Bill May Forbid Cops From Shooting to Kill

hey, if a person is aiming for an arm or leg are they not more likely to hit a torso?

This is a ridiculous law; people who are shot in the arm of leg can still fire back. Also, it is extremely unrealistic to tell an officer to shoot someone who is firing in the arm of leg from forty feet away in a dark alley or project courtyard.

Sorry for the typos. I meant to say that it is extremely unrealistic to tell an officer to aim at someone's arm or leg from forty feet way in a dark alley or project courtyard. Also, the guy firing at the police might be running, which makes it all the more difficult to hit a precise part of his body.

This bill is ridiculous, and it will never pass. It addresses a real problem in an entirely insane way. Why don't we enact laws requiring stricter review of police shootings and start indicting cops for manslaughter in cases like Sean Bell.

Let's be honest, if you have a gun, and someone is shooting at you, you shoot to kill, cops or no cops. No training will change that, and that isn't the problem. The problem is cops shooting unarmed citizens or armed citizens who could be disarmed with less than lethal force. Start treating cops who shoot unarmed civilians as criminals, hold them accountable to already existing laws, and let them blow the head off real criminals with real intent to kill.

I agree, but this bill is necessary to prosecute officers that use excessive force. Cases like Sean Bell have gone to trial but the officers have been found not guilty because they were following the law which called for "use of deadly force" in those situations. Cops usually got off because they were following those guidelines but this will change those guidelines.

Right, but the way in which the bill is worded means that the PBA and news outlets (and apparently Biden) will talk about it as a "John Wayne Bill," meaning it will never pass. It should be re-written in a less attackable form.

Let me make it real simple for everyone this isn't about what body parts the cops are shooting at, this is about how many times should an officer shoot a person to stop them from being a danger to others. Even if officers shot someone 41 times in just their legs and arms it would still be a problem because that is EXCESSIVE.

It's not where they are shooting but how many times.

I can't even recall one was the last times criminals shot a victim 41 times.

This is about training officers correctly to take a shot or two stop for a split second and take more shots AS NEEDED they can not be trained to blindly empty out their weapons, then they are acting as a firing squad.

I aint see anything much at all wrong with it and im dominican born and raised in bk

I have a problem with thinking that goes on when you pull the gun

Just like in the military you gotta train,train,train*

The whole white statement is wrong because even I know of "white guilt"..see it everyday in williamsburg

In fact your statement "The only people that see nothing wrong with the "shoot to kill" training by the nypd are whites of course (BTW white myself)" shows it clearly.

I aint naive and on that fairy tale shit of all cops are good and out to protect us.

Just like that I had my good and bad with the law and I aint gonna be prejudice and say all cops are bad either.

Lets cut the shit if it wasn't for cops it would be open season.

Please ladies and gentlemen don't fall for the propaganda that the NYPD's union is making this out to be. Here is the actual law as it reads now and how it would read if this bill passes:

THE CURRENT LAW

Section of state Penal Law S 35.15(2)(a)(ii)

“A person may not use deadly physical force upon another person . . . unless: he or she is . . . a police officer or peace officer or a person assisting a police officer or a peace officer at the latter’s direction.”

THE PROPOSAL

Section of Assembly Bill A02952

“A police officer or peace officer . . . uses such force with the intent to stop, rather than kill . . . and uses only the minimal amount of force necessary to effect such stop.”

No where does it say to aim for limbs or any other body part, that's silly. This proposal says "use force with the intent to stop, rather than kill" meaning focus on stopping the person instead of making sure the person is dead, that's all.

There's no need to shoot a human 41 times, (unless your goal is to kill) and I think that's what this bill is trying to correct. Cops carry 16 shot Glocks but there's no need to immediately empty out the clip on anyone. So this bill says, you can shoot but remember the goal is to STOP the person not kill them, so if possible take less shots. For example, if the cop shoots the person twice and pauses for a second and sees that the person is still a threat then take another shot and so on until you stopped him/her but officers should not be trained or encouraged to keep shooting until they run out of bullets.

