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• Wednesday, September 5, 2007 03:30 AM

  Justified - you bet!

  Let me get this straight - a drunken man calls his sister at night and then fires a shotgun prompting her to call 911 thinking he is dead. When the police respond, he does not follow orders and come out, but ends up in a drunken conversation where he makes threats. This goes on for a few hours and then when he does not come out - the police attempt to incapacitate him with tear gas which fails. He then comes out of the house, discharges the weapon and returns inside.

  (he later discharges the weapon again and then later points it at a vehicle - 12 to 15 hours after this starts)

  1) If you are the police investigating this - how do you know he has not got someone inside the house with him that he has killed or injured?

  2) If you are the police and you fire all that tear gas and then the man is not "incapacitated" - do you suspect that he might be using something more than alcohol to fuel his rage?

  3) If you are the police and talking to the guy and he refuses to come out - do you just leave and maybe let him go on a bloody rampage? (his family was there to calm him down - right!)

  4) If at the end when he points the shotgun at the approaching vehicle - do you let him shoot it or just ignore it? (pointing a gun at any law enforcement agent is usually considered grounds for deadly force - whether the person doing it is sane, drunk or possessed)

  The point is - if you don't "surround him" and he then goes on a bloody rampage (given the conversation with the negotiator, would you dismiss this threats after he had had the argument with his wife or dismiss it as a drunken threat?)

  This story has so many holes in it that is hard to even know where to start. "Police overreact to man firing shotgun 3 times" - right!

  But this is Salon – la-la logic land!

  two stories about shoootings in two days? at least the other one had a point (although it appeared to leave out quite a bit too)

  —Ironclad Read Ironclad's other letters
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