Police Shootings (Singapore)

For some strange reasons, or perhaps no reason at all, just coincidence, or perhaps for reasons beyond human comprehension, in the last few months, there have been a spate of incidents involving men armed with knives, and in one case a sword.

In at least two cases, the police were present and tried to de-escalate the situation, but had to shoot the armed man. In the case of 17 Feb, the man with the knife charged at policemen at the Clementi Neighbourhood Police Centre. The police at the scene shot the man.

He was hit in the arm, and survived.

About a month later, at Bendemeer, an older man was approached by police officers and told to drop the knife he was carrying. He did not comply and police used their Tasers on him. Three times. I believe they failed to hit him with the tasers. Three times. Finally, he charged at them and one of them fired his service weapon. The man was hit in the chest and died.

Anyway, the two shootings were so close in time that it was inevitable that they were compared.

And the public generally praised the Clementi shooting for humanely shooting the man in the arm, but questioned the intent (?) of the police officer at Bendemeer for "shooting to kill". 

Tbe minister clarified in Parliament that police officers were trained to shoot at "centre mass" or the body. 

So technically, the Bendemeer shooting was on target, and the Clementi shooting was lucky it still hit the assailant.

If either of the police officers who shot the men were asked in court during a trial: "did you shoot to kill?" the answer both of them should give is, "I shot to stop him (the knife-wielder)." If the Clementi Police officer were to be asked, "were you trying to shoot his arm to wound him?" His honest answer would be no. Firstly, because if you have done any shooting, you should know that the arm is a very small target, and secondly, there is no guarantee that an arm shot would be sufficient to stop the man, even if you did manage to hit that (very small) target. If the officer claims that he was aiming at the arm of the knife-wielder and had only intended to shoot him in the arm to wound him, I would call him a liar and would like to see his shooting scores in his last combat shoot. 

Police are trained to shoot "centre-mass" the largest part of the target, the body. One of the three rules of gun handling is never point a gun at anything you do not intend to shoot. In both cases, a single shot was sufficient to stop the men. The objective of stopping the person has been achieved. However, it is unfortunate that in the process of stopping the Bendemeer assailant, he was killed. 

Conversely, it might also be said that the Clementi shooting was almost unfortunate because the shot almost miss the target. It was sheer luck that the target was hit in the arm. And fortunate for him, that he chose not to fight on, and to fall to the ground., thus satisfying the intent of the shot. If he stayed on his feet and charged on, he might well have earned further shots until he was stopped. 

The point of this comment is to disabuse the general public of the notion that a) Police officers shoot to kill. They do not. b) And neither do they shoot to wound. That is not the intent. And not realistic. Really, if police officers are gun-kata saints, they should be shooting the knife out of the hands of the knife-wielder. That would be a lot more impressive, no? A gun (pistol/revolver) is a deadly weapon. Used only in the last resort when life is endangered. You shoot to stop an assailant or would-be assailant. With the risk that it may result in the death of the target (because the gun is a deadly weapon). You do not intend it, but it is a risk that on the balance of all outcomes, you the police officer decided that it is worth taking. And you decide this all in the moment. (After which you should still have time to aim for a non-lethal part of the body to hit?)