The Gun Counter

San Francisco PD

65 shots. 15 seconds.

No hits.

Derp.

Damn lucky since they were shooting into an RV from all angles including up... wonder how many went through and traveled on they knew not where. Nor care, I suppose...

Suppressive fire is a perfectly valid TTP. For the infantry.

Much less so for police.

I understand returning fire. But you need to have the (self) control to only shoot if you can positively ID the target. (I'm OK with shooting through concealment, IF the concealment is small enough that you can be reasonably sure the target is behind it. An entire RV does not meet this standard.)

If you watch the video, it looks like a scene from a Naked Gun movie.

That was a tactical goat screw. If you asked the officers who fired, I doubt any of them could honestly say that saw the bad guy at the time they were shooting. And they darn well should have been asked by now, by whatever body has the job of reviewing shootings by officers.

It looked and sounded to me like bad guy popped off two rounds, then one cop shot back, or at least shot at the RV in general, and then a bunch of the other cops joined in panicked reactive fire.

Questions for SFPD:

- You knew the bad guy was armed, and had already shot two people. Why are so many cops standing around with no cover/concealment from the BG in the RV? All of the cops trying to run behind that SUV is the source of half of the goat fornicating right there.

- The scene commander should have assigned roles to officers on scene. Larry, Curly, and Moe - you're dealing with the people coming out of the RV. Bob, you cover the back window. Doug, you cover the windows on this side. Etc.

- On yeah - What happened to "Know your target, and what's beyond it?"

Langenator wrote:
- On yeah - What happened to "Know your target, and what's beyond it?"

Qualified Immunity means never having to give a shit about target depth and backstopping.

They are shooting in the general direction of an actual bad guy, all good compared to a lot of other cases recently.

There's a case to be made for issuing the police single-action revolvers. Maybe swing-out cylinder guns, but modified to SAO. Simply to force them to aim.

Mike OTDP wrote:There's a case to be made for issuing the police single-action revolvers. Maybe swing-out cylinder guns, but modified to SAO. Simply to force them to aim.

Even with today's modern "high speed - low drag" auto pistols, I still recommend the S&W K frame .38/.357 to most people who are buying their first handgun.
It's dirt simple, and utterly reliable.

There's a lot of police officers who probably don't need anything more complicated either.........

I recall when NYPD transitioned from revolvers to autos the number of shots fired per incident doubled but the number of hits remained the same.