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Officer's gun goes off by mistake in Jamaica Plain; police investigating
By adamg on Mon, 05/02/2016 - 3:02pm
The scene from inside City Feed and Supply.
Around 2 p.m. on Seaverns Avenue, just off Centre Street.
P. Cheung forwarded a friend's photo from inside City Feed.
John Hayden forwards a report from the local neighborhood watch - that an officer's gun went off accidentally and that nobody was hit. Boston Police are investigating the incident.
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
Officer negligently discharges his duty weapon
This is a reporting pet peeve of mine. Guns don't just go off accidentally, even when dropped (assuming he wasn't ridin' dirty with some sort of antique pistol). He was careless enough to somehow get a finger or other object inside the trigger guard and apply enough force to pull the trigger. Oopsies?
Remind me why cops routinely
Remind me why cops routinely carry firearms? I can see how some officers would need them in some situations, but why should every officer be armed at all times?
Because...
It's pretty hard to guess which officers will be facing a lethal situation on any given day. Unless you know some fortune tellers who could set the duty roster each day and see who will need a firearm and who wouldn't.
London and UK does fine.
London and UK does fine.
I'll see my way out.
We aren't the UK
I guarantee you if you tell law enforcement they can't all carry guns the number of law enforcement will drop dramatically. We aren't the UK, this isn't a valid argument at all.
not a valid comparison
Whether you like or hate guns, the simple truth is that the culture is ingrained in U.S. society and there are millions in circulation. Criminals will get them here. That's why we arm the police.
People often bring up Australia's gun control as an effective example, but the same thing applies to the UK. They never had that pervasive gun culture with all the guns out there. They are also island nations with a fraction of the population of the U.S. And guess what - it's not some utopia. They have their problems with violence, too. Making meth illegal in Australia sure hasn't kept it out of the country, just like the UK's strict knife laws haven't stopped people from stabbing each other.
Yeah
It also sucks for the store which likely lost an afternoon's worth of business plus whatever damage was done and the negative press to boot.
Why did they have to close
Why did they have to close off the whole store?
The store was not closed
The store was not closed, all of the businesses on that corner remained open. The street was blocked for over an hour as cops trickled in. There were over a dozen uniformed and plainclothes police and a few suits to boot. A fair number of pedestrians were confused about why the commotion and stopped to the watch.
This kind of thing
This kind of thing is why I am not swayed by arguments based on "responsible gun owner" or "good guys with guns" or "guns don't kill people" themes. The damned things are dangerous. When they go off, something or someone gets damaged, because they're designed to do damage. If the most highly-trained professionals have them go off unintentionally, nobody can be assumed to be safely carrying one.
So far, nobody has come up with a way to make them safe that doesn't seriously interfere with their intended purpose. If a gun is sufficiently ready to fire that it's useful in an emergency, it's an accident waiting to happen. If it's sufficiently safeguarded that it can't discharge accidentally, it's no use in an emergency.
Most guns are perfect, in that they do exactly what they were intended to do when triggered: send a dense piece of metal flying through the air at high velocity. Unfortunately, human beings are imperfect. They are inattentive, emotional, make mistakes, get drunk or otherwise impaired, and are just not well-equipped to reliably control a machine such as a firearm. Even highly-trained police officers, who can be counted on to be effective in operating firearms when their use is necessary, cannot be counted on to never accidentally operate them the rest of the time.
We should be removing the vast majority of these dangerous machines from our midst.
Hate to break it to you but
Hate to break it to you but the average gun owner spends more time at the range than the average cop. It's a huge problem that the police keep getting more equipment and do not get anywhere near the practice time they should on a regular basis. Cops won't put the training or practice time unless they are paid as the vast majority of them never have the need to use their service weapon over a career.
Unless a police officer is in a high risk unit or shoots competitively they only train or shoot maybe once a year for requalification. Practice really should be a one hour each month requirement.
You miss the point
Training and practice do not make gun-carrying foolproof, and there are fools in police departments, as in the rest of the population. You can easily find reports of gun-safety instructors and gun-range masters shooting people they did not mean to, including themselves. Reports of people being shot at gun ranges are numerous. Given the fallibility of human beings, the more gun-carrying people present in a location, the greater the likelihood that somebody will get shot.
If that were true the NRA
If that were true the NRA convention would be a bloodbath each year and instead it is as boring as a Barry Manilow concert.
With all due respect to Mr. Manilow.
And if you have children
For God's sake, don't have guns around.
or lock them up
As the law says. If your firearms are accessible to children, you are not only failing to comply with MA laws, but you're not a "responsible gun owner" as you say above. Not sure how that fits in to your argument, as these people would be -- by nature -- irresponsible and not representative of those who follow safety practices.
This kind of post
is written by someone who knows nothing about guns, but who thinks because they are educated in another field that they are somehow qualified to tell us lawful gun owners what we can and cannot do. The pistols carried by BPD likely have at least two safety mechanisms. This was not an "accident" - it was negligence. This officer should be put on desk duty.
You talking about me?
You don't know me, and have no standing to make statements about what I do or do not know. Be advised that in the Army, I qualified Expert with the M-14, then qualified Expert with the M-16, then carried one for a year in Vietnam.
If you read my comments, you will not find any instance of me telling you what you can or cannot do.
i know a lot about guns
the m-16 is a full two Ms better than the m-14, for example
Accidents happen.
I just had a flash back to that movie Demolition Man where Cocto wanted a flawless society where none suffered or died. Accidents happen. People die. This is no different than a car going through the building or hitting someone on the street or duck boats hitting and killing people. It happens, it will continue to happen.
No such thing as "accidents"
No such thing as "accidents" only negligence.
If a Boston license holder (the few which meet Boston's non-restricted license criteria) did this they would lose their license for the rest of their lives in MA and might face criminal charges from the DA's office.
I wager this cop gets a slap on the wrist and gets to keep on carrying after some retraining.
Desk pop?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=948-2Vzgi3w