Officer Stevens shares his encounter with two armed active shooters with large capacity AK pattern rifles. For those who carry concealed, there is plenty to consider from defending yourself and loved ones to capacity, caliber, and bullet weight and configuration of your carry piece. Cop shares gunfight lessons from ISIS-inspired 'Draw the Prophet' terror attack
One heck of a lesson. 38 years in LE, never involved in officer involved shooting before, on a paid extra detail, a crowd of people present including unarmed fellow security, he had sidearm holstered and faced two individual threats with rifles with high capacity magazines, side arms, backpacks that might contain explosives and body armor and had literally a fraction of a second to make a decision, while under fire from a rifle, implement it and then react to the chance that IED's were also present. It kind of looks to me that he may well have earned the total wages he was paid for his duty for his whole life in a few seconds. Bad guys 0, good guys 2 looks like real good numbers to me and much better than Fort Hood and a lot of other situations we have had in the last few years. All BS aside, it sometimes does come down to that thin blue line protecting us from evil in real life as well as in the movies.
AND from the description, This Officer could ACTUALLY Hit what he was aiming at, Multiple Times with Multiple Shots... You have NO IDEA, how rare that really is....
After reading that, the thing that struck me was the cop was able to hit ANYTHING! If you know any cops, take them shooting and if they can hit a 2' x 2' target (piece of paper, cardboard box, ANYTHING!) at 10 yards (30 feet) slow fire, ANYWHERE on the target, they are probably in the top 10% of the po-LICE shooters. No that is NOT a joke. At my club po-LICE were allowed to shoot free if they used their duty gear. We had one regular cop who shoot with competition gear and was good. He would always try to get the other thug... er... cops to come and shoot. I never saw a single one who could hit the side of a barn from the inside! That "lightening fast draw"? MAYBE 15 seconds, usually longer! We quit having timed fire for the cops because NONE of them could even get their hand on the pistol in the 3 second time limit (hands above head, called a "surrender position". BEEEEP! three seconds BEEEP!). Seriously. At three seconds most of them did not even have their hand on the gun. "At the beep you draw your pistol and fire as many times as you can at the target. You have three seconds. You ready? Let's start!" "OK, just to check, at the BEEP, you draw your holstered pistol and fire. OK?" "Let's try that again!" "Can you hear the beep? Do we need to hold the timer closer to your ear?" "You DO know that at the beep you draw, right?" "Let's just try this, at the beep you draw and fire, no time limit." "Ummmm, sure, 20 seconds from beep to first shoot is... um... ah... well that was pretty good for you!" Maybe if we called it "last powdered doughnut".... I would use a regular carry belt holster (not comp holster) and would get off 8 aimed rounds with my stock 1911 and if I was good that day, get in a reload, very good and a ninth shot, all in 3 seconds. A good solid 12 out of 25 shooters, so I was not overly fast compared to the Master and A class shooters. However I wasn't being shot at (I have been, so I know what I am talking about). Being shot at adds a whole new level of stress and excitement. He not only figured out what was going on, he headed towards the danger (also rare!) and did all the right things. Practically unheard of! Good for him!
BTPost, sounds like a lifetime of training paid off, he didn't just point and pray as the man with the rifle did, he got a sight picture, shot, reacquired it, shot again, and once primary target was down, proceeded to secondary target. Real good lesson, a hit, even if not terminal, beats he** out of 10 missed shots used to keep suspect down and off balance. Might of been a whole different ball game if he had not been using a 45 and had 14 rounds, most of which hit his targets. While the nay sayers try to minimize his actions, he alone rendered the attackers harmless and the semantics about who fired the fatal shots are meaningless. All to often we read of 30 + shots of 9 MM fired with only 1 or 2 hitting in nearly random areas. As usual in any real world situation, the press and lawyers are involved as well as the FBI, so with everyone trying to either cover their a**, get the maximum payout in a civil suit, or win a press prize for some perceived law enforcement mistake, we will probably never really know what happened.
I have a pretty good memory for numbers. (you will just have to take my word for it .... or not) I know I have seen statistics with regard to police vs bad folks and civilians vs bad folks, and there is a 1 to 5 ratio that shows civilian shooters are 5 times more likely to hit what they are aiming at than the LEOs. Now that maybe skewed for a number of reasons. I think one thing that could skew it is a number of civilians have guns but when push come to shove, will crap their pants before they actually use it other than to wave it around. Those other civilians who carry and are willing to step up to protect themselves or others are real familiar with their weapon of choice. They practice and fully understand the gravity of using that weapon. They don't have to engage and may retreat and or take an excellent defensive position waiting for an excellent opportunity to shoot. LEOs on the other hand often don't get the chance to retreat/withdrawl from the situation and just have to deal with it as it comes. Crappy situation or otherwise. Jus sayin
To drift this thread a little... My BIL was a LEO and he and his partner use to shoot at each others targets when at the qualifying range. On any given day, without practice and with his duty weapon, I could routinely outshoot him. I know that is just one example, but true. He told me that they only counted hits in the black of the silhouette so no negative points for anything outside that area.
Um....they (those shots not even in the silhouette) would be the potential positive hits on innocent victims. There's little comfort in being the collateral damage of A LEO whose weapons 'proficiency' qualification has been gamed with the help of fellow officers. I do have to wonder about other unethical / fraudulent conduct such officers might be capable of. The slippery slope of corruption often starts with small acts of self serving dishonesty.
Not to worry, they were both good cops. Both retired now, both glad they do not have to carry a firearm daily. Both were motor officers (bikes). My BIL had a bad accident breaking both legs on a spill from his bike avoiding an opposite direction driver. In a wheelchair for a year and a half then put him on desk duty for the remainder of his career. Cops are people and subject to the same temptations as everyone else. They fight off and avoid those temptations just like you and I.
