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It is clear that this young person had mental conditions...and needed help....this is what has happened....no one can discipline children any longer but officers have a right to kill them.....the officers use tasers in school....so please explain why a taser could not have been used in this situation.....this boy was 17 years old....and yes....I do know how boys can be....someone with a mental illness though does not think like a normal person....perhaps officers need to learn more about mental illnesses and how these people think....because there are a lot of people in the country who have mental illnesses.....This person no doubt did not have the right medicines for his condition...this is such a sad situation.....and I feel could have and should have been handled in a different manner....back up should have been called and a different means of calming this person down should have been used.....

If I am not mistaken, when a child is treated for a mental illness, parent/caregivers are also taught management techniques to help them cope with specific related behavior issues. If the family members were not able to calm this young man down, it is quite possible that police would not have been able to either no matter how much additional training received. Let us not forget that they are not mental health experts, they are law enforcement officers. While additional training may have been helpful, there is no way to know that this situation could have been prevented.

This again? Haven't we gone over this enough? Officers ALWAYS shoot for center mass. If there officer feels threatened enough to shoot someone, they're not looking to wound, they are going to stop the threat. Shooting center mass gives them the largest target and the best chance to stop the threat. Period.

Why did the officer not just shoot the knife out of his hand? Gosh, John Wayne did it all of his life!

Officers DO NOT shoot to kill, they shoot to stop the threat. The only way to do this is to shoot for what is called "center mass", the upper part of the torso. The movies are not real life. When you shoot someone, they do not fly backwards and land 20 feet away. When you shoot someone and they're coming at you with a knife, they're still coming if you shoot them once. Shooting someone in the leg is never an option, that is not going to keep the subject from advancing. We can "should-have" this to death, but the simple fact is that this kid was coming at a Deputy Sheriff with a knife after already threatening to kill family members, a fact that would've been relayed to him by the dispatcher. Yes, he obviously had some mental problems. The fact that he had mental issues doesn't mean that the knife in his hand was any less deadly. It probably makes it more so. That being said, it certainly is a tragic ending to a young man's life.

It is because of people like Mimi that we can't keep police officers anymore. The reality is that nobody with a gun intends to shoot a person. It is due to the factors of being inconsiderate, immoral, incredibly stupid, and people with shortsightedness that come at someone (officer) holding a gun. The fact that a person of Mimi's and others "feelings" should indicate they have never been in a situation where they felt there was another way out other that shooting. Why don't you ignorant "feeling" people try being an officer rather than a criminal then you might undetand why that individual got shot!!

It is very obvious that officers are not taught about mental illnesses......for those of you have have an issue with my opinion.....it is very sad when parents, teachers and other adults are not allowed to disciple the children these days....but officers are allowed to shoot them....and yes....I do have a big problem with this....normally when people need help.....nothing is done until something like this happens.....this young man needed help...people with mental illness problems DO NOT THINK OR ACT like normal people do....rumor was that 5 shots were fired....and if this is true....then I think someone had problems....I am sure something will be learned from this experience.....people who have problems with others with mental illnesses will not feel comfortable calling for help....so very sad that this came down to what happened....perhaps more training needs to be done on how to handle people with mental illnesses....I can also tell you this....with the right therapy.....these people can have a decent life....

I do not think the right decisions are always made with people who have power to do whatever in situations such as this.....sometimes....people act before they think.........this person needed help before it got to this point.....
it is a sad situation......not only for the family but for the police officer who killed this person....

I would like to know of those who have commented.....just how many are in law enforcement? I bet several of the responses are from officers of some sort.....

I can speak as a witness to an attempt by an officer to shoot to wound rather than to kill. I was riding with my father, a superior officer on a police department in Michigan, when we received a call for a hostage situation. The first officers on the scene had tried to talk the offender into surrendering. As we approached the scene, the offender came out with a handgun drawn. He was ordered to drop it. Instead, he aimed at the officer who tried to shoot him in the arm and missed. The officer was hit with a non-lethal shot to the body. The offender was then killed by other officers on the scene.

If is absolutely essential to shoot to kill if an officer is threatened. Even then, he cannot be sure of stopping the perpetrator and should empty his weapon into him. It is very rare that lethal force must be used by a police officer, but the incident with the kid with the knife was one of these situations.

Doc

In my layman's opinion if a person is aggressive enough to come at a law enforcement officer with a lethal weapon and violate the officer's sense of security there is no other choice but for the officer to shoot at center mass.

What does Mimi expect, for the officer to run from the offender until back up arriver? For the officer to engage in a wrestling match with the offender?

Hesitation allows for mistakes. What if this officer had disarmed this kid only to have the kid snap a year from now and go on a shooting rampage and kill innocent people?

