All this has taught me that if confronted by the police is to interlock/interlace fingers on top of head, drop to knees, and tell the "officers" to get my gun, cause I ain't going to touch it.
This incident has woke me up to the point if I were in a mall packed with people, armed and some crazed individual started shooting, I may not draw my weapon, but instead just walk out.
You don't shoot people just because they are holding a weapon, period.
It takes "well trained" individual well over a second and a half to bring a holstered a weapon to bear, acquire a target, and fire. This is from a open carry holster, speed holster if you like. (A CCW holster, depending on the type could take extra seconds.)
It takes most others three tenths of a second to "react" to anyones "action".
My point is, if I (or most anyone else) had a gun "drawn" on you, giving you commands, there isn't an individual in the world that could unholster, bring a weapon to bear and shoot me before I sent him to his maker.
You do the math.
"He was going for his gun", is pure hollywood.
Seems to me this was a very, very bad shoot.
Edit to add: I don't blame the officers, I blame their training. This is the same "well trained" police department that, just four years ago fired over 600 rounds, at one guy, and not achieve the desired effect, not until a former army veteran ended the five hour gunfight. Their training officers need to be re-evaluated.
Team Sergeant
May 12, 2006
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Sniper tells of fatal shots
After 15 minutes, jury rules police shooting in standoff justified
By FRANCIS McCABE
Charles Collingwood nestled the butt of his .308-caliber Accuracy International sniper rifle against his shoulder and peered through the scope.
He had a "crystal clear" view of unit 265 of the Woodridge Villas apartment complex, from which Christopher Scott Hawkins had engaged police in a standoff for nearly five hours on Feb. 9.
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Collingwood, a 13-year Metropolitan Police Department veteran, lay on the roof of a house on Arthur Avenue, more than 100 yards from Hawkins' apartment in the complex near Eastern and Owens avenues.
After 10 canisters of tear gas were lobbed into his apartment, Hawkins fired a flurry of shots from a .40-caliber Glock semiautomatic handgun. One round buzzed over Collingwood's head.
"I needed to stop the threat," Collingwood told jurors Thursday during the Clark County coroner's inquest into the fatal shooting of Hawkins by police.
The SWAT sniper said he adjusted his scope, put the cross hairs on the bridge of Hawkins' nose and squeezed the trigger.
All told, 44 law enforcement officers fired their guns that day. Hawkins used more than 50 rounds of ammunition.
Police countered with more than 600 rounds.
No one knows for sure who fired the fatal bullet, said Sgt. Russell Shoemaker, who investigated the case.
After the jury found the actions of police justified, officer Robert Schmidt, who was the first officer to arrive in response to the marijuana complaint, was asked whether he was happy.
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_ho...s/7365518.html