How often civilians and police hit bystanders

[Jeff White]

1. The previous poster is correct. Cops are civilians in every legal sense of the word.

We aren't going to sidetrack this thread with that discredited, and totally irrelevant discussion. Is that understood? You can have that discussion on some other forum but you can't have it here. Is that understood? I am going to be very clear here. If you continue in that line of discussion here, we will help you find another place where you'd be more comfortable. We aren't playing those silly games in here any longer. I can't be any clearer then that.

2. The 11% number isn't too awfully unbelieveable when you compare it to the documented "miss rate" of cops ................... which has held steady at 81% for the past five years.

Source?

 

[dawg23]

1. Sorry to have disagreed with a Moderator. Thanks for the threat..

2. Source: http://www.ncjrs.gov/app/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=203152

Here's a link to the full article: http://www.policeone.com/writers/columnists/PoliceMagazine/articles/77165/ "Vast majority of shots are taken at 21 feet or less ....... with a hit rate of 12-18%.

 

[Jeff White]

It's not a threat, it's a promise. You can disagree with staff all you want. But you can't hijack a thread with an irrelevant discussion over the proper use of a word in common use. You'll soon find this in a sticky on the rules of engagement here. This is the accepted definition of the word civilian:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civilian

civilian
One entry found.

Main Entry:
ci·vil·ian Listen to the pronunciation of civilian
Pronunciation:
\sə-ˈvil-yən also -ˈvi-yən\
Function:
noun
Date:
14th century

1: a specialist in Roman or modern civil law2 a: one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force b: outsider 1
— civilian adjective

You will find the term used by it's common definition in many references and publications that we use. Threads will not be hijacked with off topic comments about the police being civilians. Regardless of your personal feelings on the subject it is not an appropriate topic for the Strategies and Tactics Forum.

 

[HIcarry]

Statistical analysis without level one evidence is worthless. Especially in a nationwide study. If you pick and choose where you take your data from, you can draw all kinds of conclusions and all of them would be wrong when applied nationwide.

Tell that to your doctor who bases most of his/her decisions on information from level 2 and lower studies.

You could not garner information that was useful nationwide from the NYPD's SOP #9 for the simple reason that there are no uniform training and use of force standards throughout the country. NYPD's firearms training is more then many departments get and also much less then a lot of departments get. There are also almost as many use of force policies as there are different police departments.

For a study to produce useful data on nationwide trends it would have to have nationwide data. There are too many different training standards and use of force policies to to come up with nationwide data that had any meaning at all.

I never said it was only to produce useful nationwide data. I did say that lacking any other factual information, it can be used to formulate some conclusions. Will it be statistically accurate once your 8-10 year study (after the appropriations are passed by congress for the grants...) is done. I don't know. Why don't you write that grant and get something started, as it seems such an easy thing to do.

 

[Jeff White]

Tell that to your doctor who bases most of his/her decisions on information from level 2 and lower studies.

I will ask him about that next time I see him.

I never said it was only to produce useful nationwide data. I did say that lacking any other factual information, it can be used to formulate some conclusions

What conclusions could you reasonably formulate and how accurate do you think they would be? Whatever conclusions you formulated would only be applicable to the group you studied. They would have no relevance to any other group or even regionally or worldwide.

Kleck's so called work is a perfect example of manufacturing data to produce a preconceived result. Kleck admitted in his interview that he counted as a defensive gun use, reports where the subject could never even verify that there was an assailant. Basically during the telephone interviews in one of his studies, people who armed themselves after hearing a bump in the night were credited with the same defensive gun use as the person who actually shot an attacker. Had to invent a criteria for defensive gun uses to get the numbers up there and make his point and sell books. In fact it was Kleck's outlandish and totally unbelievable conclusions that got me looking in to how these studies are done....It's not science, it's fraud.

Will it be statistically accurate once your 8-10 year study (after the appropriations are passed by congress for the grants...) is done. I don't know. Why don't you write that grant and get something started, as it seems such an easy thing to do.

I just might do that. It would be valuable for the training community.

 

[WardenWolf]

But, doing all this while still going through an insulated metal door kind of surprised me!

Believe it or not, these light metal doors are probably less effective at stopping a bullet than a solid wooden door. They're made with a light metal shell, a foam interior, and another metal shell. In essence, it's like shooting through a soda can, only a little bit tougher. The interior really doesn't have any effect on the bullet, either. Whereas with a wooden door, the wood compresses and is a solid barrier throughout its thickness, with a hollow metal door it just blows clean through with negligible impact on velocity.

Such doors are designed to resist crowbars and kick-ins, not bullets. They work for this purpose because they can bend without splintering and failing completely. They're less effective versus a bullet, though. They're such a light gauge of steel that a bullet or a fire axe would go right through them.

Bottom line: if you want real protection, either get a quality metal-lined hardwood door with proper latches and reinforcement or stick with a solid hardwood door. A metal doorframe also dramatically helps.

