Police Kill Armed Man, Hostage in Fla.

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You know, I never thought about it, but what sense does it make for a cop to take a bullet rather than the hostage? If you are a hostage and the bad guy shoots and disables the cop, what is to stop the bad guy from then killing you? I mean, basically what we are advocating is that in the name of honor and glory, that more people die for our sense of "right".

Bad things happen. I say do a thorough investigation. See if you can figure out who made the errant shots and fire them. Yeah that is tough for the cop, but it was also tough for the hostage. I see nothing wrong with expecting bad breaks for the cop since I accept bad breaks from the hostage. We don't need to go overboard and send them to prison. That doesn't make any sense either. Why add one more person to our list of tax payer sponsored inmates when they were just trying to do their job in the first place?

However, I see absolutely no point in a cop dieing just because they are supposed to "protect and serve". If a cop dies to save more lives, that is noble. If a cop dies to save one person, really what has been accomplished?

I don't mind taking risks in order to protect people. However, I will not throw my life away when it doesn't gain anything for anyone. Still, we don't have enough information here to properly judge this situation. Even if one or two of the cops had died, would the hostage still have made it out alive? We don't know that.
 
IF they were not trapped, and depending on the initial distance, then my question is why they didn't simply run away
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That seems to be the official advice that your average Joe citizen would get from the police department. You see it on the news and read it in the papers all the time. It's hard to count the number of times you hear the mantra from police that "the victim did the right thing by not taking the law into their own hands". Even if a victim was being shot at I doubt you'll see many CLEO's lining up to get on the news an explain why they should of returned fire instead of ducked and ran away. You would think, at least in a situation where an innocent person is likely to be killed, they would be able to take their own advice.

It's true that none of us know the entire situation so we really aren't in any position to be judging and I'm sure the police didn't have much time to think about their reaction but still it's hard to argue that the hostage would not have been better off if the cops wouldn't have showed up that day. It's hard to get much worse than dead. At the very worst for that hostage all things would have been equal.
 
It's true that none of us know the entire situation so we really aren't in any position to be judging and I'm sure the police didn't have much time to think about their reaction but still it's hard to argue that the hostage would not have been better off if the cops wouldn't have showed up that day. It's hard to get much worse than dead. At the very worst for that hostage all things would have been equal.
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So is it the police's fault she died or the man who took her hostage and put her in that position to begin with? Should we just let the criminal element do whatever they want whenever they want at the risk of someone might be harmed by the police? Let’s not forget who really started this whole thing. It was the guy who took her hostage and shot at the cops. Period. He is the real cause of this and to sit here and try to argue the cops shouldn't have shown up is ridiculous. You had better odds of convincing me they should have ran away and sought cover before you can convince me that cops should just let the criminal element in society do as they please. Face reality, the cops are going to show up. Face reality, the cops should show up because that is what we pay them to do, stop criminals or arrest them after the fact.

Yeah someone screwed up and hit the hostage. Focus on that. To insinuate there is no blame on the one person who really started this by saying the hostage would have been better off at the complete mercy of that animal is ludicrous.
 
I read the original story again.
The four officers, all veterans with at least 10 years experience, were put on administrative leave pending an investigation. None was injured.
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Answered my own question.

I now only have to wonder how far away were the officers and if they would have returned fire if the hostage had not just been perceived as a 'prole'.
 
El Rojo said:
So is it the police's fault she died or the man who took her hostage and put her in that position to begin with?
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Obviously if the guy had not taken her hostage and shot at the cops then the cops wouldn't have killed her. I'm not sure how many degrees of separation are required before blame is allowed to shift.
 
True, the cops shooting her is the cop's fault. Find out who shot her, fire them. I have no problems with that. However, I find it a waste of time to say, "If the cops wouldn't have shown up, she couldn't have been worse off." I would imagine rape and torture could be worse off.
 
Byron Quick

Why didn't they run away? One very simple explanation is in line with the few facts that we have. The police had heard two shotgun blasts from within the apartment as they approached. The police had no way of knowing that a dog had been shot instead of a person. So they run away to avoid the possibility of shooting the hostage. And then the next day the headlined story goes something like this: Wounded hostage bleeds to death in apartment after police run!!!
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I didn't mean that the police should have run away when they heard shots fired. I was wondering if the police may have had the chance to run away from the gunman after he came out of the apartment and fired upon them. I also did not mean that the cops should run away and go home and wait to find out what happened by reading the next day's newspaper; I meant that they should have run and sought sufficient cover from which to observe or negotiate with or stall the BG long enough for SWAT to arrive.

