Quote:
Originally Posted by Arya Stark
What I want to know is what if the guy didn't have a knife but a gun hidden in his pants? Were the cops willing to have a shootout with all those people standing behind the culprit?
The cops pulled up and pointed their guns directly at him with many innocent people in the line of fire. If the culprit did pull out a gun, how many people were going to get shot in a shootout?
Was the situation that extreme that they had to come in like ghost busters? Couldn't they have stalked him for a while, cleared the scene, waited for backup?
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The problem is in many instances the law will state "you shall" arrest, there is no wiggle room in that. I'm not sure what the original call was that required police to attend. If it was something like, there's a man with a knife, the public expectation would be that you go deal with that situation ASAP. And you can what if a situation to death. What if the police waited back and the guy started stabbing people? Then the criticism would be that police failed to act. As for the potential shootout, of course that's not ideal, but if a guy is gonna shoot at you, you are pretty much out of options. This is where training takes over and hopefully your rounds hit the guy centre mass and none miss.