National Guard shooting in NOLA

Posted here since this is where the likely impact may fall, considering the ROEs on the Mexican border.

Update: Guardsman shoots, kills man whose rifle turns out to be BB gun
March 8, 2007
The Associated Press

A National Guardsman shot and killed a man who threw a piece of broken glass at a National Guard patrol and later pointed what guardsmen and police thought was a rifle at them early today, police said.

Homicide detectives are investigating the shooting, but the guardsman, whose name was not released, appears to have been acting appropriately, said Sgt. Joe Narcisse, a New Orleans Police Department spokesman.

The dead man has not been identified, Narcisse said.

The National Guard members saw the man at about 1 a.m., carrying a hacksaw while riding a bicycle in the Lower Ninth Ward, which remains largely vacant since Hurricane Katrina. They thought they should check him out because thefts of copper pipe are common, Narcisse wrote in response to an e-mail.

''As the guardsmen approached the man, he produced a knife, threatening the military men and then threw a piece of broken glass at them, cutting a sergeant's arm,'' Narcisse wrote in his news release.

The man ran into a rundown house, he said. When police and guardsmen entered the house and approached the man, he pointed a BB gun that looked like a rifle at them. A Guardsman shot the man several times, police said.

Narcisse said the man did not carry any identification, and there was none in the house.

''It's unclear if the home was his or not. He clearly knew the (gun) was there,'' Narcisse wrote.

I guess the moral of the story is not to point things that look like weapons at people with real weapons. Honestly, I guess the only reason things like this get written up is to serve as some sort of morality play

The problem is there is a certain segment of our society that is against people being shot regardless of the whys....I spent hours on the stand over my part in a shooting that lasted 3 to 4 minutes at the most. Thats why I get so worried when I keep hearing about young soldiers with far less maturity and life experience being forced into "policing" roles that they have not had adequate training for. Especially in our own country. A split second decision can ruin your future.

I agree with your sentiment. My reply was a bit flippant.

I had some training last year that invoked scenarios much like that discussed in the article. In reading the article and reflecting on the training, I can't help but wonder why the subject wasn't shot when he threatened the cops and guardsman with a knife. Part of our training involved standing roughly 20 feet from a subject armed with a knife, weapon holstered. The subject then initiated a charge and we were told to respond. Every single time, the subject was able to "cut" us before we could unholster the weapon.

The lesson here is that even at a distance, a knife is a deadly weapon and deadly force is authorized. However, ROE is often taught in such a way as to maximize confusion and create hesitation that could be deadly (often by lawyers that don't know any better). This is especially the case in using troops for policing duties that haven't been properly trained.

A good article on this can be found in the July 2005 issue of Proceedings (http://www.usni.org/proceedings/pro2005toc.htm). You have to register to read. Another good article can be found at: http://www.usni.org/proceedings/Arti...PROparks1.html

The couple of knives I have will easily shave hair off the leg or arm and quite possibly many criminals keep their knives sharp too. Add some crack to an already deranged mind with a sharp knife in the hand and it spells serious injury or death for anyone facing that person. Let Mr. Glock or Colt talk to them first and do the intervention.

Calibre Press has a very interesting video on edged weapons. It even shows what a fork can do to someone. It's pretty amazing. I think they started the whole 21' rule with bladed weapons. They even show some of, at the time, best knife fighters in the world do their thing. A knife doesn't jam, you don't have to reload it, and it's pretty traumatic to get stuck with one. Swords are even worse. I was on a homicide scene where the victim took a single strike from a sword and was very nearly decapitated from just one blow in the hands of a mental without any martial arts background. Plus, he was little guy. It was something else. After seeing that stuff it's hard to take the general population serious with their T.V. induced ideas like shooting to wound, or that we should be better trained in martial arts so that we can close with and disarm subjects armed with swords.....:confused:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mondor

I guess the moral of the story is not to point things that look like weapons at people with real weapons. Honestly, I guess the only reason things like this get written up is to serve as some sort of morality play

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Translation: Darwinism is still in effect.

This puts the patrol area in context:

Study: Murder rate is even higher
Figures make N.O. the deadliest city
Monday, March 12, 2007
By Brendan McCarthy
Staff writer

A new study by a Tulane University professor puts New Orleans' murder rate as the highest in the country.

The study estimates the city's 2006 murder rate at 96 per every 100,000 people.

Determining the exact per capita murder rate, the most popular measuring stick for overall violent crime, has largely been up for debate, falling victim to slippery estimates of the city's post-Katrina population.

The new study, by demographer Mark VanLandingham, aims to fix the main flaw in previous per capita murder estimates for 2006: It takes into account the large change in New Orleans' population during the year, with far fewer people in the city at the beginning of 2006 than at the end. That change raises the murder rate substantially.

For instance, using the highest static population estimate VanLandingham found in his research, 201,000, would produce a murder rate of about 80 per 100,000 people, still significantly lower than the new study's conclusion. Using the figure New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley has offered -- 275,000, based on an estimate rather than research -- the murder rate would fall to just 58 per 100,000 people.

