http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/national_world&id=8787034

Great work, NYPD.

The NYPD has never overreacted with a massive amount of gunfire in the past, right?

At least this time the guy actually had a gun.

Don't get me wrong, they probably did the right thing. It's just a shame that innocent people were injured.

SIDE NOTE: When the gunman has been shot 10 times, you've probably fired too many times.

Considering gun fights last only a few seconds and they were in "oh ****" mode, I doubt they were counting hits. At least they *did* hit though, nothing like hearing about police shootouts where nobody scores a hit from 15 feet.

Just in case it wasn't clear from the article, the NYPD officers were the only people who opened fire during this shooting. The gunman had murdered his boss earlier, who was supposedly his only target.

Edit: The NYPD officers were able to take down an armed man before he had a chance to return fire and hurt anybody else. That's really good. Yeah it sucks that 9 bystanders were injured, but that's just the reality of it, especially when weapons as inaccurate as pistols are involved.

The fact that two trained police officers could only get a ~60% accuracy with their weapons illustrates exactly why I don't think untrained civilians should be allowed to carry them.

Trained but inexperienced...
I agree that it's good that they took him out, but I think it was a problem that they shot way more rounds than necessary, and opened fire without regard to the others around. I know they made a split-decision, but their job is to protect, not to harm.

Ideally speaking, they should have each fired 2 rounds, and if they can't have enough accuracy with their weapons to hit a man sized target at 50 yards or less, then they should be given training until they can, or taken out of a role where they might have need to employ gunfire.

How are two fifteen-year veterans of the NYPD inexperienced?

Cadrill's problem with that headline is this:

"IF THEY WERE TRAINED NAVY MEN SUCH AS MYSELF, THEY WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN INJURED."

...

"THEY'D BE DEAD."

15-year veterans. If they haven't found a reason to shoot someone before this, they were probably doing something right.

If they were using rifles, maybe. Come off it, Sarn. Their sidearms - and your M9 - have a maximum effective range of 50 yards. Hitting a man-sized target at 50 yards is a coin toss. Now try doing it after shooting an epipen.

bull. There's a reason they call it max "effective" range. It's the range at which a properly trained individual can employ the weapon effectively and accurately. Besides which, (I can't find any specifics, but) it's likely they were significantly closer than 50 yards anyway. It was a busy New York City sidewalk. If they were 50 yards away, they probably wouldn't have been able to even see the guy.

In their defense (and this is why I said "Ideally speaking" which you ignored), they were in a tense moment with only a couple of seconds to react, so you have to expect human error. But if they were trained properly, this sort of an incident should simply not happen. Neither should this.

Google accidental police shootings. My whole point is that there is an incredible deficiency in the training and/or screening of police officers.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/transit-holstering-gun-accidentally-shoots-harlem-suspect-leg-article-1.1141988 (Why would you holster a weapon with the safety off in the first place?)
Or, perhaps you've seen this video before:

(Maybe take your finger off the trigger if you're not in the process of firing?)

I could post example after example of police officers negligently discharging their weapons while violating BASIC weapon safety rules.

No, Sarn. The US military defines maximum effective range as the range at which a properly trained soldier can be reasonably expected to achieve a 50% accuracy across multiple shots, on a static range with stationary targets.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/24/empire-state-building-shooting-video_n_1829400.html

Looks like about 12 feet and 20 feet.

I agree completely. I just don't think military sharpshooter training is a part of the answer, especially when switching to bullpup rifles would give the 'good' officers an order of magnitude accuracy improvement at the same standard of training.

Once a chuckle****, always a chuckle****. Bad trigger discipline isn't just bad training, it's bad people.

Just because someone has military grade firearms training doesn't necessarily mean they're any less of a ****bag when it comes to the handling and operation of firearms. For example, according to some reports the Army would shoot at ****ing anything in Iraq, even obvious friendlies (Like Marines). Also a GM probably isn't gonna be my go to guy for marksmanship lectures.

So yeah, that was kinda scary. I work a few blocks away and thankfully it never made it that far. They had 5th ave closed right up to the corner I work on.




Shut up. The Empire State Building at rush hour is surrounded by hundreds of people. Considering what could have happened, 9 people is a relatively good number. Also, they all survived. I am much happier that they took those shots then let that lunatic walk further uptown (hey, thats towards my office!), possibly causing more casualties. The Police DID protect people.