 

[HIcarry]

What conclusions could you reasonably formulate and how accurate do you think they would be? Whatever conclusions you formulated would only be applicable to the group you studied. They would have no relevance to any other group or even regionally or worldwide.

Really? So, if I studied a large group of 65 year-old white males in New York, say for the efficacy of a new hypertensive medication, any conclusions made about how effective it was and the risk/benefit ratio couldn't be used to extrapolate possible results for a similar group in Florida? How exactly do you think folks that do a lot of research, like drug companies, get the OK to proceed with testing on larger and larger groups? That's right, from small groups. Are they always right? Nope. But they are sometimes.

All I am saying is, that in light of the lack of information from well controlled studies on the subject, we have to use what we have. Somewhere between your "there is no information 'cause it's not a level 1, randomized, double-blinded study" and "it's the Gospel according to Kleck" there is a middle ground. One that will look at the available data, judge it's relevance and reliability, and formulate a conclusion. That is the nature of research. Heck, even with good, well controlled studies, things can get confusing. Just look at the back-and-forth on the HRT stuff out there. There's lots of information about that, and much of it level 1, and all of those doctors arguing the pros and cons are surely not uneducated on the subject.

So what conclusions could we get from an admittedly less than great scientific study, such as the one that spurred this debate? How about that, in general, increased concealed carry won't cause folks to go out shooting each other any more than they already do. Or, that based on available data, it doesn't seem likely that the Brady claims of boatloads of innocent bystanders getting shot isn't reality based. That's not terribly specific, but it's something factually-based, and it's better than nothing. And, who knows, maybe it will spur more research on the subject....yours included.

 

[HIcarry]

So the percentages stated are not for the whole of the US, but from a study of newspaper articles from Missouri? There is a lot to be said for the amount of non-representation of data from newspaper stories as the basis for such statistics.

I also noticed that it did not say that police shot bystanders 11% of the time as suggested above, but they mistook wrong people as bad guys 11% of the time.

Nope, appears not. As Jeff has said, no such database exists. The wording of the paragraph is less than ideal. It states that "Only 2% of shootings by civilians, but 11% of shootings by police, involved an innocent person mistakenly thought to be a criminal." So one might conclude it only involved shootings, not necessarily injuries. On the other hand, it isn't too difficult to interpret it the other way either.

And you're right, there may be a lot missing. But, what if the authors of the study ised the news reports to start investigating the shooting? What if they used information from those stories and then contacted and verifed the reports and excluded those they couldn't? Would that make the study "better?" So, I guess it needs to be determined where the numbers came from. Maybe reading the book from which the numbers came from would be a good start.

 

[ilbob]

Does anyone have a source for how often police and civilians hit innocent bystanders in self defense incidents? I thought it was something like 11% for police and 3% for civilians.

If you counted fellow police officers as innocent bystanders, I might buy it.

I might also buy the notion that cops might end up shooting in situations where there are more likely to be innocent bystanders than are non-cops.

So, I might be able to see that is the case.

I would want to see the raw data though.

It might also be instructive to see just what period of time the data came from. Police training these days is substantially better than it was 20 years ago.

 

[Dulvarian]

Well, personally, I think the issue could be solved if all the criminal investigative branches of local, state, and federal services used a standard computerized form and it all went into a database.

You could even make it really easy to use with little dropdown boxes in it. You could even include a little thingy to click to say whether or not you were certain of the data.

You could get data like... home owner shot 13 rounds of .45 acp at BG and hit him all 13 times.

That's about the only way that you could get reliable data. Truthfully, that is something that should have been done a long time ago. Hell, use of touch screens with drop downs would make it a lot faster for a cop to fill out a report.

 

[hankdatank1362]

and has used acceptable methods of extrapolating data from a small population to a larger one (done all the time in research and statistics) it should be recognized as provinding some usable information.

In this instance, the "extrapolation" would be technically known as "disproportionate stratified sampling" and is subject to many, many forms of bias and logical fallacies.

The biggest threat lies in the generalizability of the research; that is, the external validity of the research (can it be applied uniformly across all departments and expect similar results?) and the construct validity of the research (is it possible that the sampling took place in departments where officers have little training or experience with firearms?)

Source: Research methods for Criminology & Criminal Justice, 5th Ed. Michael Maxfield / Earl Babbie

 

[soullight]

cops

Let me preface this post by stating credentials. I have been a "cop" for 23 years, worked in 3 states. I am the chief firearms instructor for my department. I have found that the majority of the people I deal with in the department are the same people they were before they became an officer. Meaning if they were a gun enthusiast before being sworn in they were afterwords. On the other hand, if they were not a firearms person before attending the academy, they were not afterwords. Many of the non gun people carry one because they have to for the job. They shoot once a year cause they have to. This fact has always intrigued me. Many of the new breed of Law enforcement join the force and have never shot a gun, yet they will be carrying one every day. It would seem that the selection process for law enforcement needs to be more cognizant of the firearms aspect of the job. This is what I have experienced on the job.

