Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Laquan McDonald Video Not Dispositive of Police Criminal Misconduct

Before we do, however, it’s also important to provide some tactical context, as it is within this context that the officers made their decision to use deadly force upon the non-compliant and knife-armed McDonald.

There is a sentiment being expressed “by some” that somehow there exists a great disparity in the lethality of a handgun and the lethality of a knife. In fact, at close quarters a knife is arguably a more lethal instrument than is a gun.

There has also been expressed the notion that because McDonald was not within arm’s reach of the police officers that he represented no imminent deadly threat. This notion is, of course, the result of ignorance.

I expect every police officer in the country has been taught a defensive doctrine called the Tueller Drill. The Tueller Drill was developed by Salt Lake City Police Officer Dennis Tueller, who among other things was a firearms instructor for his department.

Dennis trained uniformed police officers who were armed with pistols and who regularly encountered violent suspects armed with impact weapons, particularly knives.

He recognized that a knife wielder standing beside an officer could surely stab that officer before the officer could clear his pistol from his holster and engage the attacker with fired rounds.

Dennis also recognized, however, that at some greater distance an impact-weapon armed attacker would be too far to constitute an imminent threat to police officer. Absent an imminent threat, the officer would not be justified in using deadly force upon the attacker.

That begged the question, then, of what distance became the threshold at which an impact-weapon armed attacker did constitute an imminent threat of death or grave bodily harm such that the officer would be justified in using deadly force. Was that distance 5 feet? 10 feet? 15 feet?

Dennis knew a pretty good time for an officer to clear his weapon from his holster and strike a target with two center-mass rounds was about 1.5 seconds. Once that time is known, the question of interest becomes how great a distance an attacker armed with an impact weapon can cross in that same 1.5 seconds. Whatever that distance, the aggressor became an imminent threat for self-defense purposes once he crossed that threshold.

After running a great many empirical tests, Dennis found that the distance that an impact-weapon armed attacker could cross from a standing start in 1.5 seconds was not just 5 feet, or 10 feet, or 15 feet. Rather, such an aggressor could consistently cross a distance of 21 feet, a full 7 yards, in the 1.5 seconds it would take the typical officer to draw his holster and engage that aggressor with aimed fire.

That suggested that an aggressor armed with an impact weapon becomes an imminent deadly threat even when he was as far away as 21 feet–a distance that astonished even many experienced law enforcement officers.

I hope I don't get within 21 feet of a cop because I always have a knife.

I hope I don't get within 21 feet of a cop because I always have a knife.

I hope I don't get within 21 feet of a cop because I always have a knife.

Cops' licenses to kill will be revoked if the sheeple ever figure out that the cops have no duty to protect them, and have a lot more latitude in protecting themselves, than us subjects have.

Liberals and other weaklings view the local cops as being representative of a mythical, all powerful, benign, "system" which somehow allows us to co-exist with our neighbors.

Promotion of this myth is perhaps the most successful propaganda campaign since Satan convinced a majority of folks that he doesn't exist.

Cops' licenses to kill will be revoked if the sheeple ever figure out that the cops have no duty to protect them, and have a lot more latitude in protecting themselves, than us subjects have.

Did the officer in the vid already have his gun drawn? If so, that 21 foot rule doesn't apply.

Where did you learn that?

it would make a difference to you if you were the one taking the rounds

If the cop was justified in firing one round he was justified in firing 15.

I hope I don't get within 21 feet of a cop because I always have a knife