Talk Elections

General Politics => International General Discussion => Topic started by: Tender Branson on May 08, 2012, 10:37:45 AM



Title: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: Tender Branson on May 08, 2012, 10:37:45 AM
Last year, Austrian police officers shot 81 times while on duty.

4 of them were directly aimed at suspects, the rest were warning shots.

1 of the 4 was deadly, the suspect died. Another suspect was injured.

It is now the 2nd time after 2000 that less than 100 shots were fired by the Police.

In Germany, only 85 shots were fired but 36 of them were directly aimed at suspects. It resulted in 6 dead suspects and 15 wounded.

http://derstandard.at/1336435279893/Oesterreich-Polizisten-gaben-im-Vorjahr-81-Schuesse-ab

...

I wonder how many shots American police officers have shot in 2011 ... :P


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: Franzl on May 08, 2012, 11:41:55 AM
Maybe that number per officer? Maybe a bit less... ;)


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: dead0man on May 08, 2012, 11:14:04 PM
They (the authorities in charge of the police) let them shoot "warning shots"?  Wow.  I thought only idiots and people in movies did the whole "warning shot" thing.  They probably shoot to "wound" instead of kill too....which would explain why they only hit 2 of the 4 bad guys they had to shoot at.



<walks away shaking his head saying "warning shots?">


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: Tender Branson on May 08, 2012, 11:53:53 PM
They (the authorities in charge of the police) let them shoot "warning shots"?  Wow.  I thought only idiots and people in movies did the whole "warning shot" thing.  They probably shoot to "wound" instead of kill too....which would explain why they only hit 2 of the 4 bad guys they had to shoot at.



<walks away shaking his head saying "warning shots?">

The bad guys in Austria are mostly unarmed or without a gun. Therefore a warning shot by the police is mostly enough for them to surrender. There's mostly no reason to actually kill them.


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: Franzl on May 09, 2012, 02:26:45 AM
They (the authorities in charge of the police) let them shoot "warning shots"?  Wow.  I thought only idiots and people in movies did the whole "warning shot" thing.  They probably shoot to "wound" instead of kill too....which would explain why they only hit 2 of the 4 bad guys they had to shoot at.



<walks away shaking his head saying "warning shots?">

Not violent enough for you? ;)


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: useful idiot on May 12, 2012, 10:37:30 AM
They (the authorities in charge of the police) let them shoot "warning shots"?  Wow.  I thought only idiots and people in movies did the whole "warning shot" thing.  They probably shoot to "wound" instead of kill too....which would explain why they only hit 2 of the 4 bad guys they had to shoot at.



<walks away shaking his head saying "warning shots?">

Not violent enough for you? ;)

I think the major qualm with warning-shots is that those bullets have to land somewhere...it's better a criminal gets hit than some kid walking down the street. Shooting to wound is essentially the same; trying to hit a guy's leg from 30 feet away with a handgun isn't impossible, but it's hardly easy, especially when you're not a sociopath and you're shaking because you could well be ending someone's life. You go for the biggest mass on a person's body, and the one that will be most likely to stop them: their torso.


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: they don't love you like i love you on May 12, 2012, 10:54:34 AM
Also the idea that there's a "safe" place to shoot someone is mostly a Hollywood invention, someone could easily die from the blood loss from a hit to the leg by the time EMT arrives or even if it not it'd be too late. That's why shots are never to "kill" or "wound" but rather simply "neutralize", basically remove the person as a threat (except for snipers who do headshots, thus obviously shoot to kill.)


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: politicus on May 13, 2012, 03:19:38 PM
Most European police forces have orders to aim at the legs in order to stop the target from running away. That's standard operating procedure. Going after the torso is too dangerous, and its not generally accepted, that the police just kills criminals. European criminals are often not armed and a large proportion of the situations where police officers draw fire arms are against mentally ill people, whom it would be amoral to kill just because they threaten someone with a weapon.

Even if a gun wound is always somewhat risky, a torso shot is clearly more risky than a leg shot.


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: dead0man on May 14, 2012, 08:35:03 AM
Do police in Europe not have Tasers (or other, ranged, less lethal, weapons)?  I know the left (and so perhaps all of Europe) love to hate Tasers, but that's just pure ignorance on their part (not like that's a new thing).


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: Tender Branson on May 14, 2012, 08:48:46 AM
Do police in Europe not have Tasers (or other, ranged, less lethal, weapons)?  I know the left (and so perhaps all of Europe) love to hate Tasers, but that's just pure ignorance on their part (not like that's a new thing).

Of course they have, but it is used very, very, very rarely:

Quote
Police used stun-gun on asylum seeker

The police used a Taser stun-gun last summer to prevent a Chechen asylum applicant from cutting his throat in a jail cell, it was revealed today (Weds).

Interior ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia today (Weds) confirmed a report about use of the gun in the weekly magazine "Falter" based on Sankt Pölten police protocols.

Gollia said the man had threatened to cut his throat with a razor blade if denied permission to speak with his therapist. Members of the elite security unit "Cobra" then used a stun-gun to incapacitate the man.

He was taken to a hospital and then to a psychiatric institution. The man was to have been deported back to his home country, Chechen, Gollia added.

The spokesman said the public prosecutor’s office had decided there was no reason to pursue the case involving the use of a weapon since use of the Taser had been "reasonable" in the circumstances.

Gollia said Vienna police had used stun-guns 70 times on an experimental basis since summer 2006.

The Taser has a range of seven metres and can shoot dart-like electrodes into a person’s body that will transfer an electric current into it to produce what manufacturer Taser International calls "neuromuscular incapacitation."