VanLandingham, a professor in the international health and development department of Tulane's School of Public Health, sought to bring hard fact to a debate between the Police Department and critics who say the it has downplayed the crime problem.

"It's part of this big policy debate: How bad is the murder rate?" VanLandingham said. "It was a question that could be answered. And I wanted to do it right, come up with a correct estimate."

The study also shows a steadily increasing murder rate since 2004. The murder rate for 2004 was 57 per every 100,000 people. In 2005, the year Katrina hit, the rate was 65 per every 100,000 people, according to VanLandingham's study.

According to his study, the 2006 murder rate was 68 percent higher than in 2004.

'Murder city'

The 2006 murder rates of other cities were exponentially lower than New Orleans' rate. Houston had a rate of about 20 per 100,000 residents, according to statistics for the first half of 2006, the most recent released by the FBI. Detroit had a rate of 41; Baltimore, 42; St. Louis, 32; Philadelphia, 25; and Newark, N.J., 36.

In analyzing crime, demographers and crime analysts say murder rates best reflect overall trends because killings are almost always reported.

New Orleans Police Department spokesman Sgt. Joe Narcisse said police officials look at the murder rate but question whether any true rate can be established. "The change in our population makes it hard to quantify with any degree of certainty," he said.

Narcisse added that holding the title of the country's most murderous city damages New Orleans' reputation. "It hurts the city, and it hurts us all, when we look at murder rates with those per capita numbers," he said.

The FBI's annual crime statistics -- the standard measure for a city's totals for murder and other major crimes -- use the midyear population estimate provided by the city, which doesn't account for New Orleans' radical shift in population in 2006.

In his study, VanLandingham used a group of the most widely accepted population estimates to estimate a month-by-month breakdown of the number of people in the city.

Other demographers and criminologists called the research the most accurate -- and frightening -- estimate of the murder rate to date.

"What the police have done is use year-end stats and year-end population to push the rate down," said Peter Scharf, a criminologist at the University of New Orleans. "This study makes the rate more precise."

Scharf said New Orleans' rate far exceeds that of other large cities. However, he sees a more worrisome sign in the study. "Now matter how your parse it, we are murder city, murder capital," he said. "But forget it, let's move on. The second issue is that we have an ascending murder rate. It's going up. That's more worrisome."

Police methodology

Police officials have shied away from discussing the 2006 murder rate, opting instead to talk about the year-end total of 162, a total that was lower than years past. In those years, however, the city had a population at least double the current estimates.

At a news conference on New Year's Day, Riley heralded the city's 2006 murder total as the lowest in 30 years.

He called the population estimates way too low and said they inflated the crime rate, and also spoke of staff shortages and hardships faced by the department and the city. He said the tally of 161 murders, later bumped to 162, was substantially lower than in the years before Katrina and was the lowest in decades.

He was optimistic. He was also incorrect. In 1999, the Police Department tallied 159 murders, according to the department's Web site and media reports published at the time. That number came at a time when New Orleans' population was around 485,000, according to census figures.

Narcisse called Riley's inaccurate declaration a "slip of the tongue."

"When the superintendent made that statement, perhaps he was generalizing a bit," Narcisse said. "It is a low number, and it is one of the lowest numbers in this time period. It's just not the lowest."

Population estimates vary

Gregory Stone, a lead researcher in one well-known population study and a manager of health demographics at the Louisiana Public Health Institute, said officials are citing year-end numbers that do not properly reflect the city's population. "Taking a year-end number in a city that has been repopulating gives a way too generous, way too low rate," Stone said.

The New Orleans Emergency Operations Center conducted three separate estimates, with the most recent theorizing that about 181,000 people resided in New Orleans at the end of January 2006, Stone said.

Other estimates have varied greatly. The U.S. Census Bureau's population estimate for Jan. 1, 2006, was 158,000. The Louisiana Public Health Institute estimated that the city boasted a population of about 201,000 between June and October.

Several demographers interviewed said the number is likely lower. Conservative estimates put the population under 200,000.

Riley has previously said migrant workers living and working in the city are not being counted in such estimates. He has cautioned that the city could get an "awful reputation" based on miscalculations in population.

Narayan Sastry, a demographer with the Rand Corp., which has conducted a series of population studies, agreed with VanLandingham's methodology.

"That's really the only correct way to do it," Sastry said, adding that demographers may differ on population estimates. "Generally, if you have a stable population, it wouldn't matter. But in this case, it's very different."
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpa...220.xml&coll=1

Latest murder on the heels of violent Carnival season
by Laura Maggi and Brendan McCarthy, Times-Picayune
Thursday February 07, 2008, 6:43 AM
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2...ower_gard.html

A gunman opened fire Wednesday morning and killed a 26-year-old man driving a rental car in the Lower Garden District, sending the car careening into a nearby building.

The fatal shooting, the 21st murder in New Orleans this year, occurred closely on the heels of a trying Carnival season for police, one in which four people were murdered and 12 others injured in shootings in the past five days, according to police records.