Could deadly force have been used.

[Rockwell1]

Not the same Loki

Mr loki you are not a police officer yourself, considering you have claimed to be a sniper in the armed forces, and I believe a gun store employee. The sniper situation was already proved to be false, so why are you claiming to be an officer now?

This guys been a member since 06 the wannabe's only been around a day or so

 

[shootistpd27]

I try to write those tickets but its always the mayors cousin, or the chiefs golfing buddys kid and the ticket gets thrown out. i never use radar. i speed so if i have to have a machine to tell me your speeding. i dont care. i wrote a girl for tailgating me in a patrol car. her granddad was the builing inspector. bye bye ticket

 

[GregGry]

my buick against the truck. IF there was no escape it seems to be the only way to scare him into backing off.

It comes down to weapon, intent, delivery system.

Did they have a weapon? Yes, the truck could serve as a weapon

Intent? The intent is iffy. There intent as far as I could tell was they wanted to drive as fast as you would allow. Believe it or not some drivers are just bad and they think they are ok if they follow you on your bumper. Since they think "well I have control of the throttle, and I wont hit them" they think they are ok. However to the person they are following its a completely different story. Again if the person had rammed your car, swerved in a manner to push you off the road (more so then in a case where they might not have seen you in their mirror) or something like that, you have intent. In the case posted the intent to cause you great bodily harm or death just isn't there. Its more of a case of bad driving on the truck drivers part.

Delivery system: The semi when used in a manner to put you off the road the delivery system.


We know the situation doesn't warrant the use of deadly force. However the displaying of force to end the situation can be appropriate. If a gun is the only option you have, and you can’t slow down/take a exit/speed up/escape the situation, then its better then nothing. However flashing a gun in that manner might not be legal per your states laws. Calling 911 on a cell phone and having the police show up will be a good thing to do. Since your not in a squad car, and you have your family to think of, its unsafe to try to take matters into your own hands in that situation.

I have been in the same situation as you except I was being tailgaited by a semi in a 1 lane construction zone. I really was afraid if I put on the brakes at all I was going to be run over. What I ended up doing is bailing on the next available exit. Even if the person was trying to ram me I would have tried to speed up as fast as I could rather then try to get a shot out to stop the driver had I been armed at the time. At high speeds and under stress the last thing you need to be worrying about is shooting behind you at such a small target. The semi has you beat, your car wont stand up to it, and odds of getting a shot that stops the threat is slim. Even displaying a gun isn’t likely to do much since the person might not even see it. Even if they do who knows how they will react. Its better to get the hell out of dodge if at all possible.

 

[swagner89]

thank you throttlejockey and mr.loki for stepping up and questioning that which needs to be questioned. so few are willing to do so. shootistpd27, the 1st amendment protects your right to free speech, and so protects my right as well. so if you continue to sling your bull**** in my path, i will be there to call you out! if you really were a police officer, i would shudder at not only your apparent ignorance for the precepts of law, but also for your ineptitude in dealing with any crisis situation. but i'm not worried...

 

[Rockwell1]

Goodnight

 

[MR.LOKI]

It is really much ado about nothing a larger vehicle was on your butt for a bit, wow welcome to driving a car, If your a cop that should not have caused all this bother, call it in if your that worried and have him stopped.

Wanting to brandish your gun at him, is what you wanted to do and you were posting here hoping to get support for that thought.

I do not believe you to be a full time Officer, you sound like a reserve who is ate up or a hanger on who has police friends. If I am mistaken my apologies but also in that case please run do not walk to your training Officer and ask for assistance.

 

[shootistpd27]

u can read swagner. but u cant comprehend. we have been discussing a scenario. no real action.

 

[Davek1977]

I came to a fork in the road and hit it very fast to shake the guy. Had the fork not been there and he kept on my bumper and had actually hit my bumper, would I have been justified exhibit my weapon out the window in his direction. I mean this guy could have killed my little girl and me. I am a cop myself

I find it INCREDIBLY scary we have members of law enforcement with such a poor understanding of the law that questions like this need to be asked, personaly

 

[GregGry]

Like I said I have no idea on his status. I do know that I have met many officers that didn't understand the use of force very well. It gets worse in states with poor training/standard levels for officers, and with older officers. I would like to think any officer in this state would know the answer to the question posted, however I know that simply isn't the case.

How I react and how other people that trained with me react can be very different. This was completely evident in scenario based training. Everyone was close to the same page in book training, but everyone reacted completely different in the actual hands on scenarios. Some were good, others were bad (Such as fellow students/officers in training knee striking people who didn't listen to their orders.

