Ah PJH,
The famed Senator Penn, I remember it well. Statewide pursuit policies, P.O.'s having to defend the heck out of themselves on justified shoots even when CSP clears them. And before anyone jumps on me, let me just say, I am not law emforcement, althouogh as a medic, I do work side by side with them. Since everyone is quick to judge the PD on these issues, Mike, Matt, and PJH all probably know about the 2 cases I'm about to mention - not sure on the person who brought up Matt being a dispatcher and originally thought he may be PD. Here ya go - explain to me how a cop can have a suspect firing a shotgun at them behind an elementary school full of kids and not be justified in taking that suspect out. The family says they know this guy would have killed someone but the PD should have shot to wound him. and the 2nd case is a guy coming after PD with a knife and refusing to drop it after multiple times of being ordered to do so. the suspect still advances towards the officers and he shouldn't have been shot because even though he had multiple arrests for drugs and assaults, he had some type of mental disorder. (and this regarding his prior arrest was not published in the papersit was discovered by careful research which verified this person was one in the same). First, cops are taught to shoot for center mass or the trunk area of the body. They are taught to shoot to kill if the situation warrants it. Quite frankly, I have always said that if someone was coming at me with a knife or a gun and it was them or me, then by golly (did I just say by golly-aw gawd!) I'm sure gonna try to make sure it's them because I have an addiction to breathing and walking around on the face of this earth. And while I posted this in response to one of the previous posts, I want to point out that in the case of the shotgun incident, people tried to turn it into a race issue. I'm not sure about the others on this board but if you are shooting at me, I'm taking you out. I'm not gonna try and reason with you and I can care if you are white, black or purple (although if you are purple and have green blood I am going to sell that to the enquirer-lol). What I think people have lost sight of is that these men and women (PD) risk their asses, day in and day out, and at the end of their day, they deserve to go home, in one friggin piece. Yeah they made their choice in jobs, but the idiot who takes a shotgun or any other weapon and tries to take someone out made a choice too. Damn!!! Sorry all, I had to vent. The blatant disregard in this area has just got me so bent, I can't even begin to tell ya. If a suspect is fleeing, you can't chase them. If a suspect is shooting at you or trying to run you down with a car, hey, ya can't shoot em either. I have an idea - why don't we just make every cop including CSP start walking, highways, etc. and we can take away their guns too, heck we'll give them peashooters because they're non-lethal. The same people who are complaining about the shoots are the same ones thatrant and rave when a PO doesn't get to their house fast enough or their house get's robbed by one of these fools. It's like the idiot who doesn't pull over for a rig going RLS to a shoot or a code then they get home and it's a family member and they're like "What took you so long" I tell ya- Let the damn PD do their job and stop critisizing them for everything they do. Are their bad apples out there, of course there are- but there are more good guys out there than bad and not just in the PD - look our former Gov was a damned crook and is now where he deserves to be (thats a whole other story) but that doesn't mean everyone from him down was bad.
Let me end this by saying- To any cop, firefighter or fellow EMS worker reading this, You stay safe out there and remember YOU DO make a difference - every day.
Joe