@Smokin Joe
@Right_in_Virginia
@verga
Please. That video is absolutely TERRIBLE in this context. Complete and utter BS. Let's quickly examine why:
1. That video shows a series of surprise attacks where officers aren't even aware the suspect has a knife, except in one instance where the officer already has their sidearm drawn.
2. That video uses suspects who, in some cases, are frickin' trained in speed knife attacks.
3. Did you see that kid? He had no idea what he was doing with that knife. He looked like the youtube kid trying to be Darth Maul with a fake lightsaber.
4. Do you really think those officers walked up to that scene and didn't already have their sidearms drawn? They would have even had time for one of them to draw a taser instead, like in the second video I posted. Some officers with guns, one with a taser, who deploys.
So, in summary, this kid wasn't going to knife ANYONE without adequate time to react. For chrissakes, he was out there with other students casually standing around him in a circle, just chillin' an waiting to see how it unfolded.
If this kid posed a real threat like the TRAINED knife wielders in that video, there would be several bloody bodies on the ground already.
He was spastically and ineffectively posturing with his knives. Period. I would have tased the kid or talked him down. I'm brave enough to know when NOT to discharge my firearm. The officer who shot this kid is a coward, plain and simple.
You keep saying 'trained attacker", but I have seen frenzied attacks on people which covered a lot of ground, fast, be that just anger or enhanced by chemicals. Those 'amateurs' can be effective, too. One of the problems an officer has is that they can't just judge a book by its cover, you don't know what that person knows, and even though their actions will betray that to some extent, that can be misleading.
As for this kid, I wasn't there. I didn't see that kid and get a sense of what was going on in his head.
But my point was that to get in Tazer range, the officer has to be within that envelope of susceptibility to a knife attack.
If you caught my previous sarcastic remarks about "shooting the knife out of the kid's hand", you might understand that my comments were aimed at the unrealistic expectations of the teevee watching public, fattened on Hollywood.
I'm glad you the type who would have risked your life to avoid shooting a kid who was likely losing it, emotionally. Getting shot was likely the last thing that kid 'needed'.
I'll grant we need more out there who have the guts to do that, and even more we need school teachers and administrators with the guts to stop the s**t before it reaches the point it did with this kid. When I was in school, it is likely that the school administrators would have dealt with the situation quite differently.
For starters, given the standoff, the other kids would have been removed from the area. Then, they would have tried to talk him down, while maintaining enough distance at first, and usually three or so of the male faculty would have been involved, spread around that circle.
An assessment of the abilities and mental state of the kid is something I am not in a position to render. He may even have been trying to commit suicide by cop, in which case, that was thwarted.
I am concerned that the officer took the shot if there were other kids in the background if there was no imminent threat, but if there was no imminent threat, why shoot at all?
