Die Hard 2

ajstoner21

ajstoner21

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So, I was watching Die Hard 2 today, and it got me thinking about airport security, and TSA, and police officers. John McClane has seen a lot of gun fights in this series.

What percentage of police officers actually get shot at, at least once, during their career? Any guesses? I have no idea and was wondering...
 
I'm not a police officer. But I have three confirmed kills to my credit if that counts.
 
I am a cop. In the training I've had, I've heard anywhere from 85-95% of cops will never be in gunfight. I don't know how accurate that is, but I think the number of officer involved shootings has been rising over the last few years. My agency has seen a lot of shootings in 2011, with multiple officers shot and killed. This year has been very bad for us. During one arrest, I had my gun drawn on a suspect. I saw a gun lying 2 feet from him on his bed. He kept looking at the gun. I had to flat out tell him he would get shot if he went for it. He saw my reasoning, and didnt do anything stupid. We've arrested people who have had guns on their bodies. All it would have taken was them to reach into a pocket and start shooting. In 8 years I have used my gun once in the line of duty. And that was to protect myself from 3 pitbulls. It is dangerous out there, but we all know movies are completely full of ****.
 
JB1842 said:
I am a cop. In the training I've had, I've heard anywhere from 85-95% of cops will never be in gunfight. I don't know how accurate that is, but I think the number of officer involved shootings has been rising over the last few years. My agency has seen a lot of shootings in 2011, with multiple officers shot and killed. This year has been very bad for us. During one arrest, I had my gun drawn on a suspect. I saw a gun lying 2 feet from him on his bed. He kept looking at the gun. I had to flat out tell him he would get shot if he went for it. He saw my reasoning, and didnt do anything stupid. We've arrested people who have had guns on their bodies. All it would have taken was them to reach into a pocket and start shooting. In 8 years I have used my gun once in the line of duty. And that was to protect myself from 3 pitbulls. It is dangerous out there, but we all know movies are completely full of ****.
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Thanks for sharing Josh! I'd imagine being a cop can be very scary some times! Stay safe!
 
I'm a state trooper and according to www.odmp.org there have been 112 officers killed so far this year, 46 by gunfire which is an increase of 18% from last year. My department has had two trooper involved shootings that I can think of so far this year. The first was killed by a trooper after the bad guy killed a deputy sheriff. The second was killed by a trooper after he charged him with a knife. 2011 has been a bad year for us so far.
I would agree with Josh that probably 90-95% of officers will never be involved in a shooting is fairly accurate.
 
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I do a lot of dispatch listening. You'd have to also be careful about the statistics because "getting shot at" and "being involved in a shooting" could really be messed with.

When a shots-fired call went out earlier this year in Edgewater, CO - there was a response of 15-20 officers from Denver, Lakewood, Edgewater, and the State Patrol.

Later when the gunman continued firing randomly down the street, a SWAT team and a mobile command post vehicle, were called in, as well as Denver's mobile armored personnel carrier to go drag out four cops and two civilians who were "being shot at" who were pinned down in a bad location a couple of blocks away. They heard ricochets on and off all night while hiding behind a wall until the vehicle came and gave them transportation and cover to get out of there.

This type of thing, you could come up with all sorts of opinions on the number of officers "involved in a shooting", and how many were actually "shot at".

Even more amazing? Virtually not covered by local news. I guess the night crew at the TV and radio news were asleep.

Was a good listen for anyone doing Emergency Services communications work. The Dispatchers had their hands full with that many agencies involved. Denver's analog EDACS radio system being patched to the State's digital APCO P-25 and Lakewood's analog systems simultaneously -- worked -- but the Lakewood guys were on the edge of their receiver coverage and noisy, making their transmissions generally worthless, the State Patrol sounded like the usual underwater ducks on the highly compressed digital narrowband system which caused some confusion at times, and only Denver was super clean and clear-sounding throughout on their analog EDACS system that's got a bejillion receiver sites.

Radio interop is truly here in Denver but it needs a lot of work still. Goid to hear that all the connections and patches worked to interconnect the systems when needed. but the system that sounded/worked the best will have to be phased out for narrow banding sometime soon.

The mish-mash of different phraseology didn't cause any significant trouble, but seemed kinda weird since these agencies all border each other but don't exactly speak the same lingo. Callsigns were a total mess during a welfare check though. You could tell that was a challenge for the Dispatchers as they stumbled over unfamiliar sounding callsigns.