Use of Tasers has been criticised after a number of deaths of people shot by them. Amnesty International claims 334 people died between 2001 and August 2008 in the USA after having been shot by the stun-guns.

The organisation says the use of Tasers can cause nausea, cramps, loss of consciousness, involuntary defecation and heath-rhythm disturbances.

The Freedom Party’s  (FPÖ) General Secretary Harald Vilimsky and a reporter of newspaper "Kurier" underwent a self-experiment in December.

Vilimsky, a supporter of making Taser guns available for policemen and prison wardens, wanted to prove that being shot with the weapon is bearable.

A few days later, it had been revealed that the officers who acted out the experiment probably had no allowance to possess and carry the weapon.

http://www.austriantimes.at/?id=11290


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: Franzl on May 14, 2012, 10:58:38 AM
Do police in Europe not have Tasers (or other, ranged, less lethal, weapons)?  I know the left (and so perhaps all of Europe) love to hate Tasers, but that's just pure ignorance on their part (not like that's a new thing).

Everyone in Europe is on the Left?


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: dead0man on May 14, 2012, 11:46:51 AM
Well of course not, but the majority (and thus the people that make the laws) is to the left of the US average.  And after reading Branson's post and the wiki on them, I see that my suspicions were accurate.  They are used, sparingly, in a few places and there has been issues regarding their use pretty much everywhere they've been used.

It's one of the many issues that the left has an emotional reaction to.  An issue that they don't think through.  (obviously "the left" isn't the only.....direction...that has this problem)


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: they don't love you like i love you on May 14, 2012, 12:17:54 PM
The problem with tasers isn't so much their existence or use but that they are too frequently used on people who aren't a threat or dangerous at all. When I was in college the Blue Earth County Sheriff's Department was stripped of them after a few incidents where they were used to break up noisy parties and college students were tazed for fleeing. And they are not necessarily harmless either, especially in an urban environment where if a person falls they'll be hitting concrete.

And dead0man are you seriously calling Austria a "left" country? LOL. For awhile one of the governing parties in Austria was led by a guy who wanted to require that children of immigrants and native Austrians attend different schools.


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: Tender Branson on May 14, 2012, 12:41:18 PM
And dead0man are you seriously calling Austria a "left" country? LOL. For awhile one of the governing parties in Austria was led by a guy who wanted to require that children of immigrants and native Austrians attend different schools.

What do you mean by "was" ?

Those people are still in the government - they are called ÖVP.

http://derstandard.at/2510386?sap=2&_seite=10


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: they don't love you like i love you on May 14, 2012, 01:36:10 PM
And dead0man are you seriously calling Austria a "left" country? LOL. For awhile one of the governing parties in Austria was led by a guy who wanted to require that children of immigrants and native Austrians attend different schools.

What do you mean by "was" ?

Those people are still in the government - they are called ÖVP.

http://derstandard.at/2510386?sap=2&_seite=10

So it's not just the Freedom Party that supports that, bleh. Well that proves my point to dead0man even moreso.


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: Tender Branson on May 14, 2012, 01:44:19 PM
And dead0man are you seriously calling Austria a "left" country? LOL. For awhile one of the governing parties in Austria was led by a guy who wanted to require that children of immigrants and native Austrians attend different schools.

What do you mean by "was" ?

Those people are still in the government - they are called ÖVP.

http://derstandard.at/2510386?sap=2&_seite=10

So it's not just the Freedom Party that supports that, bleh. Well that proves my point to dead0man even moreso.

Yup. The ÖVP wants own foreigner classes. And the FPÖ wants to put the kids of immigrants into the next plane and deport them to the country where they came from ... :P


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: MaxQue on May 14, 2012, 05:06:10 PM
Do police in Europe not have Tasers (or other, ranged, less lethal, weapons)?  I know the left (and so perhaps all of Europe) love to hate Tasers, but that's just pure ignorance on their part (not like that's a new thing).

I don't see why we should trust a corporation which is so secretive with the health effects of its weapon. They act like they want to hide something.

And Tazer kill, by the way. Not than I'm against its use, but only on dangerous people, not on agited, confuse and disoriented people.


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: dead0man on May 14, 2012, 06:01:25 PM
Do police in Europe not have Tasers (or other, ranged, less lethal, weapons)?  I know the left (and so perhaps all of Europe) love to hate Tasers, but that's just pure ignorance on their part (not like that's a new thing).

I don't see why we should trust a corporation which is so secretive with the health effects of its weapon. They act like they want to hide something.
I have no idea what you're going on about.
Quote
And Tazer kill, by the way. Not than I'm against its use, but only on dangerous people, not on agited, confuse and disoriented people.
Of course they can be abused, any tool can be, but batons and guns can be abused too and they are much more dangerous.


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: they don't love you like i love you on May 14, 2012, 09:18:17 PM
The difference is that a cop isn't likely to shoot or club someone for fleeing after jaywalking or leaving an illegal keg party or something. They do taze. Like I said, tasers were banned with my college town's county's sheriff's department (granted they were fairly unimportant in comparison to Mankato PD.)


Title: Re: Austrian police officers like to shoot more than their German counterparts
Post by: dead0man on May 14, 2012, 11:18:21 PM
The difference is that a cop isn't likely to shoot or club someone for fleeing after jaywalking or leaving an illegal keg party or something.
But they certainly have before..and it's not like every cop will taze you for stupid sh**t.  It depends on the cop.  Some are asshats and will abuse you with whatever tool they have.  Most wont.  All things considered, I'd rather police have them as a tool to subdue people that need subduing instead of just a gun and a blunt device.