"...or a person assisting a police officer or a peace officer at the latter’s direction."

I'm glad this bill takes into account all the sitcom and cop show situations in which a spunky bystander is pressed into helping the police:

"He got me... I'm dying here, spunky newspaper vendor. You gotta take my gun and sneak up on the terrorist and shoot him anywhere not in the explosive belt. It's okay, state Penal Law S 35.15(2)(a)(ii) has got you covered..."

Maybe I should write "plucky" instead of "spunky", things being the way they are nowadays.

Well said.

No one who has ever fired a handgun would find this anything less than total idiocy.

2011:

Introducing all new: poison bullets. Can't aim? Boss telling you to shoot for extremities? No problem! These guys activate upon contact with blood and immediately render the affected body uninhabitable.

2016:

New law goes into effect: cops can't use hurtful words in the middle of a firefight. They have to be polite to anyone pointing a gun at them and tell them nicely, but sternly to "put the weapon down." They can only get their guns out of the car if the perp refuses 3 verbal requests and 1 in writing.

The only people that see nothing wrong with the "shoot to kill" training by the nypd are whites of course (BTW white myself). The day a police officer shoots an unarmed white male or female, the nypd would be forced to walk the beat on their knees.

The mentality and actions of the nypd are disgusting. For example, a few years ago, in the BX, there was an incident where police were called for a fight and when officers arrived, there was a teen holding a knife, police officers say drop it twice, they shoot him four times in his chest. Chest! You mean to tell me there was no way to shoot him in the leg or arm?

Anyone who says the nypd are out to protect us is just plain naive or just fucking retarded. They are out to make their quota which they are paid to do

Mr. Napalm, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Just curious, did you ever hear about the killing of the Baptist paster in Georgia, Jonathan Ayers? Ayers, who was white, was a completely innocent and unarmed person when he was shot to death by the police sitting in his car in a gas station. Under your reasoning this case (involving a white pastor)would be all over the national news, but it was not.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-5279161-504083.html

http://www.ajc.com/news/family-store-owner-wonder-130662.html

As nice as this would be, in real life when firearms are involved, the wherewithall to aim (and hit) a suspect in a non-lethal area (the arm and leg still contain critical arteries, namely the brachial and femoral, respectively) is simply not there. Firearms are dangerous and lethal; any shot, essentially, has the potential to kill. We can't pretend like there's a special way to shoot a gun that makes it less lethal than other ways, especially in adrenaline-charged situations.

All of this being said, Paladino's justification seems off the mark: "Criminals don't play by rules, so cops shouldn't have to, either."

can we remove their guns as well!?

Having someone take aim at a specific limb/body part another than the chest is just dumb and is gonna end up with more deaths

I can guarantee you the people who came up with this shit have no experience with guns at all and most likely never even shot one

A realistic approach would have been more mandated gun training

I always thought that the problem with these police shootings stem from bad training at the police academy. You cannot put a glock with a 16 shot magazine in the hands of an officer and tell him/her to empty out the clip whenever they perceive that there is a threat without disastrous results. There have been too many killings of innocent or mentally ill people at the hands of police officers who simply followed this protocol of "shoot to kill". It's not the officers fault if he was trained to do this so the problem is the training and hopefully something like this will change the training and avoid further casualties. People are worried about handicapping the police during shoot outs but in all honesty shoot outs happen much, much less often than these "accidental" police shootings. I have faith in the justice system and I'm pretty certain that if a police officer killed a criminal involved in a shoot out no jury would find the officer liable or convict him/her for it. This bill makes a very sensible demand that should have been in place a long time ago, that officers try to shoot to stop instead of to kill, what's wrong with that? Maybe if officers would have been trained to shoot to stop Sean Bell would've survived, maybe Diallo would have survived, and many countless others would be alive today.

