a scumbag made a call that was as evil as evil can be.

Direct all your hatred there, first.

Then, when the smoke clears, let the investigation happen to bring out the truth.

We may or may not like the findings, nor the outcome. Myself included.

The only thing I can takeaway from the video (in the swiftness that it occurred) is that the guy on the porch had his hands down and then raised them, and it is very possible that it could have appeared that he was raising his hands to present fire. (in light of the above 911 call and possible advisement from the dispatcher(s)) But the video is so very poor.

quote:

Originally posted by Edmond:

quote:

Originally posted by Fenris:
Can someone explain to me why the RoE for soldiers in a combat zone facing foreign enemies are more restrictive than the RoE for domestic police facing innocent citizens?

There were plenty of instances where we could've killed someone and for it to be justified. Such as a kid running around with a toy AK. But we didn't shoot him. We also didn't shoot the Afghan guard when we came near the compound he was guarding at night despite the fact that he leveled his AK at us.

Funny how service members overseas can lack blood lust fighting a war but it seems cops here crave it.

It's the same defense: I feared for my safety.

Worse is that some people will defend that mentality no matter what.

yes, everyday I wake up hoping to murder innocent citizens. I'm going to write "murder someone" on my daily list of ten things I have to accomplish since we cops crave violence. You sir, are an asshole! An epic douchebag. That being said I hope you never find yourself in a self defence situation so you don't have to say what everyone always says... "I feared for my safety."

quote:

Originally posted by gw3971: That being said I hope you never find yourself in a self defence situation so you don't have to say what everyone always says... "I feared for my safety."

How would you rate the chances of a non-LEO avoiding immediate arrest, prosecution and conviction in a case of shooting an unarmed person across a street because "he reached for his waistband and I feared for my safety"?

quote:

Originally posted by Russ59:
Because the media is using the Swatting term, are just assuming it was an actual Swat team with the long guns? As Chongo stated, Swat doesn’t appear out of thin air.

Does that make the fellow on the porch less dead?

quote:

Originally posted by MNSIG:

quote:

Originally posted by gw3971: That being said I hope you never find yourself in a self defence situation so you don't have to say what everyone always says... "I feared for my safety."

How would you rate the chances of a non-LEO avoiding immediate arrest, prosecution and conviction in a case of shooting an unarmed person across a street because "he reached for his waistband and I feared for my safety"?

Good point. Curious, if I was a criminal perp inside, would I just open the door and walk outside with a gun tucked in my belt?

For those who say the officer made a tough, but correct choice, assume that was your son, brother, or friend/neighbor dead on the porch.

I have little confidence the official investigation will be free from bias. Too many self serving agendas in the mix.

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster: Curious, if I was a criminal perp inside, would I just open the door and walk outside with a gun tucked in my belt?

Of course not. That's where judgement beyond tunnel vision SHOULD come in. Looking at the overall scenario and evaluating "does this make sense?" Yes, it needs to happen quickly sometimes. At arm's length it needs to happen very quickly. Across the street, much less quickly.

Think of a pilot losing an engine on takeoff. He needs to decide damn fast if he is going to abort the take off, try to take off with one engine out and re-asses, or punch out. If the same thing happens at altitude, there's a heck of a lot more time. The USAF or USN would probably take a dim view of a pilot ejecting and losing a plane because he saw a warning light at 40,000 feet.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Could it be a bad shoot? Possibly.

Possibly? Ugh. Seriously, what is the malfunction with some of you? Here, let me help y'all out. When an innocent, unarmed man is shot dead on his own front porch by a bunch of incompetent cowboys, it's a "bad shoot." Everyday and twice on Sunday.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:
I would very much like the world to get some fucking control over spoofed phone numbers.

And should the FCC move to do this, the telemarketing companies will launch an all-out effort to oppose it. The "government can do no good" crowd will rally behind that effort, choosing to believe the telemarketing industry's fake news over that of people who actually understand how such things work. The bought-and-paid-for politicians will stonewall any legislative effort. Nothing will happen.

We just saw it happen with another aspect of telecommunications.

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:
Ut Oh, I got an email that Russia is going to nuke us. Better nuke them first!!! It must be from them, it says Vladimir@wererussiansforreal.ru in the "from:" field.

That can be fixed, too. Would you care to take a wild-ass guess at what industry is the biggest roadblock to fixing the email problem? Give you three guesses.

no clue what you're talking about.

quote:

Originally posted by Exodus:

quote:

Originally posted by mbinky:
Spoofed phone numbers drive me nuts also, but are there any legitimate uses for them? I can't think of any.

SOP for telemarketing and third party support companies. They spoof the number to appear to be from the company they represent. One call center may represent multiple companies. It is regulated, but not enforced.

Agreed. It's the enforcement that I'd like to see. They lost total control of this with local number portability. Now a number from outside the LATA can exist within the borders of it and be a source from within the local trunking. It's a mess.

Identity is everything and we live for a time, in a land where there is little identity verification control, and what is, is rather more complex than the average Joe is ready to undertake (digital certificates for email for example).

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
I’ve not read in depth yet on this. One question I have, was that actually a SWAT officer, or just an officer with a rifle?

SWAT teams don’t just materialize from thin air. It would be routine to have patrol officers respond, set up a perimeter and organize a emergency entry team (in case they heard shots fired inside), while trying to make contact with the residents. SWAT here isn’t even going to get a phone call until a situation is confirmed by a supervisor on scene, and even then it’s going to be another half hour before anything is organized.

