Whew, okay! A lot to respond to I think.
ich1990 wrote:While I can't speak for the conditions in a video game, police officers (and SWAT teams) are allowed to kill the suspect if it is clear that there is an immanent danger to the hostages or themselves. This is why police practice shooting silhouette targets of criminals holding a person in front of them.
This is correct. In the game, this is how it works. If a dude is just squatting somewhere holding a gun and you shoot and kill them, you are docked points for unauthorized use of deadly force. You are ONLY allowed to kill them if they shoot at you or your teammates. Even then you still don't get full points in the game (the only way to get full points is to incapacitate them, not kill them).
The use of deadly force is something we went over a lot when I was working SSDF (basically military police) in the Navy. There are very specific times you are allowed to use deadly force and God help you if you use it when you aren't allowed.
If a dude came up to the ship brandishing an axe, basically we would not be allowed to use deadly force on him. We could shoot him, but we were not allowed to kill him. Of course, if we shot him and he died from the wound but it was obvious we weren't trying to kill him it'd still be okay.
Like what I'm saying is, if we shot him in the torso and he bled to death or something, we'd be in the clear. If we were to have shot him in the head though we'd be in serious trouble because that means we were obviously trying to kill him which would be unauthorized. In fact, you can serve hard time in a military prison if you kill a suspect in the Navy working security and you have a Marksman badge (because that means you would be a good enough shot to shoot him somewhere non-lethal).
Obviously civilian cops aren't quite as strict as the military]I also think you may be confused as to what constitutes an assault rifle. By definition they have selective fire capabilities, meaning that they can be shot in semi-auto mode. They are also not "spray and pray" weapons but mid-sized and quite accurate. [/QUOTE]
I don't know much about guns so I'll take your word on that since I really don't know what kind of toy gun the kid had and what the real-world version's capabilities are. Still he said his dad was a police officer, not SWAT, although his dad may be SWAT and he's just too young to make the distinction, I'm not really sure. But a regular police officer wouldn't be carrying an assault rifle either way in normal circumstances.
I doubt a SWAT member, in a hostage situation, would put down his full sized assault rifle and draw his much more inaccurate sidearm to shoot a suspect. When he did shoot, he would fire at whatever was exposed, often the head. He would shoot to preserve the life of the hostage and himself first, suspect second. Police may "shoot the bad guy in the knee" in the movies, but in real life if you have to stop somebody you shoot for the torso or the head. As for a suspect using an axe instead of a knife or gun, that is a little shakier. It is a lot harder to kill a hostage with an axe, but I could imagine situations where it would be necessary for an officer to shoot to stop that from happening.
Okay lot of stuff to cover here too! The use of deadly force in civilian police cases is covered by the Supreme Court case
Tennessee v. Garner. Basically a dude named Garner committed a burglary and was fleeing the scene, and the officer shot him in the back of the head. The dude's father sued the city of Memphis and the precinct for killing his son. The District Court ruled in favor of the police, but the father appealed, and the Court of Appeals reversed the decision, saying that shooting a fleeing suspect counted as "seizure" and thus was not warranted, especially in light of the fact that it was a simple burglary.
Anyway long story short it went to SCOTUS and they ruled in favor of the police/city that deadly force was authorized. So SCOTUS laid down when deadly force is authorized in a civilian police situation. It boils down to this: when the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious injury to the officer or others, or when pursuing a fleeing suspect that fits the same criteria.
To use the axe scenario: if a person just has an axe swinging it around, being crazy, a police officer would PROBABLY not be able to use deadly force (but could still shoot him) because the person isn't too much of a significant threat to anyone, since people could run away from him more than likely. If it was a gun, then yeah, they could use deadly force because you can shoot people a lot easier than you can swing an axe at them.
If the axe-wielder had a hostage, then the police would definitely be able to use deadly force because unlike if he was alone, having a hostage means he can absolutely inflict death or serious injury to that person.
And if the axe-man was running from the scene of a crime then police could use deadly force to stop him too.
I'm not an expert in police work, I only know what I know from working security in the Navy (and I had a 9mm Baretta so I mean I COULD have shot someone if I had needed to) and if someone had an axe or a knife but no hostages when I was working security, then I would not have been allowed to kill him, only shoot him to stop the action. Maybe civilian police are more lax on their authorization of deadly force? Although I HOPE not, but I can't assume since I don't know which is why I said "PROBABLY" up there when I was talking about the first situation.
It doesn't mean that the father is being negligent, just that the child's prepubescent intellect is distorting and misapplying what he has been told. It could also mean that he has been watching too much tv, where reality is somewhat diluted. It could also mean the child didn't have a toy gun to arm his bad guy with, and had to settle for an axe. In any case, I don't think you have enough facts to deride the father's parenting skills.
Okay fair enough but there are a few people here who think kids need to be taught guns aren't toys, to respect guns (and not ban them) and all that stuff. And I would think or hope that if his dad IS a cop then he would instill that respect and whatnot in his kid and say stuff like "Shooting people isn't fun, it's not a game, guns aren't toys, we don't shoot someone unless there's no other way," etc. See my dad was a pharmacist and they don't really work with guns and my dad didn't really have any guns anyway (except a hunting rifle) which he made abundantly clear was NOT to be messed with.
Maybe I just didn't have any interest in guns in the first place as a kid so it's hard for me to see another view on the subject. *shrug* I fully admit this. I'm probably trying to apply adult thinking to a 4th grader which I guess probably doesn't work too well. So I will close with this cop-out.
Everyone is ignoring the fact that the size of that toy gun means it would never fit in a Lego character's hands anyway! Have you seen the hands on Lego people? They're WAY too small to hold something that big!
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