Police Shoot Man Over Stolen Donuts

Spaceturkey.

Recommended one use a leather jacket to neutralize a knife attack? Oooookay.

I think Mewa took the same approach. Of course these guys are "sophisticated, street smart" city people, surrounded by tough guys a'plenty.

Well, that's not exactly what he said, but people hounded him over this particular interpretation. He was talking about defending yourself from a guy with a knife when you were not armed. A leather jacket, swung at the knife hand could briefly blunt the attack. He did not claim it could serve as armor or anything like that.

No, Spaceturkey left us to join the Sacred Order of the Jacket, and walked off to tour the earth, like Kane in Kung Fu. From the ice flows of Iceland, where he learned to use his jacket as a flotation device. He climbed the Himalayas, learning from the sherpas how to insulate his jacket with Yeti hair. Brazilian jacket-jit-ju, Filipino collar flipping, North Korean juggling, he has honed his skills. Now after killing Tommy Ramone in single combat, he is ready.

@Spaceturkey is on his way back to us, throw down your hoodies and North Face jackets and repent....

It wasn't that.

It was the arrogance of thinking it will always work. The arrogance of thinking he was "untouchable" and if you needed something other then a leather jacket to defeat a knife you were a wuss.

He refused to understand that beating a couple of drunks with knives wouldn't save him the day he comes up against someone who knows how to use a knife.

Talking about using a leather jacket on a bus to stop a knife wielding man.

Acting like you're God's gift to hand-to-hand fighting is bound to get people pounding you on Wordforge and your silly jacket won't work through your monitor.

I'm surprised you missed that reference.

People gave him shit over it for months.

Hell, I went out and bought a leather jacket just because he recommended it! I keep it in my gun safe. This is New Jersey, ya know. I might get arrested for wearing such a dangerous weapon around in public.

It's too hot in Florida for a leather jacket.

I have no choice but to use my gun.

And the knife holder wouldn't see you telegraphing that jacket swinging movement and avoid it or fake a thrust to get you to commit thereby putting yourself off balance? Just askin'

No idea. My response to guy wielding a knife is to run in the opposite direction.

That's the best response. Especially if you don't have a gun. At least with a gun you can hold him off at a distance. Any other weapon requires you get in close which puts you in great danger.

Unfortunately cops don't have the option of running away. But let's give them leather jackets! But not old-school WWII bomber jackets - that enables the "militarization" of our police.

OMG I have a leather jacket! My son gave me one that's too big for him.
It is thick too, it weighs about as much as a flak vest. But it's too hot here in Georgia for it most of the year.

I usually don't notice that stuff, especially if it's in a gun/knife thread. I tend to avoid those threads, since I'm not really interested in them.

He pointed out that anyone that a leather jacket was a better tool for disarming someone with a knife than a gun. And that anyone that said otherwise was a pussy.

Then he got stabbed to death by someone who wasn't as high as he was.

Your leather jacket can't protect you if you leave it at home.

I'd get a hernia lugging that behemoth of a cow-skin. Besides this being Georgia where anyone can just use a gun, stabbings aren't all that common.

When and where did we get the idea out that police have some special obligation to suffer serious injuries before using lethal force?

If you had a gun and a guy was threatening you with a knife, how long would you let them menace you?

My take on it meshes pretty perfectly with what a friend to many of us posted on Facebook a couple of days ago:

As they say, case closed.

One step. Then :erimg:

Some people at my work were saying "why didn't they just taser him" and "why did the cop shoot to kill? Can't they just shoot to maim?"
and of course "even if he didn't have a knife, there would be one once they investigated the body."
Regardless I have a plan - only arm black cops. 99 percent of the cop-on-suspect shootings will never make it to the news then.
Or give cops the option of being armed. If you are willing to take your chances on committing the unforgivable, city destroying sin of shooting a black suspect, arm yourself.
If you are willing to take your chances with 300 pound men and knife-wielding crazies killing you, don't arm yourself. Don't like either option?
Don't be a cop. After a few years of nobody wanting to be cops they will have to draft them (like the military did way back when) or call in the Feds to protect the towns.

There was another police shooting recently where the media reported the officers as "other then white"

Tazers have saved lives. But, it mainly happens when there's time and/or space to maneuver.

There was an attempted suicide by cop about two months ago. Guy had a domestic with his wife and he decided to just let the cops kill him when they got there. When the first unit got there, the guy came out of the front door of the house with a butcher knife. The officer threw his car in reverse and backed away to a safe distance. He got out, drew his weapon, and took cover between the open door and the car's a-frame. The second officer to get on scene came from a different direction and thanks to proper radio usage, he came around behind the bad guy at an angle and was able to deploy his tazer in a fashion where the first officer was still able to safely use lethal force if it became necessary. That guy lived. But, all the events unfolded in his favor. He didn't charge the barricaded officer. The officers had time and room to maneuver into an advantageous position.

I wasn't there for this shoot. Bad guy with a knife, cop with a gun, I'm almost always going to lean towards it being a good shoot until I hear something making it bad. But, as for the question of deploying a tazer, there simply may not have been time or space to get into position and Paladin hit the nail on the head. I'm not going to take an unnecessary risk and risk my life on a one-shot tool that may or may not work, doubly so in the winter. Tazers are notoriously ineffective on suspects wearing heavy clothing.

I'm not even going to address the idiocy of "shooting to maim." There have been dozens of threads about that over the last decade and the idea has been totally and completely debunked so many times that it is a waste of my time to even type these two sentences.

People really get upset when someone dies from a "nonlethal" TASER shot.

Besides, everyone knows that TASERs are a bit "hit & miss" when it comes to effectiveness. Rodney King took two TASER hits and was far from neutralized. If you are big, not overly sensitive, wearing thick clothing or for that matter just royally pissed then the likelihood of going down to a TASER hit is not that great.

Yep.The trouble with so many people debating this issue is they have no experience with guns and think every gun situation can be handled like in the movies.

And the scary part is the woman at work who said it is ex-military! Guess gun logic went in one ear and out the other for her.