Denver police officers faced an armed bad guy who drew down on them amid a busy bar crowd at 1:35 a.m. The cops engaged, firing their sidearms, scoring seven hits out of six rounds. That represents a remarkable 117% hit rate. The only problem is that six of the seven people who were wounded soaked up rounds meant for the bad guy.
They surely donāt appreciate DPDās marksmanship skills or lack thereof.
Yes, thereās that peskyĀ fourth rule of gun safety: Know your target and whatās beyond it.Ā For the record, that even applies to the stapleĀ guns you use to put your targets at the range. But for good guys everywhere, firing anything except carefully controlled shots at a bad actor surrounded by innocents could probably be described more as negligence than exigence.
Maybe Denver Police should hire a guy like Elisjsha Dicken to coach them up on their marksmanship skills. Heās the guy without formal training who took down a rifle-toting lunaticĀ shooting people in a crowded mall in Indiana. Dicken scoredĀ eight hits out of ten shots fired, wounding no innocents by mistake, at up to 40 yards away.
Hereās the dirty laundry on the horrific incidentĀ from theĀ Denver Post.
Denver police on Tuesday released surveillance video and body camera footage of three officers shooting an armed man and injuring six innocent bystanders outside busy downtown bars on July 17.
For the first time, the videos show from start to finish the shooting, which a grand jury will investigate. Denver police officials previously made public still images they selected from the videos but denied public records requests by The Denver Post and other news outlets to release the videos in their entiretyā¦
Denver policeĀ previously saidĀ Waddy was holding theĀ gun by the slide on the top when the officers fired. Itās unclear if Waddy could have fired theĀ gunĀ while holding it that way, Cmdr. Matt ClarkĀ said at a July 20 news conference. He said the officers believed the muzzle of the gunĀ pointed at them as Waddy pulled it out.
Two officers shot a combined five rounds while facing Waddy with the front wall of Larimer Beer Hall behind him. A third officer fired one round from Waddyās right side, and a crowd of people was visible behind Waddy in the officerās body camera footage.
āThe Department of Safety and Denver Police Department remains concerned about the health and well-being of those who were injured in this incident and will continue to offer support to aid in their healing,ā the departments said in a joint statement Tuesday.
Maybe Denverās police need to spend more time onĀ the fundamentals of handgun safety and marksmanship and less on āwokeā racial/implicit bias training.