I am sorry that the young man was troubled, but we cannot begin to second guess our law enforcement officers when they are confronted with deadly force.

cf. Michael Hayes circa 1987.

First, thanks to Ryan Seals for posting this article. It is the first attempt I can remember of an article that tries to educate the public about police tactics. Police tactics are based on millions of encounters with dangerous people, and above all the THE LAW. If people like MiMi don't like or understand them, they should first educate themselves by researching the subject. Since I doubt that will happen...

MiMi, I have been a Greensboro Police Officer for eleven years. Once I went through an academy and defensive tactics classes I learned why shooting center mass in the above scenario was the proper way to train officers. Law enforcement already gets mental health training every year. I have no idea why the myth that we aren't trained enough about mentally ill people is perpetuated. If you are going to cite incidents like the Rook shooting then keep reading. Not only do we get training every year, we also get an incredible amount of experience through innumerable contacts each year that involve mentally ill or unstable people. Whether they truly are mentally ill or not, law enforcement defuses these situations just the same, nobody gets hurt, and nobody ever hears about it because those stories never make the paper.

Also, law enforcement usually doesn't know if the person they are dealing with is truly mentally ill or not. The fact is that with all the bad people that we deal with, that act out of nothing more than malice, it's pretty hard to know for sure who's mentally ill or not until they can be evaluated by a doctor at a later time. Mentally ill people don't have a sign on their chest indicating their diagnosis, and their actions often match the other bad people out there that just want to hurt a cop. A doctor would not think the chances were very good to evaluate an armed subject that is hyped up and angry during a confrontation with police. A doctor wouldn't even bother until later when the subject is calm and coherant. Expecting an officer to do what a doctor wouldn't try in the few seconds an officer has to defuse an armed confrontation like the Rook incident is completely unrealistic. If Rook stayed in one place and responded to anything the duputy said it would be different, but Rook never gave the deputy a chance to defuse the situation.

As for using a taser/pepper spray/shooting in the leg, etc...when an armed person is closing distance on an officer despite being countered with a gun and loud commands, odds are very high that they won't be stopped by anything but a bullet to center mass. If they are mentally ill or high on a drug, they are more unpredictable because they may not feel pain. The range of pepper spray is well within the 21 feet of safe distance from a person armed with a knife. That makes pepper spray a very weak option. The taser may not work as stated above. Two probes need to enter the skin and if one misses it won't work, and then the officer will have an armed person that is even more angry closing the distance quickly while he has the WRONG tool in his hand. Using a taser would at least be in the realm of possibility, even though it's dangerous and against training, if another officer was present with his pistol out. One officer could try the taser while the other could fire the pistol if things went badly. I can't stress enough that this is dangerous and against training, but I bring it up to point out that this was not an option at all because Rook never gave the deputy time to wait for back-up.

Shooting someone in the leg, as much as Holleywood wants us to think, will not stop someone before they close the distance. When someone is hyped up enough to charge an officer with a knife, they will keep coming despite a leg injury. Even if the injury turns out to be serious, it takes the brain some time to realize it. That person can continue to threaten or kill an officer with a knife well before the damage sets in both physically and mentally on the subject. Shooting accurately is hard, shooting accurately while your body is going through a shock from an armed threat is extremely hard. The burst of adrenaline is a very bad thing for officers because it causes a reduced level of muscle coordination. That's why (if you ever pay attention to this stuff) officers across the country routinely shoot with poor accuracy during deadly threat scenarios. So expecting an officer to be able to shoot a knife out of someone's hand, or shoot them in the leg is again very unrealistic. Shooting center mass is the best way to stop the threat as quickly as possible, gives the officer the best chance of actually hitting the target, and reduces the chances of a stray bullet hitting an innocent person.

People get so caught up in the fact that Rook was mentally ill. People think that a mentally ill person automatically has a reduced culpability. This is an assumption, and even if it turns out to be true in court, that does not reduce the deadly threat they posed to an officer. The use of deadly force by law enforcement is determined by the ACTIONS of the subject, not his motive or mental state. The mental state of a subject does not make his knife any less deadly. Deadly force laws have been established for a long time, and police tactics have been formed based on the law and reenforced by millions of deadly force encounters. People need to research this stuff before they put forth opinions that are, unfortunately, based on ignorance. MiMi, please research these things on your own. Talk to someone at the Guilford Center, and defensive tactics and firearms instructors with the Sheriff's or Police Department. Ther is an unlimited number of training resources online that you could review. Don't get stuck on your opinion so much that you don't educate yourself. The attitudes and myths that continue to be perpetuated about these scenarios don't help to reduce the number of these incidents, and they most likely make them more dangerous and harder to defuse when the subject thinks that there just might be another outcome besides getting shot in the chest.