Also, after going to bed thinking about the situation, I wonder if we'll find out that the hostage was hit by ONE officer only, instead of two or three. Someone perhaps joined in the shooting when he did not have a clear shot and did not check his background.
 
I think the error may have been in the approach

The problem may have occured when the officers approached the apartment after hearing shots fired. Regardless of what they assumed had been shot at, maybe they should not have approached but sought cover and addressed the guy with a bullhorn or loudspeaker.

I hope I don't get ridiculed for what I just suggested, since it seems to make the most sense to me. Since when is anyone taught to charge forward in any situation when shots are fired? Even in lone gunman/suicide situations where no hostage exists, cops set up a perimeter or whatever but don't go rushing in without a well-thought plan. Do they? Weren't these officers informed from the onset that it was a hostage situation? Were they going to knock on the door?

I know they were trying to help. It seems that the cops kind of set themselves up to be in a situation where they were forced to make a bad decision. They were like ducks in a barrel. I still wonder if retreat was an option at this point, though.

Byron, if I am ever taken hostage do not come charging in to rescue me and in so doing deliberately put yourself in a situation where you will feel compelled to shoot through me to save your own life.

Shouldn't there be something in our minds or hearts that prevents us, even at the risk of our own lives, from risking killing innocent people? Is it lack of compassion, selfishness, self-importance, or cowardice that overrides our value of the right to life of others?

Then again, it may have simply been a bad shot.
 
Tell you what: several here seem to think that birdshot is no big deal. OK, put on the coat that turned them before. Set up a grapefruit to represent a brain 10 yards away. Then have a shotgunner firing buckshot off the line to the grapefruit. Put a large piece of poster paper up immediately behind the grapefruit to track stray rounds. Get an ordinary trash can as 'cover.' Now while firing at the grapefruit from your 'cover,' avoid being hit by the birdshot. See what it does to your accuracy.

Sure must be some great shot with nerves of steel here.
 
Actually, it sounds like the cops were pretty decent shots. They had 10 hits on the bad guy between four of them. Even if they shot 15 rounds each, that is far above par compared to the Los Angeles County Sherrif's Department when they lit up that guy in the car with 120 rounds and only got 5 hits (one hit was on their own too). If you count the hits on the hostage too, they didn't do too bad.

Then again, I would imagine any hit on the hostage would automatically give you a zero.
 
I think that maybe too many people have been influence by Hollywood propaganda.

Police officers are not super, even though they may be tempted to pretend they are, to get the babes. If I could get away with pretending to be super I'd probably do it too. So you can't fault them for playing their super-ness up.

And hostage takers aren't going to be rational. They might have watched a few movies and figured that they know what's up. They're probably tired and drunk or high.

And the hostage, they have to accept ultimate responsibility for their lives. They are, once you get past all the rhetoric, responsible to themselves. You can say 'it was his fault, he shot me' and legally you are right, but in the cold hard light of reality combat doesn't recognize right and wrong. Only success and failure.

So if yo're taken hostage you have to realize that you have dangerous amateurs on all sides that are a treat to your existence! It's not a pretty picture, but you're living in a modern-day jungle, and jungle laws are in place.

BTW one time in Winnipeg, decades ago, a bank robber thought he had a brilliant plan. He strapped a big bomb to himself, ALA Hollywood, and planned that the police would surround the bank. So after he's loaded up as much money as he can carry he exits the bank, and proceeds to try to explain that he has a bomb and they should not shoot him. In theory it was a good plan, and in a Hollywood movie it probably would have worked. But in reality he got blown up and money scattered everywhere.

Lol. DO NOT EXPECT HOLLYWOOD MOVIE TO COME TRUE. FORGET ANY LEARNING ASPECT, YOU CANNOT LEARN ANYTHING FROM THEM!! (I made this mistake, maybe the only slightly realistic aspect is some, very few car chases and crashes. The gunfights are clearly not realistic, the pick-up lines do not really work with girls, and IRL if you try to deliver a dramatic monologue people do not appreciate it.

Lol. "I have a bomb! If you shoot - " BOOOM

(Except the ending of Resevoir Dogs, that seems pretty realistic, where they try to carjack a lady)
 
Tell me again where the grapefruit was?
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The grapefruit represents an effective head shot. One in the CNS in the head.

You put "None were injured" in bold letters. So? I never claimed that their marksmanship was degraded by their wounds. I stated that being shot at would degrade most folks' marksmanship.