Until then, it’s wait and watch, unless someone gets the resident on the phone.

I trust about 10% of what comes over the radio from dispatch. This is a good example of why. I’ve never gone on a hostage or barricade call that was anything like how it was initially dispatched. ‘Trus but verify’ isn’t even close. ‘Assume they are full of shit and go figure it out, cautiously’ is more like it.

Now see this is the way officers need to think and just maybe innocent people wouldn't have to worry about encounters with the police. I applaud you for being one of the good ones.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
I may be sinking but still have my life preserver on. There are two cops in the body cam video. Looks like one shot and the other did not. Were they the only ones on scene? Who drove the unit up beside the house? Did they drive right up to the house (if they did, way stupid) and then run across the street? Again, I want to know more.

The video appears to be 40ish yards, maybe more. The cops are FAR away from the innocent man poking his head out the door to see what all the commotion is across the street. This is why the video is shit.

I'm a decent shot and can draw pretty darn quickly. There is zero chance I could hit one of those cops behind cover with long guns and optics trained on me. ZERO, and I won my division for last two matches I entered.

The police were in no danger, even if he did have a concealed pistol. Even in bright daylight, I'd have trouble drawing a getting a shot to hit someone 70% or more covered by a car at 40+ yds. At night with a spot light on me, the best I could do is empty mag in direction of light.

Here's an experiment for anyone who wants to try. You will need - Nerf gun, 1,000 lumen or brighter flashlight, and three friends/family members.. At night go in your front yard. Position your three family members behind cars and have one blind you with the light. Then try to take a site picture with your Nerf gun.

You will find it nearly impossible to see your targets.

This guy was no danger even if he did have a gun. Bad shoot, period.

Want further evidence? Only one cop pulled the trigger. What is common in these type of shootings? Usually all of the cops feel like they are in danger and all open fire simultaneously.

At the beginning of the video what I hear is:

"Get in" (?)

"Walk this way. Walk this..."

Then he raises his hands to upper chest level. And the shot is taken.

Is that it?

And why is a patrol car parked on the right side of the house? If that's a patrol car.

quote:

Originally posted by Flashlightboy:
Man you are whipped into a frenzy over an extremely hazy and grainy cam that neither shows nor tells.........

Well, to be accurate it is the unconditional belief that this was good work by law enforcement displayed by certain members that has me spun up, not the video itself but I get your point and you are correct. Based on the information that is available as bad as it may be, to not admit that the shooting may be at least questionable puts people in the "us vs them civilians" camp and for some reason it struck a nerve.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Could it be a bad shoot? Possibly.

Possibly? Ugh. Seriously, what is the malfunction with some of you? Here, let me help y'all out. When an innocent, unarmed man is shot dead on his own front porch by a bunch of incompetent cowboys, it's a "bad shoot." Everyday and twice on Sunday.

My thoughts exactly when I read that....”bad shoot.” Yeah, ask the guy who came out on his porch to find out why Papa Johns was delivering pizzas with blue and white lights on their cars if it was a “bad shoot.”

Just that language alone .... “bad shoot”... is insulting to what happened to this guy.

Hopefully, this “bad cop” will get a “good prosecution” and then a “good prison sentence”. Maybe then, we can stop attracting all of the “good shoot” enthusiast to the police force.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
You're seeing what the cops saw.

Based on the views expressed in the early posts here, I was surprised to learn that there is evidently no better video than what I was able to view and that no one asked that question before I did because, no, that video doesn’t show what the police saw.

In this day of ubiquitous still and video cameras on everyone’s smart phones, it’s amazing to me that the fact of poor digital photographic quality isn’t universally recognized.
This issue has been raised and addressed several times by the Force Science Institute (and possibly others) since the proliferation of body cameras. Such cameras do not produce high definition images, partly because the amount of data they’re collecting is already overwhelming the administrative capacity of some agencies to store and manage it all.

More important, though, such cameras have very wide angle coverage to help ensure they capture as much of the view at very close distances as possible where most police interactions occur. That in turn means that objects at farther distances become very small and “grainy” very quickly as the distance increases. They also distort the perspective and make it seem that distant objects are much farther away than they actually are.

Wide angle photographic lenses do not replicate the views we see with our eyes, especially under low light conditions. I have any number of wide angle images on my computer that provide far less visual detail than I could see when I exposed them, and they are still images that were taken with a camera and lenses that are of much higher quality than typical police body cameras.

I’m not defending the officers’ actions, but unless someone can point to evidence that I haven’t seen thus far, I must withhold some judgment for the moment. For example, the photographic part of the video is very poor, but the audio is pretty clear, and I’m not hearing what some posters here claim to have heard.

quote:

Originally posted by jehzsa:
At the beginning of the video what I hear is:

"Get in" (?)

"Walk this way. Walk this..."

Then he raises his hands to upper chest level. And the shot is taken.

Is that it?

The cop was speaking hick.

It was "show your hands", "walk this way", "shit he can't hear me" BOOM

The man was following his instructions albeit delayed from trying to process all the confusion.

The shooter needs to spend the next 60 in a super max with the city, county, local, paying out a mega jackpot and the spoof caller needs to be beaten to death as this wasn't his first rodeo.

He will do it again and again.