multiple shootings

[jnhdrac]

I work in a district of about 60 officers. Those officers have been involved in a total of 18 shooting incidents that I am aware of. What I find interesting is that 3 of those officers account for 10 of the shooting incidents. I am counting any incident where the officer discharged his firearm, whether shooting at wounded animals, attacking animals, or people. The 3 officers are all good officers, but most of the others are just as good. I have not seen a difference in the activity levels of the 3 and the others who have been involved in a single incident or most of those who have never been involved in an incident. My sampling is hardly scientific, but there does seem to be a trend that a small number of officers account for a majority of the shooting incidents. One theory I have is that there is a strong psychological wall to actually shooting, and once somebody uses justified deadly force once, they are more willing to use justified deadly force again. I am talking about absolutely justified, absolutely legal, deadly force. Has anybody else noticed a trend like this?

[CinciCobra]

My district is about 120 officers, and we have about 1100 department wide. Our department's last two shootings occurred this month, and both were w/ plain clothes officers. I found that interesting. Yet the gun arrests are coming from uniformed officers. The plain clothes shootings were all good shoots, and the officers immediately ID'd themselves.

The uniformed shootings we have had seem to be completely random, in regards to location / time / and officer. I work in probably the worst neighborhood in our city, and we haven't had a uniformed officer involved shooting in over 3 years. And we recovered over a hundred guns on third shift alone last year.

Now, in agreement with your post, we had an officer that was involved in two shootings in a week and one was a fatal shooting. He was in a running gun battle that lasted about 5 blocks through alleys and courtyards, and the other was a standoff w/ a code 9 (mental) that was sporting a 12 gauge shotgun. Beyond that, I can't think of any other officers that have killed multiple suspects.

[1sgkelly]

Killing the first one is the hardest; it gets easier the more you do it.

Some old sergeant in the Army.