All Good Things...

It was very pleasant not thinking about politics for a few days. However, the good citizen cannot leave his duties for long, nor entrust them to others.
Police: All Empire State shooting victims were wounded by officers

...The officers unloaded 16 rounds in the shadow of the Empire State Building at a disgruntled former apparel designer, killing him after he engaged in a gunbattle with police, authorities said.

Three passersby sustained direct gunshot wounds, while the remaining six were hit by fragments, according to New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. All injuries were caused by police, he said Saturday.
The last time I was in New York, the police I saw were carrying automatic rifles. Maybe semi-automatic ones would be a better choice for them than handguns: a single shot is both more accurate, and more likely to drop the target, so that fewer rounds are necessary.

Either that, or -- crazy talk, I know -- you could allow other citizens to be prepared to do their duty to assist.
The FBI reports that in 2010, 19 police officers were slain while alone on patrol. Seven officers were killed with their own weapons. Of 56 officers killed, 16 had fired their own weapons, as Harrison did.... FBI Supplemental Homicide Reports show that private citizens killed police attackers only three times annually since 2000. Yet an unusual and compelling story of self-defense by a concealed carry licensee gets mentioned only by local media.
"Only three times a year" is a much larger figure when the total number of officers killed is below 60. Those three would nearly round it out to sixty -- except five percent of the time, an ordinary citizen stepped up and saved the cop.

If you view this as something that occurs with statistical regularity, we might start to ask, "What can we do to raise this figure?" Quite a lot of things, if you wanted to do so: especially in places like Chicago and New York, a robust police and private partnership could be highly effective. Consider the benefits of offering free training to citizens, helping them to understand how to report and how to assist, and making sure the police understood to expect and and how to respond to the assistance they were getting.

I would think you could move a substantial number of those officers out of the "killed in the line of duty" column, and over to the "saved by citizen assistance" column. Is that worth doing?

2 comments:

bthun said...

I don't even know what to say. The murdering perp killed one man in the building, but did not get off a shot after exiting the crime scene. Yet nine? citizens unfortunate enough to be in the free-fire zone were shot by NYPD.

I mentioned in another thread just the other day that reports claim the Federales have recently purchased approximately four rounds of hollow point .40 cal and .357 Sig for every U.S citizen. Given the marksmanship performance of the NYPD, an argument could be made to justify doubling the order.

bthun said...

Oh yeah, to your question:

"I would think you could move a substantial number of those officers out of the "killed in the line of duty" column, and over to the "saved by citizen assistance" column. Is that worth doing? "

I suspect we would all, or almost all, agree that yes, it is worth doing.

The problem is, as always, with those members of the leadership who would rather the peasantry not have the means to defend themselves or others. Those leaders who have armed guards assigned either on their personal retainer or funded by the taxpayer but connive to deny the peasants the same. NY, NY and M. Bloomberg being a good example.