Anyway, counting the officers "involved" versus "shot at" in that indecent would have been interesting.
 
I think that if you take all policemen nationwide, the rate of incidence is low. But if you look at certain specialty units (narcotics, fugitive recovery) the numbers will be higher, simply because of the situations those units are dealing with.
 
denverpilot said:
You'd have to also be careful about the statistics because "getting shot at" and "being involved in a shooting" could really be messed with.
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Precisely.
In my career, I discharged my weapon once, killing a Great Dane that the owner had sic'd on me. Not the dog's fault, but what are you gonna do?

On the other hand, I have been shot AT numerous times, but either:

1 - Could not locate the source of the shots.
a - Walking down the sidewalk in the projects, someone opened up on me and my partner. The rounds hit the wall around us, about 20 rounds, but we could not identify the source and engage before the guy just disappeared into the darkness. Multiply this incident numerous times.
b - Took rounds in the helicopter twice. Once we could see muzzle flashes and knew we were getting shot at, once we found the hole in post-flight inspection.

2 - Could identify the source, but could not engage
a - Guy shot at us during a riot, but he was in the middle of the crowd and we could not return fire. Two incidents like this.
b - Gunfight between the dopers and Hell's Angels, during which one member came out on the HA House balcony with a rifle sniping dopers. We got there, and he shot at us, but with pistols and shotguns and a large open area in front of the house, we could not effectively engage him. Once SWAT snipers got there, he gave up.
c - Two robbers shot two officers and ran into a wooded area. We attempted to track them, but they were shooting at us with rifles and we had pistols and shotguns. They were able to drive us out of the wooded area, but could keep them contained until SWAT went in and got them.

Police get shot AT a whole more more than they shoot back.
 
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PilotAlan said:
Precisely.
In my career, I discharged my weapon once, killing a Great Dane that the owner had sic'd on me. Not the dog's fault, but what are you gonna do?

On the other hand, I have been shot AT numerous times, but either:

1 - Could not locate the source of the shots.
a - Walking down the sidewalk in the projects, someone opened up on me and my partner. The rounds hit the wall around us, about 20 rounds, but we could not identify the source and engage before the guy just disappeared into the darkness. Multiply this incident numerous times.
b - Took rounds in the helicopter twice. Once we could see muzzle flashes and knew we were getting shot at, once we found the hole in post-flight inspection.

2 - Could identify the source, but could not engage
a - Guy shot at us during a riot, but he was in the middle of the crowd and we could not return fire. Two incidents like this.
b - Gunfight between the dopers and Hell's Angels, during which one member came out on the HA House balcony with a rifle sniping dopers. We got there, and he shot at us, but with pistols and shotguns and a large open area in front of the house, we could not effectively engage him. Once SWAT snipers got there, he gave up.
c - Two robbers shot two officers and ran into a wooded area. We attempted to track them, but they were shooting at us with rifles and we had pistols and shotguns. They were able to drive us out of the wooded area, but could keep them contained until SWAT went in and got them.

Police get shot AT a whole more more than they shoot back.
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Ain't that the truth. When you see a gunfight on TV both sides just blaze away. In reality (based on my limited experience carrying a gun and badge) the first priority is to not get killed, second priority is not to kill any innocents. That removes a whole lot of opportunities to return fire.

I think I've told the story before about almost shooting a man during a CG boarding. We were assembling the crew at the stern before conducting our normal "safety sweep of man-sized compartments" and a guy comes out of the superstructure about 15 feet from me with a big knife in his hand, and he looks annoyed. I take a step back and tell him to drop the knife, he keeps coming. He gets close to ten feet (our "ok to shoot" circle) and I pull my M9, point it at him, and yell at him to stop and drop the knife. He takes one more step and I hear the other crewmen yelling at him.... in some language I don't understand. He drops the knife and steps back.

Turns out he didn't speak or understand english AT ALL. One more step and I or another team member would have shot him, and the other team member had an M16. We would have been justified but wouldn't THAT have been a sucky thing to carry around for the rest of your life?

Even cops I've met who I consider to be too close to the redneck asshat stereotype get a LOT calmer and more deliberative when the situation escalates from "you will respect mah authoritah" to a deadly force situation. That's a testament to the training and innate professionalism in my opinion.
 
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