In light of recent events, this might be true

lostmygravitas · 12 days

"These blast points....too accurate for the NYPD"

lxxwj · 12 days

Wait, what happened?

pleiades9 · 12 days

I had a discussion about the Empire State shooting with a friend in the military who has also done a great deal of voluntary tactical training. Here's his thoughts on the matter:

1) For better or worse, many cops treat their job as a police officer as just that: a job. You clock in, you clock out, you go home and do the things you enjoy doing, be it sports, watching TV, drinking, or whatever. This means that they're likely not spending much more than the required minimum amount of time at the gun range. Why do it, if you view it as a job that pays the bills rather than a profession you dedicate yourself to?

2) Even though accuracy training is a big part of being a cop, it's not emphasized as much as most people seem to think. A lot of the training police receive is in defusing situations - once something has escalated to guns being drawn, the chances of a serious fuck-up become very high (as this shooting demonstrates). The emphasis is on preventing the situation from becoming a shootout, much more so than what to do when the shootout happens.

3) Any report you read of the situation will give you an idea of just how chaotic the situation was. Bystanders running every which way. The fourth rule of gun safety is "Know your target and what is behind it." However, just because a potential innocent casualty is behind your target, it's not an absolute contraindication to firing your weapon. It's a judgment call, and an indication to use extra caution. Extra training can improve the outcomes of these judgment calls, sure, but then points 1 and 2 above come into play once more.

4) Six of the nine people injured were hit by fragments of either concrete or ricocheting bullet. Difficult (but not impossible) to predict who's at risk to be nailed by fragments when your primary focus is on a man waving a gun around.

Not to say some culpability shouldn't rest with the officers (they did directly hit at least three innocent bystanders), but given the situation, and the other factors listed above, I would hesitate before judging them too harshly.

gnit2 · 12 days

Front page. I'm calling it now.

Edit: 7 posts away. C'mon... we got thissss...

Edit2: Aw yiss.

deadfuzzball · 12 days

16 rounds, 9 wounded, 10 hits on target. That's 19 hits with 16 rounds. It's impressive as hell if you ignore the entire story and how terrible it is.

Great aim, just bad results in a crowded area when bullets go through people and keep going.

mtldude1967 · 12 days

Last I heard, they hit the suspect 10 times out of 16 shots, a 62.5% accuracy rate, which is exceptionally good for a high anxiety and stressful situation that they had only a couple of seconds to prepare for and evaluate.

porchcracker · 12 days

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/26/us/new-york-empire-state-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

In the article, the cops Hit the shooter 9 out of 16 times, with 9 pedestrians injured, 3 from intact bullets. So while yes, they exhibited poor judgement in shooting lanes, their accuracy is much higher than average for close range shootouts. (Aveni, 2003)

tl:dr- may have been poor judgement, but statistically better than average shooting.

highintensitycanada · 12 days

bad guns perhaps?

omgdonerkebab · 12 days

ITT: People who base their opinions off video games.

Bullets can often go through targets. If you want a fast, effective bullet, you can't do anything about this.
Real-life targets move unpredictably.
In a video game, you can allow yourself to take a hit in order to reposition for a better shot. In real life, the object is to not get hit at all, and in this situation, not to let the gunman get off a single shot.

Guess what? The officers did a great job in stopping the threat before the gunman could kill anyone else. For those of you crying out that the gunman didn't fire at the police officers, the video clearly shows him pulling out the gun in response to their presence. Why do you think he did that?

truthpooper · 12 days

All I could think of when I heard about this

Heisenburg · 12 days

You'd think the largest para-military organization in the U.S. would at least get some range time every once in a while. They shoot like Mr. Magoo.

[deleted] · 12 days

We need to get this in GIF form with a scene from Commando.

12288 · 12 days

Yeah, like when they took down the Millennium Falcon in the first act of New Hope and the entire series ended.

HydroCrank · 12 days

9/9 would hit!

Danez · 12 days

I guess this must mean the NYPD is the bad guy in this movie.

deerFarts · 12 days

at least they weren't SandPeople shooting...

noahthewale · 12 days

Too soon?

dagreekguy · 12 days

why is this true?

ZACHtheSEAL · 12 days

i heard the wounds were from bullet fragments from ricochets. the rounds the officers were using were probably gold dot hollowpoints and those mushroom out so its quite likely that the bullets broke apart when they hot a hard concrete surface

VirginsAreSlutsToo · 12 days

Too soon?

teewan · 11 days

Aim was fine. Can't control where the fragments go after they hit the target.

OhSchistGneiss · 11 days

But they wouldn't be able to shoot the suspect, although no innocent bystanders would ever get hit either

TheWhiteWolf08 · 11 days

At least they got the crazy murderer.

[deleted] · 11 days

So how about these guys

jackovasaurusrex · 11 days

I've been making jokes across every article possible. "The NYPD should stop getting trained by the storm troopers." "Hey, NYPD, you're not storm troopers!"

serosis · 11 days

Anybody think Obi Wan was being sarcastic when he said that those blast points were, "Too accurate for Sand-People"?

eman462 · 11 days

The NYPD cops remind me of the cops in GTA. They will keep shooting even after you are dead. And dont down vote me into nothing it is true. When the times square knife guy was shot the cops continued shooting for a second or two.

kinyon · 11 days

so could someone fill me in on the story behind this?

stormin217 · 11 days

amazing

OTuama · 11 days

It wouldn't be true if people understood that rubbernecking at the scene of a crime is dangerous. But everyone likes a show, so shit like this happens.

DrDeath666 · 11 days

Definitely top 3 most clever / original posts of 2012. Trust me. I live on this shit.

Kanuck88 · 11 days

Try and shoot at someone with a 100 % accuracy when you are afraid for your life. God knows I would miss....

Immigman · 11 days

Police confronted an armed a assailant who had just shot one of their own in an extremely densely populated part of NYC. The necessity of stoping this maniac quickly was clear, the likelihood of collateral damage high. The fact that police fired so few rounds, when the average NYPD issued Glock has a 30 round magazine, makes it clear the the officers were trying to be judicious with their shots. It's unfair, given the environment, to Monday morning quarterback the officers. Especially when anyone whose been to the Empire State Building would attest to how densely populated the area is. If anything, this underscores the need for law enforcement in urban areas to consider fragmentation ammunition (ammo that shatters on impact, making it unlikely that the round would penetrate drywall, wood, or plexiglass). Fragmentation ammo is less likely to result in collateral damage and is highly recommended for home defense use since the round will not ricochet or penetrate drywall. The NYPD might also consider not using high velocity rounds in thier guns. Currently standard issue rounds are the "hot" +P loads. These rounds tend to over-penetrate their target, which in an urban environment can result in an increased liklihood of collateral damage.

RonaldFuckingPaul · 12 days

oh boy, original. you took a comment from another post about this and made it a picture. lame

funny

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