Active Shooter In NS. April 19 2020

[Haggis]

LEO: All he had to do was throw his revolver out into plain sight. It's not my fault he brought a slingshot to a gunfight. To misquote Mr Churchill, a criminal is someone who tries to kill you, and failing that, asks you not to kill him.

Judge: "Let's not resort to sarcasm." (BTDT)
Lawyer: "At any point during your fusillade of gunfire, did you offer him a chance to surrender?"

 

[Weinie]

It’s just contrary to round accountability in a way. Police services like terms a lot.

Police “service” instead of “force” etc.

If suppressing fire was a book it would be huge- and it’s very small, semi-applicable police use, would be a few paragraphs. So it’s not accurate to use the term if youre splitting hairs.

I suppose in practicality you’re right. But if you used it in passing comments with lawyers you’d be in trouble. Which is where the real hesitancy would be I imagine. I would want to be very specific about my intention and goal rather than using a scary umbrella term at an inquest or a subject officer statement

Consider how people at this particular inquiry are hanging entire narratives off a few words in an hour of testimony- that’s where the issue would be

First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

 

[Kat Stevens]

Judge: "Let's not resort to sarcasm." (BTDT)
Lawyer: "At any point during your fusillade of gunfire, did you offer him a chance to surrender?"

LEO: Words matter. It wasn't a fusillade, read a book. Shots were aimed in his direction. How do you know I didn't give him the opportunity to surrender after every shot? Assumes facts not in evidence. If he would have stayed under cover, he wouldn't have been shot at. I shoot at my target, if I don't see it, I don't shoot at it. Errr... your honour.


EDIT In case you can't tell, I'm just sort of having fun with it now, mods feel free to end my massive derail any time*

 

[Haggis]

EDIT In case you can't tell, I'm just sort of having fun with it now, mods feel free to end my massive derail any time*

And so am I. I was mildly scolded for using sarcasm on the stand during an assault trial.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Judge: "Let's not resort to sarcasm." (BTDT)
Lawyer: "At any point during your fusillade of gunfire, did you offer him a chance to surrender?"

My personal favourite, along these lines:

 

[Brad Sallows]

pinning fire

More or less what I envisioned. Shots close enough to make the shooter flinch. Aimed to hit, but not obsessively so. But instead of a rapid series of shots to try to bring someone down, spaced out a bit to buy time - for someone to move, for bystanders to flee the area, etc.

 

[lenaitch]

More or less what I envisioned. Shots close enough to make the shooter flinch. Aimed to hit, but not obsessively so. But instead of a rapid series of shots to try to bring someone down, spaced out a bit to buy time - for someone to move, for bystanders to flee the area, etc.

Oooo . . . bad description. Police don't have the authority to make people flinch. Everything needs to be to two related ends: stop the threat and protect the public.

Provided you can articulate your cause of action and authority for taking it, in a courtroom several months later when the sun is shining and the birds are singing and people are willing to spend hours parsing your words used to describe actions and decisions taken in seconds in the dark of the night, then you'll make out fine - maybe. In the court of public opinion, maybe not so much, because there, other factors often completely unrelated come into play.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I see the problem. Stop/protect in such situations basically means incapacitate. Absent clear rules about warning shots, or unnerving a shooter (which could end up in a hair-splitting court argument over "you could shoot well enough to spook, but not to hit?", it's a legal risk.

parsing your words used to describe actions and decisions taken in seconds in the dark of the night

Watched parts of the Rittenhouse trial. Second-guessing/split-second-by-split-second dissection was unbelievably worse than I imagined.

 

[brihard]

Oooo . . . bad description. Police don't have the authority to make people flinch. Everything needs to be to two related ends: stop the threat and protect the public.

Provided you can articulate your cause of action and authority for taking it, in a courtroom several months later when the sun is shining and the birds are singing and people are willing to spend hours parsing your words used to describe actions and decisions taken in seconds in the dark of the night, then you'll make out fine - maybe. In the court of public opinion, maybe not so much, because there, other factors often completely unrelated come into play.

Yup. I don’t have Booter’s use of force pedigree - my instructional experience is much more modest, but still from the same school.