 

[Old Guy]

I doubt a pistol bullet would have enough energy left in it to do much damage after traveling through a human body, but I'd still like to see some case studies or hard facts about it.

When the Police in Ontario Canada were about to transition from Revolvers to pistols, it was found that the previous stupid (oops sorry) rule of semi-wad-cutter lead projectile would not work, but even prior to that the hollow point (called dum-dum bullets by the AG of Ontario) came under fire.

The Cops wanted HPLSW at 158g +p velocity's.

As the Politicians did not trust the Cop's? Surprise! They still don't, I as a private (non Police) Firearms Instructor received a call, from an under sectary? Whatever that was, on this subject.

"Could one of the solid bullets go right through a bad guy (he said bad guy!) and strike and kill an innocent bystander"

"As we are having more and more Vietnamese Gangsters getting in to firefights with the Police, very small and light people, a bullet could quite easily go right through, and kill a grandma" Said I.
"I will pass this on to the Minister" he said.

They did allow the change, any mention of new Canadians being targeted in any way, Officials run away! Was it my statement, that did it? Who knows.

Probably as the many thousands of misses don't seem to hit much, it might not be such a problem, yes?

 

[Old Guy]

Soullight.

I taught around 500 students a year, for 23 years, Security, and Police... The Police, first question on entering the range, "What time are we done?"

And even tho they were supposed to arrive in Uniform, Jeans were 99% the dress.

The new breed, better! And wear their vests.

As I am retired now (more or less) not sure how it has gone since 2003.

Keep Safe.

 

[soullight]

officers

I work as a juvenile probation parole officer currently. We are academy trained and certified police officers. Many probation officers in other states are not armed certified officers. My experiences have been somewhat different than yours. Out of 50 probation officers working in the district, only about 10 are suitable to go on an arrest team. We use arrest teams to bring in violators. I am the head of that team. The rest of the officers are as described. They only wear a gun when they have to, don't bring a flash light on a take down, etc. I also have a good friend who is a firearms instructor for a local agency. We find the same factors over there. The people who can shoot are the gun people who already trained with their guns prior to employment. The people who work out and train are those who did it before joining the force. I have also found that our population is changing. I grew up in the deep south. My dad and uncle taught me to shoot and hunt. I am finding that the urbanization of america is resulting in fewer and fewer people hunting and enjoying guns. This results in m ore police recruits who have never fired a gun.

 

[soullight]

training

I have also found that the training our recruits receive is more liability conscious than effectiveness based. Our defensive tactics training is very much lacking in reality based techniques. Out post firearms course does not accurately reflect reality. Our current administration does not encourage firearms proficiency just basic competency. As a trainer, I am given the minimal time to give instruction. We do the best we can with the resources we have.

 

[soullight]

training

I forgot to mention, they still say how long will this take and when are we done, just like your guys did.

 

[Erik]

"Only 2% of shootings by civilians, but 11% of shootings by police, involved an innocent person mistakenly thought to be a criminal."

The author is not talking about un-involved third parties being shot accidentally, but people being mis-identified as involved parties and purposefully shot. The issue is not of accuracy, but of identification. Does anyone not understand how a civilian is less likely to misidentify the criminal attacking them than the police a criminal attacking another? It is the reason we have all of those "what to do when the police show up" threads. And in that context, the statistical variation makes sense.

 

[soullight]

identification

another factor might be contact. Police come into more situations, by nature of the profession, to have to use deadly force. the sheer number of police contact/use of deadly force would skew the number over civilians. I agree with the moderator that it would be a very difficult issue to study and the context and variables of the study would be hard to quantify.

 

[Old Guy]

When looking at any incident of contact, in violence, between any one, and I mean anyone, the variables are basically a million fold.

All of them have one common denominator, one or the other combatant is going to be hurt, even killed, sometimes both of you!

An other factor, not always true, but a lot of times is so, he who brings the most to this contest, and delivers the first blow (or shot)s) wins!

When I was in my twenty's (1955 and up) and working in Liverpool on the door of the Cavern and the Blue Angel, hitting/kicking/head butting, and doing it first, was a way of life (mind you I did get stabbed twice!) the same actions now would probably end in jail!

What that did build, which has never gone away, was the body language sense valve! a huge asset. Plus the instant start to move, no "I wonder what should I do now" pause. This is exactly like the non thought twitch of the steering wheel at 70 mph, to avoid a potentially horrible accident, because you have driven a couple of million miles to build that twitch, that instant reflex.

An other major asset, you can back down much easier, your ego is not such an important factor, if it is not fueled by the need to show off, all ends in a less traumatic manner.

And having 16 rounds of 127g WW Ranger 9mm rounds just a moment away, does give you a few more options.

Keep Safe.