Recent Police Shootings Locally

[bullets13]

Today there was another police shooting, this one in Orangefield.  Beaumont has had two in the last 3 weeks, and jasper had one a couple of months ago. Lots going on.  They all seem justified to me.  The only one that was very questionable was the chainsaw guy, but it sure sounds like he went after somebody with the chainsaw before he got shot.  

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[bullets13]

5 days ago... 

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[bullets13]

10 days ago... 

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[tvc184]

I think that Beaumont has had five this year. That is astronomical for that size of a city. But…. it runs like that sometimes.

Port Arthur had a run of I believe 5 officer involved shootings back in the 90s, all fatal, in only a couple of years time frame. I was on scene for a couple of them.

The streets seem to be getting crazy lately and in my opinion social media and current policing policies aren’t helping. 

[tvc184]

We had an officer involved fatal shooting at my agency about 40 years ago. A man was reported to be swinging an axe one morning around people and especially children in the neighborhood. One officer tried to distract the man while another officer risked his life trying to sneak up on the suspect from behind and tackle him while grabbing the arm with the axe. 

The guy heard the officer sneaking up behind him and raised the axe to strike the officer. One shot was fired and the man with the axe was killed.

 That wasn’t the story though. The odd part was when the media showed and asked a commanding officer something like, did you have to try to tackle the man and could you have simply left the scene without using dead force?

 The lieutenant responded with…. Sure, we could’ve left the same. There was a man swinging an axe around citizens and especially children but we could’ve driven away and left it with them. Is that why we hired the police?

[mat]

I understand today’s shooting was totally justified. This is a prime example that mental issues are real.

[tvc184]

On the issue of mental health and the police, the discussion most of the time at some point turns to, the police didn’t know what they were doing, they had no training, they immediately resort to force, etc.

 In the 254 counties in Texas it would be extremely conservative to say that the police encounter 25 mentally ill people daily somewhere in the state. From experience there are probably more instances than that in Houston alone but let’s err extremely on the side of caution.

 That means that roughly 10,000 mentally ill people come into adversarial contact with the police annually. All Texas police officers must go to Crisis Intervention Training and deescalation training. 

So an unfortunate incident like this happens. The cries go out… the police aren’t trained! They look simply to use force!!

All the while ignoring the 9,999 that didn’t end in deadly force.

 The actual number is probably 35,000 contacts each year but if one goes bad…. 34,999 are ignored.
 

I have brought as many as three people to an emergency crisis center in a single day as a regular patrol officer. That is one officer on one day. Now add 25 ,000 Texas officers for a year. 

[mat]

From what I understand, the officer that shot, was THE mental health responder for the department. Most qualified and still got the crap beat out of him before he could defend.