Force is used, basically, to change behaviour. When you tell someone they‘re under arrest and to turn around and give you their hands for cuffing, and they tell you to eff off, you may use some modest force to get him to comply. When he’s shooting at you or others, you may use a hell of a lot more to get his behaviour to change away from being a deadly threat. Maybe in the course of doing so you kill or badly wound him, or maybe you achieve a psychological stop and he gives up. In any case the force is being used to achieve the lawful execution of your duty to effect the arrest.

Any use of force has to be articulated so as to explain why it was reasonable and necessary. You also have to be prepared to explain why it wasn’t reckless or negligent, or excessive.

Any shot fired must be with the intent of changing the suspect’s behaviour to reduce the threat from that of death or grievous bodily harm. Any shot fired with an intent other than that would be super hard to defend. Any shot not fired at the suspect will put you in the position of explaining why you aren’t causing a greater risk through errant rounds.

That doesn’t make it impossible. Just damned hard.

 

[lenaitch]

Nice.

We had to treat all patients as viable, or face the possibility of coroner's court, and putting our municipal taxpayers on the wrong end of a lawsuit.

Unless,

1. decapitation, transection, visible decomposition, putrefaction; or

2. absence of vital signs and:
a. a grossly charred body;
b. an open head or torso wound with gross outpouring of cranial or visceral contents;
c. gross rigor mortis (i.e. limbs and/or body stiff, posturing of limbs or body); or
d. dependent lividity (i.e. fixed, non-blanching purple or black discolouration of skin in dependent area of body).

I recall one family in our town ( successfully ) collected $10 million from city taxpayers for a 29 minute Delay in ( paramedic ) Service.

Not to suggest there is any civil liability in the MCI being discussed.

The one thing we don't know (well, unless we do and I missed it) in the MCI proceedings is whether (a) the scene where the victim was left was safe for paramedics and/or whether there were even paramedics around. Did they make a decision that went against policy and protocols? Perhaps, and I suspect there but for the grace of a god go a lot of us in emergency services. I get that people may be angry, particularly in view of the 'Fitbit angle', but if the members are called to account, provided they can adequately articulate their good faith thought process, a reasonable assessment might agree with them.

Unless somebody is declared dead by a competent authority, they're not; but context is often key. I worked in both rural and urban areas where the coroner almost never attended the scene, so off in the ambulance the victim went, regardless of condition. In others, the coroner always attended but, in reality, the victim received no treatment or transport, base solely on our assessment (they still went off in the ambulance as we had no body removal service within a reasonable distance).

 

[Kat Stevens]

Yup. I don’t have Booter’s use of force pedigree - my instructional experience is much more modest, but still from the same school.

Force is used, basically, to change behaviour. When you tell someone they‘re under arrest and to turn around and give you their hands for cuffing, and they tell you to eff off, you may use some modest force to get him to comply. When he’s shooting at you or others, you may use a hell of a lot more to get his behaviour to change away from being a deadly threat. Maybe in the course of doing so you kill or badly wound him, or maybe you achieve a psychological stop and he gives up. In any case the force is being used to achieve the lawful execution of your duty to effect the arrest.

Any use of force has to be articulated so as to explain why it was reasonable and necessary. You also have to be prepared to explain why it wasn’t reckless or negligent, or excessive.

Any shot fired must be with the intent of changing the suspect’s behaviour to reduce the threat from that of death or grievous bodily harm. Any shot fired with an intent other than that would be super hard to defend. Any shot not fired at the suspect will put you in the position of explaining why you aren’t causing a greater risk through errant rounds.

That doesn’t make it impossible. Just damned hard.

I know I'm dumb, but putting rounds into the wall above the bad guys head stops him from popping up and shooting others, or, worse, me, until my compadres can get to a position to reel him in. Is that not altering behaviour to support the aim? Happy ending. For most of us, at least.

 

[Haggis]

I see the problem. Stop/protect in such situations basically means incapacitate.

I know I'm dumb, but putting rounds into the wall above the bad guys head stops him from popping up and shooting others, or, worse, me, until my compadres can get to a position to reel him in. Is that not altering behaviour to support the aim? Happy ending. For most of us, at least.

