Real life is not television
By Dave Brown
When police are forced to resort to deadly force, there are necessary consequences. This is Canada after all, and we would not tolerate the indiscriminate use of any level of force on the part of the people who are supposed to be there to protect us, let alone the highest level of force that it is possible for a police officer to employ. Trust me; no one takes this lightly.
On the other hand, it is about time we got rid of all those myths that have built up over the years on the use of force by police. Life is not television and this is not some Dirty Harry movie; this is real life.
In real life, if you pull a knife on the police, you will be shot. There are no alternatives. There is no Taser; no baton; no pepper spray; no intermediate force option in the world that would reliably protect an officer or bystanders from a knife attack in a dynamic situation. It is simple science the assailant is acting, and the police officer is reacting. Action always trumps reaction, and it has long been documented and understood that an assailant can travel a distance of over seven meters and stab a person in less time than it takes to react, draw and fire a sidearm.
So why not shoot for the arm or a leg as many people think would be possible? Well, we need to put this myth to bed once and for all. Sure, Olympic handgun target shooters at the absolute top of their game can put all ten shots into the 2.6 centimeter 10 ring of a paper target at 20 meters, but they have ten minutes to do this, not fractions of a second. Plus, their target is not moving
nor is it trying to kill them.
A bullet must necessarily follow some simple laws of physics as it speeds through the air at two times the speed of sound. The slightest misalignment of the sights on that handgun result in not only missing a small and moving portion of a target, it results in missing the target entirely. Unlike television, once that bullet is fired, it must hit something. That something might be another person; another officer; another vehicle two kilometers down the road with your mother/father/child/spouse/etc. in it.
Once that bullet is fired, no force on the face of the earth can bring it back again.
Police officers must shoot for the center-mass of the deadly threat; there is no other location that would be scientifically, morally or legally justified.
Police officers do not shoot to wound, nor do they shoot to kill. They shoot for only one purpose to stop. When they are forced to employ deadly force, they must do it in such a way that it stops the threat as quickly and efficiently as possible without putting themselves or anyone else in any greater danger.
One other reason that police officers cannot shoot for an arm or a leg is that it would have little effect anyway. Again, this is not television. In real life, when people get shot, they dont fly backwards like they were kicked by a horse. It is just not physically possible. In fact, in many cases, they dont even know they are shot, meaning they are still a threat to life.
One of the survival mechanisms of the human body has often been termed the fight or flight syndrome and this dictates that in high stress situations, all blood flow concentrates into the center-mass of the body. The body is preparing itself for battle by reducing blood flow to the extremities and also by introducing adrenalin into the bloodstream to act as painkiller. This simply means that a person could literally be shot in the arm or the leg and not feel a thing. They could still be a threat.
Ever hear stories of people in combat who have their arm or leg blown off and dont even know it until after the battle is over? This is why police officers are trained to shoot for center mass; any shot to an extremity would fail to stop a threat. With an edged weapon such as a knife, an assailant could easily travel seven meters before they even knew they were shot.
As for hitting them in the leg and bringing them down; even the best handgun shooters in the world couldnt consistently make a shot like that even if the target was perfectly stationary and not trying to kill them.
Police officers already have a difficult enough job. We should be necessarily examining their actions whenever they use force, but we should also be using facts to do so, not some myth or television mentality.
I did looked up some topics but all seemed lame/too short
Any help will be appreciated