The moral of this story is that he apparently did the best thing possible, and that if he is in law enforcement he knows that he needs to take some refresher courses.

 

[GregGry]

I find it INCREDIBLY scary we have members of law enforcement with such a poor understanding of the law that questions like this need to be asked, personaly

You aren't required to be an expert on the use of force to be an officer, just reaonable. There are numerous people that I witnessed do insanely stupid things in recruit training, such as shooting a unarmed person 2 times with a sim gun, (the person was on his knees, hands visable), and students that knee struck people with no reason to. Some of the people gave me doubts as to their ability to understand the use of force. They all passed the classes despite their questionable responses in training. I assure you that they would easily be capable of asking questions such as the on in the OP and much much worse.

 

[swagner89]

shootistpd27- "we have been discussing a scenario. no real action." exactly. this is all fairy tale. so why don't you just pose the question as hypothetical, instead of making up phony stories? the former i wouldnt mind; the latter is wasting my time more than i already have. quit BS'ing and be real.

GregGry- if you have met officers that are as retarded as the premise of this story, then that is REALLY scary, because i believe you are genuine.

 

[GregGry]

Past instructors of mine have talked about going down to Georgia and southern states to do legal training. They said that they ran into officers that couldn't write, so they had to call another officer to show up to write the ticket. This was 8 to 10 years ago that this happened to them, so in all fairness things are likely better and I am sure that such things didn't reflect more then a small percentage of officers.

I have even been witness to officers asking law professors how they could "work around a law". When it comes to use of force my state has significant training requirements when compared to other states. That doesn't mean its impossible to get hired unless your a use of force master. I know of many people that can pass the classes but they can't really comprehend the use of force on the fly. Thus there were people knee striking others when it wasn't justified. I have always taken that careful "in control approach" to things. I easily found out who was like me when it came to pursuit driving, and general handling of vehicle skills. To many people tried to push the car to the limits and past. In all fairness it was mostly younger people.



I will admit the original post did have me worried because I would expect a trained officer would understand the answer to the question posed. In my case I can pretty much figure out on my own the chances of use of force being legal/justified. However not everyone I know is capable of doing such a thing. It really is unfortunate that they would be in charge of so many things that deal with the use of force yet they don't truly understand it.

 

[Davek1977]

I assure you that they would easily be capable of asking questions such as the on in the OP and much much worse.

LOL...well, that does anything but reassure me!!! You'd think the use of force would be an area training was comprehensive in. I realize theres a lot to learn about being a cop, but common sense should be a requirement, you'd think. I too had to learn the use of force continum as a corrections officer, and while not what I'd call an "expert" in the field, it seeemd pretty straightforeward and based in common sense...more or less, never use more force than is necessary to control the situation at hand. I realize thats a gross oversimplification, but in reality, thats what it boils down to.

I still find it EXTREMELY scary we have LEO's who are so confused as to when they can and can't pull a gun that he'd even PONDER waving a gun out the window at someone tailgating him. Maybe I missed it, but was pulling over to the side of the road and allowing the truck by ever considered as an option? Lord knows I'd do that before thinking I was justified in blasting the guy....

I am a cop myself, I wouldnt prosecute someone in my shoes who did that

I didnt say that I could prosecute

its easy enough to see why people would jump on that detail, the way you've written it......

 

[fingerbanger]

" Mr loki you are not a police officer yourself, considering you have claimed to be a sniper in the armed forces, and I believe a gun store employee. The sniper situation was already proved to be false, so why are you claiming to be an officer now? "

If I was drinking milk it would have come out my nose.

Alright I can't help but laugh my arse off at this. So you have been a member since 06 and have all of 5 posts? And decide to chime in now. Talk about bad timing! You do know that like yesterday, some jackball named Loki was pretending to be some super secrete sniper right? I'm not bashing man, I have taken some heat for my screen name too, but you have to see the humor in this.

 

[GregGry]

Yes it was apparently bad timing. The post count was correct for the other person. I guess i can't be faulted for jumping the gun so to say, since the odds of the name being very similar are pretty low. Especially with the post count.

 

[Just One Shot]

If you are in fact a LEO,

I don't understand why you didn't make your get away by pulling to the side of the road, take up a position behind the truck and then call your local Police/Sheriff dept. and ask for assistance.

Even when not in uniform you can still call for backup. I'm no lawyer but isn't there a thing called citizen's arrest that could apply in situations where human life is placed in jeopardy?

 

[Art Eatman]

Asking about behavior in a threatening traffic situation? Folks seem willing to get conned into almost any subject, even when guns are not part of the discussion.

This is THR, not "Common Sense 101".