LV Breaking news strip shooting

http://news3lv.com/news/local/metro-officer-involved-in-a-shooting-on-the-las-vegas-strip-near-the-bellagio

One time when I was outside in Vegas a officer involved shooting occurred down the street from me. I think I counted 30 police cars in the next 15 minutes coming from all directions.

Crazy. Police better have a good reason for opening fire on The Strip on a Friday night.

Not that there would be consequences if they didn't.

The bigger question. Was a COPS film crew with them?

The Sun seems to have the most detail so far as of the wee small hours (not long before I need to be passing very near there). And my first-blush personal reactions to what they're reporting at this time are hmmm, errrr, ummm, and ehhh:

http://lasvegassun.com/news/2016/jan/22/officer-involved-shooting-traffic-las-vegas-strip/

But I definitely wanna reserve the right to change my opinion of what I dunno wuzupwiddat to ahhh, huh, wud, and/or aiyeee, respectively....

Hmmm:

Quote: The Sun

...said officers responded about 7:30 p.m. to reports of a man walking in and out of Strip traffic waving a gun and pointing it at passers-by....

Errrr:

Quote: The Sun

...Officers fired on the man, who was not hit...

Ummm:

Quote: The Sun

...The gunfire grazed two bystanders, one of which was a juvenile who was taken to a local hospital...

Ehhh:

Quote: The Sun

...The suspect, who is familiar to Strip buskers as one who frequently sells goods to tourists, was apprehended...

[Quotes from The Sun are from what is identified as their 2nd revision online, as of about midnight-ish, and the story to which the link points will probably be rewritten on the fly to become different in some significant way by dawn. Hopefully not to include DrawingDead stupidly stumbling into the middle of some damn thing while trying to get to his own other thing nearby. I really do not wish to resemble my avatar today.]

Boz's basic rule of common sense: White, Black or anyone else...you wave, pull or show a gun near a Police Officer and you can expect to be justifiably shot. If you are lucky enough to be given a command to drop it and don't comply...feel lucky if you live.

Quote: Boz

Boz's basic rule of common sense: White, Black or anyone else...you wave, pull or show a gun near a Police Officer and you can expect to be justifiably shot. If you are lucky enough to be given a command to drop it and don't comply...feel lucky if you live.

Some people want the police to make a medical diagnosis in this kind of deal; they don't really have time for that. People try to say they could do something different--I say that they should stand on the wrong end of a gun and make that call.

Not all shootings are justified, of course, but waving a gun, pointing gun, and anything threatening is pretty much grounds for instant lead poisoning.

Waving or pointing a gun on the strip in and out of traffic deserves being shot

I too think someone doing that probably does reed to be ACTUALLY shot for the good of all, not merely sorta shot AT, by an officer with better aim with his weapon, and continuous awareness of the backstop of any shot he/she fires. Methinks the parents of the "juvenile" who apparently got winged instead of the offending wackadoodle-dingdong might end up raising some rather expensive formal objections about their precious little spawn getting drafted into this little vacation adventure.

It is easy to say that everyone should be a better shot and perhaps it is true...but it is a lot harder to shoot at a living, breathing, moving, human being and to measure accurately all of the possible outcomes of taking the shot than it is to hit a target that may or may not be moving.

Ok then tazed and then shot in the head at close range- there is zero reason waving a gun on the strip should not result in that

Quote: Wizardofnothing

Ok then tazed and then shot in the head at close range- there is zero reason waving a gun on the strip should not result in that

Hmmmm. Maybe one way of dealing with a guy who is mentally ill, as surely such irrational behaviour would suggest. There but for the grace of (insert deity of your choosing) go I.
He needed to be rendered harmless as effectively and quickly as possible, so I can understand tazering or shooting him as the least worst option. Murdering him after disarming him feels just a tiny bit harsh.
But, anyway, the whole concept of anyone running amok with a gun is pretty alien to me as a Brit. The worst we would be likely to run amok with in Blighty would be some kitchen knife or big stick. I don't personally know anyone who's ever handled a handgun or heard one fired. I prefer it that way and feel safer knowing that there isn't one generally within a mile of me. You guys over the pond might never know that sort of comfort, and will, instead have the dubious contentment of feeling that you, or your friends or local cop will protect you with guns of your own. How many Americans die by gunshot each year, even in their own homes by their own weapons? We must count mental disturbance as an influencer of anyone with access to a gun (or a car) as recently observed in that Vegas crazy driver event. Without easy access to a gun, the potential damage has to be far less. But your ancestors let the genie out of the bottle, They sowed the seeds of your liberty and of your crazy (IMHO) gun culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

Quote: RonC

It is easy to say that everyone should be a better shot and...