Exactly. The aim of any LE use-of-force is to change the subject's behaviour. Even a missed shot can do that.

Watched parts of the Rittenhouse trial. Second-guessing/split-second-by-split-second dissection was unbelievably worse than I imagined.

Learning how to articulate your use-of-force in court is a big part of our training.

 

[KevinB]

I know I'm dumb, but putting rounds into the wall above the bad guys head stops him from popping up and shooting others, or, worse, me, until my compadres can get to a position to reel him in. Is that not altering behaviour to support the aim? Happy ending. For most of us, at least.

Will the backstop stop the round, and will the round not ricochet potentially causing injury or death to civilians?

I am not disagreeing with you -- I'm just pointing out what can be brought up later.

Part of the reason larger LEA's have Testing entities - so the bullet performance is a known (or as well known as it can be) item.

 

[lenaitch]

I know I'm dumb, but putting rounds into the wall above the bad guys head stops him from popping up and shooting others, or, worse, me, until my compadres can get to a position to reel him in. Is that not altering behaviour to support the aim? Happy ending, for most of us, at least.

It might, depending on how it is described by you and other witnesses. The term 'articulable cause' has crept into the legal system and law enforcement training in Canada. With apologies to R v Mann, it basically boils down to a witness (you) adequately and clearly explaining to the court how your actions were both necessary and within and satisfied your authority in the particular set of circumstances at hand. The 'adequate and clearly' part is important, since your often dealing with juries (you only get one shot at a first impression) and appellate-level courts only get to read the record. That's one of the reasons training focuses in on so-called 'canned phrases' (varies by jurisdiction) both for testimony and notebooks; such as 'as little force as necessary' (many favour the words "as little" over 'as much'), or 'to stop the threat' (avoiding the word 'eliminate'). They really do sound canned and somewhat scripted, but they avoid stress, slang, colloquialisms or nervous coppers in the stand fumbling for words.

 

[Booter]

I know I'm dumb, but putting rounds into the wall above the bad guys head stops him from popping up and shooting others, or, worse, me, until my compadres can get to a position to reel him in. Is that not altering behaviour to support the aim? Happy ending. For most of us, at least.

It would be your word salad that makes the difference.

and as recently as 2005 the Victoria police service had warning shots in their policies.

In the end you will have to convince people of the reasonableness. Like running over some one to stop an incident. It’s impossible to say “you can’t do that!” It’s more like “I wouldn’t want to have to explain that”

 

[Jarnhamar]

This is all really interesting. Surprising to see just how large of a microscope police are under.

Is this level of understanding of the use of force standard across the police departments?

 

[Haggis]

This is all really interesting. Surprising to see just how large of a microscope police are under.

Is this level of understanding of the use of force standard across the police departments?

The national use-of-force framework is the RCMP's Incident Management Intervention Model (IMIM). Most LEA have similar use of force options (tools) such as firearm, CEW (Taser), OC spray, batons, handcuffs. Specialty units may have other lethal and less than lethal options available (e.g. beanbag or baton rounds, tear gas rounds, OC shotgun rounds). All federal civilian agencies train in use-of-force to the RCMP standard.

Most provinces have slight variations of this model. Québec police, for example, employ their tools differently but to the same end as agencies from other provinces. The focus is always on de-escalation. And, as previously discussed, that can take many forms.

 

[Booter]

This is all really interesting. Surprising to see just how large of a microscope police are under.

Is this level of understanding of the use of force standard across the police departments?

Ideally they refer to their training and what they observed and felt. Then a different person explains how and why they are trained a way. That’s why it’s important in their training I don’t seed words like “suppression”- they explain what they did and what they were looking for. Someone else explains WHY it was an acceptable action consistent with training. Kinda.

Anecdotally and dated, I have assisted officers and investigations with some of this stuff conceptually- like a particular independent agency demanding post shooting for officers to “guess” how many times they shot- it’s an unproductive exercise. I train officers to search and press the trigger while evaluating the threats behaviour. My trigger runs until I see the change in behaviour.

