Police Shooting in NY: Groom Killed On Wedding Day(Updated)[Merged]

southland22 said

let me clear up what im trying to say.
policies are written and changed every month and we recieve the updates throughout the year. one facter that is always present is policies are guidlines the officers and the dept must go by but they are flexable due to the nature of evets. that has been ruled on in a court of law. specifically that ruling stats that no guideline or policy can deny a officer the right to defend himself when deadly force is being used against him or her.

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That's fine - and I completely agree that protecting your life falls above a policy, but in this case, I think it means that the burden of proof falls to the officers to prove that they only way to defend themselves was to unload 50 rounds (including changing clips) into a car that had no other weapon in it, when the current policy is to never shoot a car unless there is another weapon involved.

The reason the policy against shooting a moving vehicle is in place in lots of jurisdictions is that there a dozens of things that can happen and only 2 of them are good. It is believed by many police departments that in most cases shooting at a moving vehicle is a bad way to resolve the situation. That appears to be the case with the NYPD.

So, since NYPD policy is to not shoot at a moving vehicle, and the officers did shoot at a moving vehicle, they have to explain why the violated that policy. It may be that there was no possible way for them to move out of the way of the moving vehicle and that it continued to move after they fired say 20 rounds, necessitating more firing. If that's the case, then they acted properly. If not, then they should be disciplined accordingly (depending on what the facts were).