I have to agree with you redneckdan. Alcohol and firearms do not mix. My off duty weapon stays in my vehicle when I'm imbibing. I think the officers in New York were justified. Each officer there percieved a threat and acted accordingly as he was trained.
Unfortunately, some officers don't agree, in particular the NYPD officer who ran over and killed a pregnant(?) woman while driving drunk.
I perceive the problem of the extant incident as not just the individual officers' actions, but of the fundamental conception of many of these undercover operations. The more I read about this incident, the more I'm convinced that the victims believed they were being carjacked or worse. It's entirely possible that the driver also perceived a threat and acted accordingly. If you pull a gun on ME, and I'm not 100% sure you're a cop, I'm running you down, ramming your car, and anything else I need to do to protect myself. I'm a big believer in "citizen safety". If a policeman fails to properly ID himself and makes himself a credible threat to my life and limb, either through negligence or malice, his immediate prospects aren't looking so good. In the Army, they taught me to drive right through the attacking elements of a vehicular ambush. That's exactly what a carjacking is, and that's exactly what I intend to do if it happens to me.
Regardless of the culpability of individual officers, some of these operations seem ill-conceived, if not outright totally irresponsible. Take for instance the operation in which Patrick Dorismond was shot to death by police. Badgering people in the street to sell drugs, to the point of public nuisance doesn't seem like something police should be doing. Shooting an unarmed man who threatened somebody for doing it would appear to be a crime, at least to anyone but the NYPD and any place besides New York City. Similarly, if the building evidence indicates that the police who fired fifty rounds at three unarmed men, acted in such a way as to make themselves look like criminals, there's a serious problem. Apart from the police on the scene, who may have been put in an untenable position by their orders, the higher-ups who formulated this operation and approved its execution should have their careers ended and their finances depleted. Criminal charges should not be out of the question.