Also, I read somewhere that the trigger pull weight (Fairly sure thats not the right term) for the NYPDs pistol is 12lbs over the standard 5.5lbs which may have caused some of the inaccuracies in firing.

Most sources i found are saying around 12lbs, or a minimum of 12 lbs.
something about the revolvers that the NYPD used to use having a 12lb pull weight, then when they switched to glock they (instead of training for the 5.5lb trigger) re-engineered them to have the same 12lb trigger, but it just ended up being cumbersome and causing problems. Dont know if that is accurate at all or not.???

They use a 9MM pistol with a 12 lb trigger pull (yes that is the correct term). However, this is pretty standard for a double action pistol (double action meaning a pull of the trigger cocks and releases the hammer). It's not necessarily true that a hefty trigger pull is a bad thing for marksmanship shooting. (One thing to keep in mind is that they use DAO (double action only) pistols, which means the trigger pull is constant between shots (as opposed to a DA/SA which has a heavy first pull then significantly lighter subsequent pulls). A DAO trigger is actually SIGNIFICANTLY easier to fire accurately than a DA/SA trigger.)

Anyway, pat, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they made the wrong choice in opening fire on him (especially considering the gunman pointed his gun at them). I'm just saying these two (and in general, all police officers or anyone who carries a firearm) should have their shooting capability carefully scrutinized, and based on all the stories you hear about police negligently and/or inaccurately firing their weapons, this doesn't seem to be happening. Instead, when one of these sorts of incidents happens, it tends to be justified and swept under the rug.

------
Jon`C, can you provide me with a reference on your definition of max effective range? I researched it after you provided it, and you're at least partially right (I did find references to the 50% accuracy), but from what I can tell it's 50% accuracy for an "average" shooter, not a "properly trained soldier" (who in my mind should be far better than "average").

And knowing the area like the back of my hand I'll once again say that 9 is an incredibly low number. Scrutinize all you want, but the NYPD didn't screw up.

I think there is probably a large span between "screwing up" and having "room for improvement".

There's no way to simulate the stresses of what it's like to be forced to open fire on an armed criminal. Even at 15 years experience, these two may have never done it once. We're talking about actual cops, not Vic Mackey. Odds are good that they probably shouldn't have popped off so many rounds, but that's neither here nor there.

And sure, the maximum effective range for most handguns is about 50 yards. But that's a point target. That means you will likely hit somewhere on that person's body. This is not a good metric to use, because it just means it's possible to hit someone at that range. Now, if they were 25 yards or less away, then we're talking about an area target, in which case we should believe that they should be able to deliver over 50% of their rounds to the center mass of the target. This is more apt for this scenario. At this point, in a stressed scenario, anything close to 50% accuracy is still passable even by military standards. They hit him 10 times total. Most of those rounds should have been center mass, but like I said, we're talking about a high stress situation, and that has to be taken into account.

It's not outstanding by any means. Would I prefer that they each fired about 20 shots and managed to land them all directly in the guy's chest? Yes. That's the ideal situation, but it's also wildly unrealistic. We're not dealing with Officers Riggs and Murtaugh, here. This also isn't a shooting range. I don't care what you can do at what range when you're shooting at a god damned B-Mod.

It is unfortunate that civilians were hurt, but it is more fortunate that no one else was killed. That's the idea, right? To protect the lives of innocent people, isn't it? Would you prefer a fragment of a 9mm bullet in a non lethal area, or a complete .45 slug in your lung? I know that's a ****ty comparison to draw, but that's what we're dealing with at that point. It's a screw-up, by all accounts, but the two cops still did the right thing.

that's all I was trying to say. Given it's a high pedestrian traffic area, 9 people hit by fragments/shrapnel is almost next to nothing.

To be clear, I'm not calling into question their decision to open fire.. I'm calling into question the level of training they received (to include the regular proficiency training they should be receiving.)

Bottom line is, they fired too many rounds with too little accuracy for the situation. I'm just raising the question, can we do better? I believe that we can.

Your face injured 9 bystanders.

The point is that most shooters with military training couldn't have done any better.

Let me dump you in a simunitions scenario and see how well you (don't) do...

I think you'll be surprised.