So when they testify or give statements- their observation starts with their threat and evaluation- the mechanism to change behaviour (in this case the trigger)- and for them to identify what changed that alerted them that they were no longer under the threat they initially faced,

It could be a snapped shot scares the bad guy and he drops the gun. That’s the change I saw so I didn’t shoot again.

Or I shot the gun in their hands because I was fixated on it. And they dropped it and that’s the change I saw so I didn’t shoot again.

Or I slowed my breathing, shot a porthole through my windshield to be able to return fire effectively on the suspect. When they observed my actions they dropped their weapon- so I didn’t shoot again.

Or when my finger touched my trigger the suspect ditched their weapon and so I knew I didn’t have to shoot.

The observation is more important than the amount of times it’s shot, the number of rounds is interesting- but not necessarily important. The reason I start shooting, why I’m shooting, and the reason I stop is.

Whether that’s because I don’t want them popping up, moving to a point of advantage, or a few other outlier odds and ends- that’s for me to explain why it was reasonable and neccessary- even If I don’t use tidy words like “suppression” etc

So for the average front end police officer- if you imagine a book, the title of the chapter could be pinning or suppression- but the chapter title isn’t really that important,

The contents and ideas in the chapter is the real important stuff- that’s what we D like to hear get articulated. Because it’s the meat of the concept. The “why” rather than umbrella term it may fall under

Because beyond the practicality of fighting, is the idea sharing/ explaining of the court room. So words, even in passing matter there.

 

[mariomike]

The one thing we don't know (well, unless we do and I missed it) in the MCI proceedings is whether (a) the scene where the victim was left was safe for paramedics and/or whether there were even paramedics around. Did they make a decision that went against policy and protocols? Perhaps, and I suspect there but for the grace of a god go a lot of us in emergency services. I get that people may be angry, particularly in view of the 'Fitbit angle', but if the members are called to account, provided they can adequately articulate their good faith thought process, a reasonable assessment might agree with them.

I don't know what the staging SOP is in Nova Scotia. Do they have one. Or, was there any staging?

Our dept. called staging "the decision making process to withhold patient care".

They had an "Alert Line" in CACC ( Control Centre ) to provide immediate notification to the Duty Officer of any crew "who delay patient contact as a result of a scene safety concern."

They immediately deployed the closest available Operations Supervisor to respond to the location.

There will be delay of service incident reports.

Of course, if police were already on scene they were in charge. You took your directions from them.

Unless somebody is declared dead by a competent authority, they're not; but context is often key. I worked in both rural and urban areas where the coroner almost never attended the scene, so off in the ambulance the victim went, regardless of condition. In others, the coroner always attended but, in reality, the victim received no treatment or transport, base solely on our assessment (they still went off in the ambulance as we had no body removal service within a reasonable distance).

The obviously dead were the easiest transports. Both ( crew ) up front. Smoking and joking. Who was going to complain?

90% of it was keeping the call originator, and the police, happy. ie: Transport.

On the other hand, the legally dead could lead to some interesting situations. We had this one on an overseas flight at Pearson...

 

[lenaitch]

This is all really interesting. Surprising to see just how large of a microscope police are under.

Is this level of understanding of the use of force standard across the police departments?

Comes with the big bucks.

Just speaking from an Ontario perspective, everybody gets the same basic training through the Ontario Police College and the Use of Force modeling comes from the government (MinSolGen) so it is standardized. Most large police services layer additional training onto their recruits. As well, large police services have variations of annual in-service training and I assume smaller ones (of which there are very few now) no doubt plug themselves into a larger neighbour's training if they don't do their own.

Although admittedly frustrating, stressful and annoying if you are the one on the little glass slide, if you stick to you training, keep your wits about you, stay in your legal lane and document/articulate effectively, the system invariably accepts that you did your duty.

I think the level of training and awareness can be evidenced by how very few charges that have been laid by the Special Investigations Unit since its inception in 1990. Also, improvements in training and equipment, particularly use-of-force, are reflected, I think, in the number of police officers killed at the hands of others, which is no where near what it was in the mid-'80s.