"Shoot to Stop" is a very sensible demand of our police officers and I don't think it will harm them in any way, this will just be a different training approach that may save many lives.

Except this isn't just a "different training approach."

If someone pulled a gun on you, do you think you could override the fight or flight adrenaline rush that is going on in your body? Do you really think that you would be able to, in the heat of a shootout, aim for a limb? Really??

Do you not understand that the NYPD is known across the nation for loving to shoot and kill "unarmed" minorities? How about that, how would you explain those actions?. You assholes are quick to pitty the nypd for not being able to pursue their passion of killing unarmed minorities

Almost (if not all) every big city in the nation has had controversial shooting incidents. Just type in Google "unarmed man shot by police" and you will see that the NYPD is not listed in the first page of search results. It happens at a greater rate in NYC just because it is by far the biggest police department in the nation and responds to the most calls.

This is no story. This is a stillborn baby. You have no idea the kind of sausage that gets "held for further consideration" and is never heard from again. Either you got played for someone else's propaganda purposes, or your doing a little rabble rousing of your own. It is not REMOTELY POSSIBLE that this bill could pass. It is purely symbolic, and most likely intended that way.

Annette Robinson and Darryl Towns should be the first idiots made to walk a beat in their districts with the requirement that they can only shoot to wound. They'll change their minds fast.

So, protect the thugs not the cops who protect us? Brilliant.

Sean Bell was a tragedy and should have never gone down like it did, but even so, this bill is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Had it been passed before Sean Bell was shot, there would still have been fifty holes in his arms and legs, and he would have bled out and died.

"The newly introduced "minimum force" bill would edit the justification clause, requiring cops to shoot "with the intent to stop, rather than kill" instead of giving the officer the right to kill if they feel their life is in danger"

So they just need to say "i aimed at his leg and missed" when they do the after action report.

Way to introduce a lame solution to a real problem.

Or maybe we should just teach all cops how to aim for the femoral artery.

There are a lot of laws that don't make sense. This one is actually a good one. It may not be possible in a lot of circumstances and depending on an officers marksmanship, to shoot to wound. But this would impose upon them the effort to try.

WHAT?! There is NO shooting course ANYWHERE in the WORLD that trains shooters (civilian/LE/Military) to wound in a time of self-defense.

When a police officer shoots someone, it is out of self-defense; not as a method of restraining the suspect. If the shot is legit, it means that the life of the officer, his/her partner or a member of the public were in danger. The reasoning for shooting a suspect in these cases is to prevent the suspect from committing harm on someone. It is NOT a method of restraining them or injuring them so that they can be apprehended. As much as the media likes to portray cops as trigger-happy goons, shootings are RARE.

Let’s delve into the “training” one would have to qualify with in order to “shoot to wound”. New shooting doctrines would mean that the officer would no longer be shooting at the largest and most stable target (center mass/torso), they would be shooting for the smaller targets which are the arms, hands, legs and feet of the subject. In case you don’t know, humans derive most of their mobility from their limbs, which is comprised of the parts I just mentioned. So, in a life and death situation, the officer would be shooting at a part that is significantly smaller than center mass AND is most likely moving around.

Every bullet fired is a liability. Every bullet that misses its target is a liability. The “hit” rate of limbs is infinitesimally smaller than hits on center mass. PERIOD. There would likely be more lawsuits from bystanders being hit than from the families of dead subjects.

Even if the officer qualifies and passes all the necessary requirements for shooting paper targets of less-lethal hit areas, in the real world adrenaline kicks in, as well as a host of other elements such as MOVEMENT from both the suspect and the officer. A shot to wound would NEVER be possible from an officer in a life or death situation.

In addition to your brilliant reply, I would like to remind everyone armed and dangerous criminals do not like to hang out in well-lit shooting ranges. They like the dark and will also accept rain, fog, etc. while running as if decades in prison depended on it.

Who is Bill and why is he so forbidding??

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