TX: Chopper cam video of Troope/BG shootout

[Frank_N_Stein]

Room for one more MMQB in the huddle?

I would bet that most good street cops, like firefighters and soldiers, are forward-leaning action-oriented problem solvers. Their jobs are to turn chaos into order, and the sooner the better. They are inherently predisposed to do something, do it now, get it accomplished. They are not as analytical as some other professions, like, say...lawyers. They have to be trained, either formally or through experience, to wait, to pull back, to study the situation. Fire companies and squads/platoons have leaders whose job it is to hang back a bit, direct who goes where, decide when to wait and when to charge. Cops (seems to me anyway) are more free agents; they often work alone, have to decide on their own, and are thrown together in ad hoc groups or teams on the fly (not counting SWAT type units).

Rory Miller, in his book Conflict Communications, points out that most human decisions (especially under stress) are taken subconsciously, and then the conscious mind back fills with logical reasons why that decision is a good idea. Therefore to make good decisions under stress you really have to train, to get those patterns of thinking into the subconscious, to have built the scripts that say to a firefighter "when the windows are sooty and little puffs of smoke are coming out of gaps, better NOT open the door", or to a pilot "plane is stalling so push stick DOWN" when he really really wants to pull it back to get away from the ground. In any situation where either the stress has overridden the training or information is not clear (or there is no training), the subconscious is going to go with those decision rules that have been internalized, like "when in doubt act". So the decision might be to "spread eagle that ******* on the ground" and figure the rest out later.

In general we probably better served by cops and firefighters and soldiers who want to get into the middle of the chaos and have to be restrained by training, rather than having to kick them in the butt to get them to do something (***cough, parkland, cough ***). There are cities where the police, rightly or wrongly, have been pounded on enough that they have become very choosy about when they take action, and the results for those cities have not been good. Over-aggression is bad, but so is punishing initiative. Remember that once upon a time the trained method of dealing with mass/spree/school shootings was oriented to restraining officers, putting up perimeters, gathering intel, sending in the special SWAT team. Now that has largely swung back to "go kill the bastard ASAP."

I don't know that this is what motivated that DPS trooper in the video, but I'll bet this is closer to the truth than many explanations. Note I am not saying he is untrained, just that I would not be surprised if he is a very action oriented, can-do guy. His mission was not just to defend himself but put that guy under control, and his experience, training, and motivation led him to try to do that as soon as possible.

Pretty spot on. And phylo's response below pretty much sum up the possible answer to the question of "why." In the last year IMPD has gone away from the "go get 'em" at the termination of a chase to performing a "felony stop" and slowing things down by waiting behind cover and calling the occupant(s) of the vehicle out. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

 

[Alamo]

...

There's also practical considerations related to tactics and community safety. I was recently in a situation taking an armed suspect into custody where I could have cover or I could have a better backdrop. If I used cover, a nieghbor's house was my backdrop....

Not a theoretical consideration. Back in December and just a few miles north of the incident in the OP, Bexar County deputies fired on a fleeing suspect who had threatened to shoot them while she was standing on the porch of a mobile home. They hit and killed her, but a miss went into the home and killed a 6 yo boy as well.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Not a theoretical consideration. Back in December and just a few miles north of the incident in the OP, Bexar County deputies fired on a fleeing suspect who had threatened to shoot them while she was standing on the porch of a mobile home. They hit and killed her, but a miss went into the home and killed a 6 yo boy as well.

And that sucks for everyone, a horrible outcome. Sometimes things go sideways in a hurry and you've got to make decisions on the fly...and sometimes there are no good options, only less suck ones. In this instance I had the time to stage, coordinate other officers, designate one to give verbal commands, one to go less-lethal, etc. I had the luxury of being able to take time, scan back drop, etc.

But, hey, someone will be along to tell me I did it wrong shortly I'm sure.

 

[T.Lex]

And that sucks for everyone, a horrible outcome. Sometimes things go sideways in a hurry and you've got to make decisions on the fly...and sometimes there are no good options, only less suck ones. In this instance I had the time to stage, coordinate other officers, designate one to give verbal commands, one to go less-lethal, etc. I had the luxury of being able to take time, scan back drop, etc.

But, hey, someone will be along to tell me I did it wrong shortly I'm sure.

Not only did you do it wrong, you did it shortly.

But that hat helps.

 

[Alamo]

And that sucks for everyone, a horrible outcome. Sometimes things go sideways in a hurry and you've got to make decisions on the fly...and sometimes there are no good options, only less suck ones. In this instance I had the time to stage, coordinate other officers, designate one to give verbal commands, one to go less-lethal, etc. I had the luxury of being able to take time, scan back drop, etc.

But, hey, someone will be along to tell me I did it wrong shortly I'm sure.

What made it even worse is that when the smoke cleared she had no gun at all. All that lots of searching turned up was a piece of pipe under the porch, and not clear (from the news articles anyway) that the pipe came from her.

 

[actaeon277]

Pretty spot on. And phylo's response below pretty much sum up the possible answer to the question of "why." In the last year IMPD has gone away from the "go get 'em" at the termination of a chase to performing a "felony stop" and slowing things down by waiting behind cover and calling the occupant(s) of the vehicle out. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Well, I have faith that no matter what the decision, it will only work sometimes, nothing works 100 percent.
And I also have faith, that if it fails 1 time in 10,000 you guys will still be judged by people sitting behind a computer, in a warm dry room, fed, with all the time in the world to figure out what you did wrong.
Sadly, a lot of people never had to make quick decisions.

I remember an "activist" that they had go through some scenarios. He failed them. Gave him a slightly different perspective.
But we can't do that with every person.