Source for the relevant wall of text below (not mine):
http://np.reddit.com/..._camera/cjweetk?context=3
This is a textbook suicide-by-cop situation.
One warning sign is committing a crime and not attempting to get away, basically provoking a police response.
Another is that he declares almost immediately "shoot me," and tries to threaten the officers.
In a suicide-by-cop situation, the first thing to do is realize that you are dealing with someone who is likely mentally ill and wants to die. They are suicidal but for some reason are unable to kill themselves. In many cases they lack the "guts" to kill themselves and it seems easier to make someone else do it. For people like this, the fact that they can't pull the trigger themselves means that if you can calm them down and wait, you might be able to defuse the situation. It also means that in many cases you aren't dealing with someone who actually wants to harm anyone. But you can't know that, and you are supposed to treat them as a serious threat.
Unlike many stand-off situations, suicide-by-cop often involves no serious crime. When there's a hostage situation or something like that, it can be difficult to get a suspect to give themselves up because they are facing serious charges. But cases such as this one, if they can calm the suspect down, they can get him to give up because he literally has only stolen sodas, he hasn't killed or kidnapped anyone.
The main priority is to try to de-escalate the situation. "The longer you prolong the engagement, the more likely you are to get a positive outcome." Don't corner the suspect, don't force them to make a decision before they are ready, don't barge in until you have to, establish a perimeter, wait for backup, try to talk the suspect down, etc.
With someone wielding a knife you should try a non-lethal option like a Tazer, and use deadly force only if necessary and seriously threatened.
We don't know what the officers knew, but we do see that they immediately exited their vehicle with guns drawn, so they must have known they were dealing with a serious situation.
When dealing with a knife wielding suspect, they teach that if you are within 21 feet, they can close the distance and stab you before you can unholster your weapon and fire. If you have your weapon out and aimed, then you can get to 10 feet. Inside 10 feet, a suspect can still suddenly attack and stab you before you can stop them (maybe you shoot them, but they still are able to stab).
So if you are dealing with a knife-wielder, keep more than 21 feet between you if your gun is holstered, and more than 10 feet if your gun is out.
So when they pull up, they should park a good distance back so that they can exit the vehicle and draw their guns before the suspect can close to within 21 feet. From the looks of it, I think they park something like 25-35 feet away.
I think this is much too close.
For one thing, it gives them little time to talk to the suspect or assess the situation before he can close to within 21 feet, which means they have to come out with guns already drawn. Which then means they are entering the scene by suddenly pulling up, parking close to the suspect and aiming guns on him. That's not a de-escalating move.
It's also bad to pull up this close because it limits their options severely in handling the situation. They are unable to advance because they are already too close. This means that they are stuck with the car right between them. This is important because it makes them unable to move laterally. If one officer moves sideways, the partner can't follow as the car is in the way. If they are standing side-by-side, then if the suspect charges them, they can both fire, but if they separate, it's possible for the suspect to get between them, making it difficult for either to fire without endangering the other officer.
Since they can't move laterally and they can't advance because they are already too close to the knife-wielding suspect, then that means that they have almost no control over the background (what's behind the suspect from their POV). This is very important because if they need to fire, they really want a clean background so they don't endanger civilians. But by pulling up so close, they make it so that they are basically stuck close to where they are.
This means that their background is decided by the suspect. This is a serious mistake.
Notice that almost immediately after they exit the car, the suspect is directly between the camera and one of the officers. The person filming is in danger of being shot by that officer if he needs to fire. We can't be sure, but the other officer doesn't seem to have a very good background either.
So the cops pulled up so close that they had to get their guns out immediately, escalating the conflict dramatically, limited their mobility which compromised their background.
So are now looking at a knife-wielding suspect and a bunch of innocent bystanders behind him. If he should charge them right then, they are going to have to choose between firing to protect themselves but possibly missing and endangering the bystanders, or not firing and dodging or stopping the suspect some other way. That's not a good position to be in.
This is an extremely bad way to begin an engagement.
They have backup on the way. Backup arrives 60 seconds after they shoot him. They should know that their job right then is to de-escalate and try to wait for back-up. Had they parked 90 feet away, this would have been much easier, they could have had 45 seconds to approach, evaluate, talk to the suspect, realize this is a suicide-by-cop situation, talked to backup, think about their options. Instead it was a total of 15 seconds between exiting the car and killing the suspect.
Once they know he has a knife and it's suicide by cop and he is starting to approach them, they should be trying to maintain at least that 10 feet safe distance. 10 feet is the minimum, so they should be thinking more like 20.
The suspect never approaches them at a high rate of speed. He doesn't charge them. He approaches fairly slowly, never at more than a standard walking speed. He even stops and pauses for about 3 seconds. Yet they make no attempt to maintain a safe distance. They don't take a single step backwards (the officer on the left shuffles his feet and maybe moves a half-step backwards, but only right at the very end). Even when the suspect pauses and looks behind him, they do not take a single step backwards.
When the suspect pauses, he turns around and looks at the cop's background, seeing that bystanders are behind him. He realizes innocents were behind him and moves so that they won't be behind him. I looked on Google Earth, he gave them a background that's the side of a building and a parking lot. If he had gone to the right, then the background is the street and then houses across the street.
I think this clearly shows the suspect doesn't actually want to hurt anyone, but we can't know that for sure, maybe he would have hurt the officers, we can't know, but it shows he's not just a raving lunatic and that he they may have been able to talk him down.
Once he moves to the left and then starts closing the distance to the officers, he still maintains a rather slow pace. They could have backed up, they were not cornered. But they chose to stand their ground, even though he was quite close to them.
They basically waited for him, making no attempt to back away, until he closed to within 6-8 feet and they began firing. They fired at least 9 shots, including at least 3 shots while he was already down.
I read an article about a cop who experienced suicide-by-cop. A young man attacked him, rammed his police cruiser, and then he pulled him over. Then the young man came at him with a broken bottle while shouting at him.
Poisson, one of two officers on the scene, drew his gun and started to back away... Poisson saw something in Seth’s face that said he wasn’t going to drop the bottle. Poisson kept backing up, kept telling Seth to drop it, but Seth kept coming at him, screaming “I’ll kill you if you don’t shoot me!” Finally, when Seth had backed Poisson into the middle of the highway, where any car coming up the hill might wipe him out, he pulled the trigger. The bullet hit Seth in the abdomen and lodged near his spine.
The officers cuffed Seth and turned him over. Poisson knelt down beside the bleeding boy, who looked at him and said, “Shoot me in the head.”
Notice that the cop in this example backs up. He backs up into the highway. Now look at the cops in this. The cop on the left wasn't willing to backup on an empty sidewalk. They were not cornered, but they acted as if they were. In fact, the officer on the right actually moved forward, not backward.
And also notice that the officer in the story shot once, the boy was stopped, then they got him medical attention and he lived.
When Seth regained consciousness after surgery in the hospital, she says, he looked at her and said, “Tell that officer I’m sorry, Mom.”
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This is why you don't just kill and say it was justified. These are people and they can be mentally ill and be made better.
We see that when backup arrives, at least one of the officers is carrying a taser. I imagine the two cops in question had a taser, either on them or in the SUV. But they chose not to use it.
Most discussion I've seen centers on the fact that they had little time to react or get out a taser.
But that neglects the fact that they put themselves in that situation. Had they simply parked 90 feet back, blocking the road, they would have had time to evaluate, assess, delay, prolong, wait for back-up, perhaps get out a taser, and at the very least they could have controlled their background and made innocent bystanders much safer.
Yes the suspect brought this on himself, yes the cops were defending themselves. But they seriously mishandled this situation.
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