Ben Carson Has Some Controversial Ideas For How To Curb Police Violence After Ferguson [VIDEO, POLL]

Dr. Ben Carson, who only Sunday said he might run for President, offered his ideas on Ferguson and how the shooting of Mike Brown might have been avoided.

Carson appeared on the Hugh Hewitt radio show to discuss the use of guns by police. Carson said: “First of all, I don’t think that the police officer did anything wrong. Nevertheless, there are probably additional techniques and knowledge that he could have been given. So all along, we probably need to beef up the instructions for police officers in general so that they don’t place themselves in such dangerous situations.”

Carson, who is a retired pediatric neurosurgeon, went on to argue that officers should be taught to shoot unarmed attackers in the legs.  “[Officer Darren Wilson] had every right to protect his life. But I do think that there are probably other techniques that could have been used . . . [F]or instance, in a lot of places, police officers aren’t even allowed to go into the more dangerous areas by themselves. They’re always paired. Or you know, people use tasers, people learn how to shoot people in the legs to stop them from charging, things of that nature. And I seriously doubt that he’d been given that information.”

Carson is speaking about the idea of “shooting to wound,” where officers would not aim to kill, but to incapacitate an attacker. Police have often dismissed this as a tactical training tool, due to the split second decisions being made when shooting someone. One officer, retired chief of police of Boca Raton Andrew Scott who spoke on the matter said: “It’s unrealistic and it’s not going to happen. You’ll have more police officers dead than you’ll have anything else,” he said. “Police officers are not trained, under no circumstances, to shoot and wound. They’re trained to shoot and neutralize the threat.” [RELATED: Trooper requests ID, Blows Away Driver When He Reaches For It. Cop Arrested.]

Officers are trained to shoot at center mass because a knee or leg are considered too small of a target to hit. “Nine times out of 10, an individual who is shot and is shot center mass, they’re not going down,” Scott said. “They’re still going to be active. They’re still going to potentially be aggressive.”

Former Green Beret and combat journalist Michael Yon agrees with that in his article “Gates of Fire,” where he also argues against the idea of shooting to wound.

Ferguson: Why did the officer not shoot Brown in the legs?

Many people are innocently asking this question. The answer could go on for pages, but to be succinct, a couple handfuls of reasons:

1) This ain’t the movies
2) Most police do not fire their weapons much. Most are not great shots.
3) He would have to be an incredible shot to be crazy enough to fire wounding shots.
4) Nearly all firefights are “stress shoots.” The other guy is moving. Heart is beating fast, often out of breath. The officer in Ferguson had just been punched in the face and had been in a wrestling match for his pistol, according to him.
5) Bullets that miss can hit someone else.
6) You always are low on ammo, and you do not want to waste a single bullet.
7) Time spent reloading is dangerous
8) I have seen many people shot who kept fighting. Shot with weapons far more powerful than any officer’s pistol. Many police and combat troops have seen this and will verify.
9) Police and Soldiers never train to shoot to wound. (None that I know of.) All combat shots are center mass of any part of the target that you can see. If you see only a foot. Shoot the foot. If you see a chest — aim for the middle. That is the way troops and police train. If the officer is pointing his pistol at someone, he is one click away from going lethal. There is no in between.
10) This ain’t the movies.

During the firefight at the link below, I was photographing when two people were shot a total of seven times. Two men, shot seven times. (US Soldier three times, al Qaeda four times with M4 point blank.)

After the US Soldier was hit three times in front of me, he continued to fight well. He was hit badly at nearly point blank. The al Qaeda terrorist was hit 4x times. He was still standing trying to shoot. One shot took off a testicle, and then he got tackled by a US Soldier, and despite being hit 4x, he then engaged in aggressive hand to hand combat.

Again, this ain’t the movies…

Former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly also concurred, saying that when police shoot, they never shoot to wound. “But the notion that somehow you can shoot to  wound, just simply doesn’t work. You train police officers to shoot for mass. You train them to shoot to stop. And the only way you can, well, wound somebody or shoot a weapon out of their hands is in the movies. Police only hit their targets 20 percent of the time,” Kelly concluded.

Peter Jirasek, a retired police sergeant and criminal justice educator argues that the concept of shooting to wound is actually unlawful. “If you only seek to wound someone by shooting, you do not have justification to shoot at all,” Jirasek said. “An attempt to shoot to wound all too often can end up in death. It does no good if a police officer says, ‘I was just trying to wound and ended up killing somebody,’ because that officer now faces criminal prosecution, not to mention a civil lawsuit. And the law will say the officer better be justified in using deadly force.”

What do you think? Should officers be trained to shoot to wound?

 

3 comments

Leave a Comment