Nope. Not everybody, not even most. Those who are trained and equipped to do it as their profession should be a competent shot; it is in the job description. I have no interest in assuming anything I don't know (my having read a quick overnight local news piece doesn't qualify as me "knowing" jack-sheet by my definition of the word) and I have no interest in getting all filled up with the loud tonic of the permanent outrage industry to go ripping into the Metro cop involved. I can have that attitude and also still be disappointed that the thing that was intended to be shot wasn't, and a couple of other two-legged mammals apparently were.

But, just speaking generally without knowing how much it may apply to this thing, I'm real sure from people whose business it is to know that training items #1, #2, #3 & everything through at least #10 is all about not firing when there is any doubt about hitting something you're really not supposed to. When I was twelve years old they didn't let me have my little paper firearms safety certificate to get a hunter's license to take out my shiny little .22 single shot and start slaughtering soda bottles and furry little gophers on the hillsides of uninhabited ranchland 'till I was totally absolutely completely clear on that whole "firstly, secondly, and thirdly, what is the backstop behind and near where you're fixing to fire" thing.

I sure don't know how difficult the shots were, or even if the description so far of what occurred is complete and accurate. But if circumstances make it difficult to avoid other people who have no business getting shot, meaning anyone who was not a panhandling trinket peddling numbskull getting off on making people wet themselves by waving his thing around, ,then the job is to not open fire. I'd be somewhat offended and seriously annoyed if I became the backstop that got plunked. There may even have been as many as a couple of other people among the thousands at the Bellagio fountain on center-Strip on a Friday evening who were still sufficiently sober to actually notice and perhaps object to being shot. Luckily, according to what I read, it was just some unproductive kid, since there seems to be a surplus of those little critters running about, they keep making more of them every day, they usually seem to be naturally drunk and feeling indestructible or some kind of kid equivalent of it just as part of the condition of being a kid from what I've seen, but there's only one DrawingDead skulking about who does not wish to be a bullet catcher. I did my time as a gov't issue target backstop with legs and ears attached many years ago under the direction of a certain stern fellow known as Sergeant Seagraves of the U.S. Army, and I'm well and truly done with that now tank-you berry much.

Where are those deranged hordes of homicidal lunatic Vegas cabbies burning rubber and scattering fanny-packs by mashing the accelerator to run down anything and anyone who gets in their way or pisses them off by existing (which is pretty much everybody who isn't also a lunatic Vegas cabbie or handing money to one) when you really need them to go ahead and make a righteous hood ornament out of somebody?

Quote: OnceDear

...the whole concept of anyone running amok with a gun is pretty alien to me as a Brit.

But your ancestors let the genie out of the bottle...

Unintentional, but this made me giggle. And for that you have my thanks =)

That little piece of the Strip in front of Paris sure seems to be a magnet for bad news. I think the cops set up a portable surveilance camera between Bally's and Paris. It will be interesting to see if the video makes it to the public eye intact.

Quote: Face

Unintentional, but this made me giggle. And for that you have my thanks =)

Now wait just a danged minute. IIRC 'twas dem Brits and other unsavory Europeans that showed up on these shores when we were perfectly happy with spears, arrows, clubs and such in a 'heated discussion'. If all dem Brits and their friends go back where they came from, well.... Maybe they'll leave some of those Louisville Sluggers laying 'round. Can't blame the Brits for heated discussion, nor count on them to take that fact of life back over the pond with 'em.
Sometimes you have to talk louder than other times. ;-)

Just to clear it up for any armchair quarter-backs, if anyone without law enforcement training would pick the tazer as their use of force option.......... You chose wrong. When deploying the tazer as the use of force option, you must be mindful that the tazer causes the recipients muscles to contract including the fingers. If the target had his finger inside the trigger well, on the trigger, the tazer would have made the final decision for the gunman to shoot or not shoot.