Near Suicide by Cop
What are the lessons learned?
Two days ago, a local check cashing business was robbed at knife point. After the suspect put a knife to her throat, and tied up the only employee, he left with $5000 in cash. He was later identified by the victim, because he had been a previous customer of the business, and had been photographed as part of receiving a loan.
As I was getting ready for work, my wife begged me not to go to, and began to cry. I reminded her that if I was not at work, someone might get hurt because I wasn’t there to protect them. I left at 8PM. At about 11PM, while several of us were sitting down having a cup of coffee, we received information that the suspect from the robbery two days earlier was threatening to come back to the same town, and have a shoot-out with the local police department. I am a deputy for the county sheriff’s department, but as the local PD was short-handed this evening, I decided to stick around and watch for this guy. I went out to my patrol vehicle, and topped off the magazines of my issued Colt AR-15. I decided that if this guy wanted to have a shoot-out with the cops, that I would have my rifle ready, so I could easily deal with him and his “Saturday Night Special” .380ACP, or whatever cheap handgun he was able to scrounge up from his meth-head buddies.
After driving around town for a short time, I decided that if I was looking to have a shoot-out with the cops, the best place to wait for them was at the police department. As I was driving to the local PD, I overheard one of their officers being dispatched to a call of a “man with a gun” a block away from the doors of the PD. I heard a local officer arrive on scene from the South, and heard several other officers responding as well from the North. As I pulled into the PD parking lot from the West, I realized my error. Assuming that the man with the gun was at the address the complainant called from, I thought the PD would be a safe off-load point. As my lights scanned the lot, I observed a man standing in the parking lot waving an AK-47 about 55 yards from me. I exited my patrol truck with my AR-15. I ordered the suspect to drop the weapon several times, but he simply yelled at me to, “F–k off!” He stood facing me, but had his rifle pointed to the South. I believed that he was about to shoot at me.
After more orders to drop the weapon, he turned to where a fellow police officer had broken cover to approach the suspect so that he could avoid a crossfire with the other officers. With the suspect focusing on this officer, and with the rifle raised to his shoulder, pointing toward the officer, I could not hold my fire any longer. I fired two rounds, hitting the suspect twice. He started to go to the ground, but took what appeared to be a kneeling firing posture. I fired two more times, hitting him once. The suspect was quickly cuffed, and flown to a trauma center. None of the officers involved were hurt.
Later, the investigation showed that the suspect had fired 8 rounds from his fully loaded AK-47, in an attempt to get police there to kill him. The suspect recovered, and is looking at life behind bars.
—ML, UT
October 4th, 2009 at 10:01 am
There’s no such thing as suicide by cop. This is for the same reason why there’s no such thing as suicide by a normal citizen.
All that happens is that you get shot for not following orders. If you were more confident you wouldn’t see any need to kill criminals unless there’s a hostage situation, or you’re the hostage.
Its all about authority: citizens think they have it, cops and government agents take it by force, bankers, CEO’s and politicians don’t need it.
March 1st, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Wow…, Doctor, Atleast that prick gets life and just didn’t die.
February 10th, 2009 at 9:44 am
.223’s cant even kill cats let alone people