@Overbear, or anyone

You just can't ignore the fact that this was a violent solution that could have resulted in with innocent people being killed. The truck could have crashed killing its other occupants, or struck another vehicle or two killing those people as well.

In the interest of public safety, he should have quickly reported it to CHP and allowed them to take control of the situation by doing what they are trained to do and bring the vehicle to a stop without endangering others. A license plate, type and color of the vehicle is important information so that they can find out who it's registered to.

I am very interested to know what the "road rage" before the shooting was.

 

or a mature discussion with different opinions

 

With the exception of a few, the responses aren't seeming to "mature".

 

I have to laugh at the people who jump to the conclusion that the cop is lying.

If he was going to need to cover his a** so much, and do all this lying in order to make himself look good and feel good about what he did, why the F*** did he even bother to call the CHP in the first place? Let the criminal (the Ford truck) call and complain about someone shooting at them (if their truck was hit). Why would this cop bring all of this down on himself if he didn't have to, or simply doesn't anyone believe that he's an upstanding person will moral convictions doing what he was trained to do?

 

"Asshat" indeed; I guess you have a problem with people having a different opinion than you.

Supporting a police state does not make you an American, it makes you a fascist. Look up the definition of liberty sometime.

 

Yeah, and thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people have met with police corruption and brutality. You can't believe that people would jump to a conclusion but in the same breath you jump to the opposite conclusion.

This thread is rife with hypocrisy.

 

What does any of this have to do with a liberal or conservative bias?

Even though you're judging people for presuppositions, you seem to be the one that has a serious issue with making assumptions.

 

Yeah, that would be nice--but I get the feeling that's expecting too much from some people.

 

your the type of guy that cheers when a cop goes down aren't you.

 

We are believing the cop because 95% of all police offers in the united states are legitimate hard working people. Stop watching TV shows and movies, not all cops are corrupt.

 

An innocent hardworking cop that keeps you and your family safe from D bags such as the guys in the truck could have been shot and killed because of road rage?!?! and his car too could have crashed and kill others...

 

You sound like a humanities major




Anyways, I think we can all agree on once fact here: If you were in a situation where a person draws a firearm on you, and you have a firearm - you WILL draw your weapon. I don't care how liberal or idealistic you are. Self preservation trumps all.

That being said, the circumstances of this story seem a bit odd. Why did the officer have the chance to get his weapon from say, the glove compartment instead of just braking or speeding off? In a moving vehicle it seems odd that the easiest course of action for the officer was to find and draw, and fire his weapon compared to other courses of action

 

using logic, the truck could have crashed killing an innocent person inside the vehicle or another motorist struck by the truck.

but saying that "an innocent hardworking cop that keeps you and your family safe" isn't really the issue here since he really isn't keeping me safe when somebody is driving wrecklessly. it's how he handles the situation which keeps the public safe. public safety is a key thing.

 

Believing or concluding ANYTHING based on the information provided is ignorant. You do not know that 95% of "all police officers in the United States are legitimate hard working people." You think this based on the teeny tiny porthole known as "your point of view." Everyone has one and has "experience based facts" as a result of this porthole, and in most cases since not many of us are the same exact person and have had the same exact experiences, these "facts" clash. Your comment about this being a forum of people with sporting cars is dead on and shows you might see what I am talking about. People who have been in tense situations they have been trained for and may not have made the exact correct decisions will feel for the cop. People that have broken the law and cannot own up to their actions will ignore any facts and simply condemn the cop. Is this a new thing????

Since we cannot conclude, all we can do is present what we know and discuss it. In most cases, due to ignorance and stupidity, this eventually turns into a pissing contest where people try to show that the others' opinion is invalid based on unrelated events they claim to have personally experienced (see: posts by Overbear). This basically ends any pointed discussion and turns it into a namecalling thing and essentially polarizes anyone's view on the topic - for the wrong reasons. People that actually agree start to argue... Nothing new here either... Anyway...

What do we know? Well for one, the people in each vehicle probably had their own personally-valid reasons to whip out the guns and get into the situation in the first place. Anything anyone could POSSIBLY say about this is knowledge-free and pointless. Any conjecture trying to imply the mental state or intent of either party here is pointless.

Once the issue escalates and becomes a public hazard, the Officer knows what to do here and probably does his best while being hindered by the items that were mentioned earlier by blue_blurr regarding the issues the Officer has to deal with in the real world. Now it is up to the authorities to decide the outcome and come to a decision on how to proceed. This should be based on what went wrong, and what the preferred outcome would have been. My guess is that it will come out that the MOST IMPORTANT thing in this case would have been the acquisition of data that could be used to track down the vehicle after the fact REGARDLESS of whether or not the officer thought he would be able to disable the vehicle. The next most important thing here is the overlying fact that the officer's prime responsibility is to protect the public and not put people in danger. His prime objectives should have been to try to not harm any innocents (job1), not get killed (job2) and get info on the criminal that could have been used to reclaim them (job3).

In my personal "KNOWLEDGE-FREE" opinion, the officer probably should not have discharged his weapon unless he was 100% sure he could hit his target - this is because he was in public and could have harmed innocent bystanders. Since I have no idea what was really happening there, I cannot say that the officer did not 100% feel he could hit his target (even whilst driving) and did not 100% know that he would not take on the risk of hitting anyone else by accident (based on direction of fire, other cars on the road, etc.).

In closing I will say that this sort of thing sucks, and I hope the bad guys are tracked down and the officer learns from this, and keeps his job. All the training in the world is worthless compared to the split seconds of actually using that training, and no one on here, not one person, can comment knowledgeably on this situation. Myself included.

 

i dont think guys who pull guns on people crossing the gg bridge are safe people to be in public