[dadoiron]

Originally Posted by mneumann02

There are a lot of questions concerning police shootings such as "Why didn't the police shoot to wound the person?" or "Why did they have to shoot him so many times?" I know I won't change anyone's mind with a simple post here, but my experience might help temper some views.

A few years ago, I was fortunate to be chosen for an FBI Citizen Training Course. There were 25 of us in the 10 week class. Participant citizens ranged from Black activists to far right conservatives. Subjects covered in the 4 1/2 hour weekly sessions included terrorism, white collar crime, kidnapping, violent crimes and "When and How to Use a Firearm."

The FBI trained us that if someone is life-threatening (to you or someone else) and you decide you to shoot, you shoot until the threat is ended. Only in Wild West movies does someone shoot to knock the gun out of the bad guy's hand or shoot to wound. To prove this important point, the FBI set up a very life-like full scale video on a wall with a very real looking and feeling fake gun that interacted with what was being shown. We each took turns as an FBI agent deciding if, when and whom to shoot. It was so real many of us were shaking during our turn as the video was played. Our first guy up shot the bad guy one time, and as the bad guy fell, he turned to us and smiled as he blew the imagined smoke from his gun barrel. Unfortunately for our "pretend" FBI agent, as the bad guy fell, he emptied his revolver into the back of the "agent."

At first the Black activist refused to role-play, but eventually did. He was shaking as he kept yelling, "FBI, drop the weapon!" When he finally decided to shoot, he not only emptied the gun's 8 round capacity, he reloaded and shot a couple more times. (They still talk about this in that FBI office.)

I asked a question. How do you know when to shoot? The FBI agent handed me the fake gun and said I was an FBI agent and I just caught a bad guy (him) robbing a bank. As the bad guy, he walked across the room away from me and put a fake gun to his head. I yelled, "FBI, drop the gun." He started yelling he was going to kill himself and walked toward me with the gun at his head. In less than the blink of an eye, as he got 10 feet away, he turned the gun on me, shot me, and said "You're dead." I had been ready to pull the trigger the moment he made a move. But I am now a dead FBI agent.

I am not arguing that all shootings are justified by any means. I'm just saying that those 25 citizens, who went through that training exercise, developed a lot more empathy for understanding how extremely tense those situations are- how life and death decisions have to be made in split seconds that will have ramifications for the rest of people's lives.

Yes