Maybe I'm dense. Is your position that the police should have held their fire until one of them was injured or killed?
 
No doubt that incoming fire could affect one's aim Byron but only one officer was "shot at". Scenario - BG has his back to you as he tries to kill someone else. What do you do? Ping! Or were they all hiding behind the same trash can? ;)

How'd he miss the cop anyway? He got a little dog with one shot. What a strange thing. All my close encounters with bullets result in descriptions of where the bullets went, what they hit, how close they missed me by, the damage they did, even what they sounded like. Where are those details in this story? Is it possible the BG fired a warning shot into the air?

Sad for the lady but I too think it is possible for a hostage to bear some of responsibillity. This crack fiend was an aquaintance of hers? She hung around all night long and watched him smoke the stuff? Those are some really bad choices!
 
I can make a head shot @ 25 ft with a snubby!

when I go to the range I routinely make long distance head shots ...
I have a SP 101 in .357 mag..my secret? crimson trace!!

I am glad though I've never had to use it in a situation like that though.
I can't fault the cops on this shoot.

I bet that guy won't be taking anymore hostages
 
Maybe I'm dense. Is your position that the police should have held their fire until one of them was injured or killed?
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Maybe I'm dense. I am aparently laboring under the misconception that the police were called to this event to try to resolve a hostage crisis.

If I am correct in my conception, then this event was a complete utter failure.

I keep emboldening the fact that none of the officers was injured as an indication, to me anyway, that the bg was either so drugged as to be incompetent with the sawed off semi, so far away from the officers that the lethality of the sos was greatly minimized (and increasing the danger to the hostage of being hit with a stray round) or both.

Maybe the cops opened up before the bg even leveled the sos. Maybe the sos went off due to death contractions of the bg.

As a citizen, I do not measure the effectiveness of LE by how many cops return from a hostage situation with no injuries. Maybe LE does.

I measure their effectiveness by how many hostages get released.

Remember the old saw.....It's better that 100 guilty go free than one innocent get convicted? Maybe LE cannot see that it is better that 100 bgs get away than 1 innocent hostage get killed. Maybe they cannot see it.

Maybe they measure their effectiveness by how many bgs go down, regardless of the collateral damage to the proles.
 
The hostage situation was resolved. The bad guy was killed and the hostage was alive at the end of the situation. She just died later, but died a free woman...as if that matters. It was resolved.

In a hostage situation, the role of the police is not simply to rescue the hostages, but to preclude the bad guy(s) from getting away and to preclude others from getting injured or killed. The hostage was lost and apparently was lost specifically due to police gunfire. That is very bad, but the bad guy was stopped, the event ended, and no others became involved or were harmed in any way. So many aspects of the situation were resolved very well. One aspect turned out terrible.

I am sure nobody wanted the hostage to die, except maybe the kidnapper when the opportunity was right. There would have been no intent on behalf of the cops to shoot the hostage. As noted above, they need to determine who was involved in shooting the hostage and that person(s) be fired, then I would add that the person(s) needs to be arrested for manslaughter.

It sucks, but that is one of the risks of the job and the use of lethal force.
 
A few more details are available in this article. I won't post the whole thing, since it's mostly redundant, but the new information is below:

Brewer, 45, had a sawed-off shotgun in one hand. He held Tracy Wood in a headlock with his other arm, police Chief Steve Hogue said last week. He turned to his right and fired once at Sgt. John Preyer, who was crouched behind a blue plastic trash can.
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A plastic trash can. That's definitely concealment, not cover. Let's hear it for journalists who don't know there's a difference.

The Hillsborough Medical Examiner has not completed autopsy reports on Brewer and Wood. But office manager Dick Bailey said Thursday that examiners concluded Brewer, 45, died from "multiple gunshot wounds" to the torso, which perforated his lungs, spleen, liver, stomach, bowel, kidney and groin.

Wood, 33, died at Tampa General Hospital a few hours after the shooting from a single gunshot wound to the torso that perforated her lung, liver, kidney and bowel, Bailey said. That conclusion does not rule out other, non-lethal, gunshot wounds, he said.
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How could you possibly know from that article what part of the bad guy was exposed and what was not in order to even begin to question if they should have taken head shots or not? Can we end the speculation yet? :barf:
 
Doesn't look to me like they were trying for head shots.
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Can we end the speculation yet?
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By all means, we should end the speculation. Just because the reported shots were mid- to lower-torso hits says absolutely nothing about where the cops were aiming.
 
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