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by bubuga
3636 days ago
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> (...) but the heart of the matter in the Dallas case is whether the suspect posed an imminent threat which could not be addressed any other way besides lethal force. At that time, the assailant already stated his purpose of killing as many police officers he could, and during his rampage he already had killed 5 police officers and gunned down dozen or so victims. The assailant planned for this sort of attack for some time, he purposely took military training in private weekend warrior schools specifically to conduct the attack he was planning, and he even planned and mobilized himself to use explosives. The assailant's plans were all suicide missions, and their goal was to inflict the most damage possible. I'm not an american, and I live in a country where there isn't a single police-involved death for years, and even I am well aware that going with such a radical option was quite obviously the only way the police could ensure that the assailant would cease to be a threat to the public. |
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The Police Executive Research Forum emphasizes that the police are not authorized to start executing someone who was engaged in active, suicidal shooting once that person is contained:
> Many [police department] policies note that Active Shooter protocols should not be used as a response to “barricaded gunman” situations. And some policies note that active shooter incidents are dynamic, and that an incident may go in and out of active shooter status in ways that could alter the police response. For example, a situation may begin as an active shooter incident, but if the shooter barricades himself in a room where he no longer has access to potential victims, and the police can secure that room and contain the shooter, the police response should shift accordingly.
http://www.policeforum.org/assets/docs/Critical_Issues_Serie...
The police had him trapped for two hours before they blew him up. Perhaps there really was a new development that forced them to take action, but it's not a call we can make merely knowing how bad the guys was. It depend on the details of the situation.