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The Human Toll of Flashbangs

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131–140 of 262 posts

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#131
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, I refuse to believe anyone, no matter how debased, would intentionally throw a flashbang into a baby's crib. Read some stories of the Holocaust, then. They didn't have flashbangs, but there were cases of babies being killed by being repeatedly swung into brick walls.

I've read the same about the Rwandan Genocide.

The Cambodian killing fields as well.

However, you have to remember that in none of these cases did the perpetrators act spontaneously on random victims. They were all primed to see the victims as part of a group both inferior (i.e. not deserving of empathy) and threatening (i.e. to be feared, hated and eliminated).

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#132
post #15

I don't live in the US, so I am maybe missing something but, if the police wants to arrest someone, wouldn't be easier to wait until this person leaves the house, grab him on the street and tell him: "Hi mate, we are the police and now you are under arrest". I don't see the need of assaulting a home.

That didn't work in England when they wanted to arrest a terror suspect, so they secretly followed him to work one day, then shot him dead as he entered the train station. It turned out he was a plumber, not a terrorist.

Context: this was two weeks after the Tube bombings in London. It was a tragic error, but it is absolutely not routine.

Wikipedia has a convenient list of UK mainland police shootings, which happen less than once a year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_U...

(The word "mainland" there excludes Northern Ireland, where the RUC behaved as an occupying force with the support of the army until the peace agreement with the IRA, at which point the police were reconstituted as PSNI with an explicit effort to be police for all the community equally.)

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#133
post #119
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pretty bang on. I think the unfortunate thing is that it has become an arms race. The police up their arms in response to civilians-gone-bad having heavier weapons. If I were in the police, I can imagine I'd feel safer riding in a tank to take down a suspected 'dangerous' criminal too. I think in some ways, this is a result of our fondness for the second amendment rights and arms as well as accepting the police a…

I think you would be interested in how fast someone can move in with a knife. Anyways, you give them space and they bolt away and stab or take hostage the next person they encounter. There are so many what ifs in these situations then end badly that you don't even want to let it get to that point. If "lunging" was the only thing knife welding psychos could do the world would be much nicer place.

UK police routinely deal with this by talking the person down, use of TASER, or baton strike. http://www.quora.com/How-do-British-police-officers-manage-t...

(There used to be an excellent police blogger who talked about doing this from firsthand experience, but he was de-anonymised and his blog taken down).

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#134
post #27
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a recent case in Albuquerque where 2 police officers are being charged with murder. In the case the police disorient a guy with a flashbang then shoot him as he turns away The police video shows Boyd talking with an officer who was seemingly trying to reach an end to the stalemate. As he picks up his backpack, Boyd tells the officer to keep his word, and not to worry about safety. "I'm not a [f———] murderer,"…

Jesus... that's completely indefensible. Now, I don't live in the US, and I only see the bad stuff that happens through the media, but I truly can't see why the police need to do things this way...

The answer that hasn't yet been mentioned in this thread: racism.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#135
post #121
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's 2.5k people in my town and it's news here (literally) when someone is arrested shopping at the local Wal-Mart. The police have two miltary-issue Humvees, for some reason.

That stuff has always irked me, trying to look threatening/intimidating. However when most people complain about military gear finding its way to police I have to laugh a little bit. When automatic grenade launchers and .50 cal machine guns start appearing then there are problems(too late at that point I guess). MWRAPS and armored personnel carriers, those are okay. Dressing in all black(A horrible tactical color BTW…

The armored tanks are not so bad as it provides something that police can feel safer and less threaten in so escalation doesn't need to happen so fast.

If you turn up in an armoured tank, you have just escalated the situation.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#137
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the chucking part seems where they go wrong. Normally you want to get them into the area called the fatal front, around 4 to 5 feet away right in front of the door. Your basically aiming for the floor and don't want them to go very far. I'm going to extrapolate from experience, I'm pretty sure a flash-bang in a crib is not going to have the intended effect.

Nope. You want them IN the room, not in front of your point man. It's called a "fatal funnel" also. All this shit goes out the window anyway (sideways pun intended) in combat. My preference is hand grenades, but you don't get many of those (or flashbangs, for that matter), so it really depends on the circumstance. Either way, you'll get kicked in the head if you toss a flashbang right inside the door.

Grenades blow through almost every building material you can think of with ease. Grenades thrown in-doors are pretty loud even if you have some sort of hs/ld ear protection it's going to rock you pretty good.

I may have not been clear, yes you want it in the room. Generally you want in the fatal front area, yes it's called a fatal funnel for that entire situation/entry point (and all sorts of other names).

In this instance its the fatal front(in relation to that fatal funnel). Generally you want to be able to clear your nearside corners and the immediate area in front of the door. The point is not to chuck the Flashbang in too far or you are not going to get the full stun effect in areas with the highest threat.

If you are 6ft like me you generally pretend you are tossing it just to your head if you were laying down. It's going to roll/bounce in most cases and go farther. In any case you are aiming for a point that is most likely going to be open. Flashbangs don't work so well if they roll under a couch or a TV stand.

I guess our grenade experiences differ, If I requested a crate of grenades. I would get a crate of grenades.

If you wanted to reduce things down you want to get the maximum stun in the areas where you do your fan-out to slow down anyone who might get grabby or dont need to get a good sight picture to hit you. That's all going to happen in proximity to door. in an ideal world your going to want to hit closer to the center but in less you stick your head in first or have a god-like sense of the local building construction and layout signatures you might as well throw into an area that everyone can see the flash and for the folks close in the bang.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#138
post #133
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you would be interested in how fast someone can move in with a knife. Anyways, you give them space and they bolt away and stab or take hostage the next person they encounter. There are so many what ifs in these situations then end badly that you don't even want to let it get to that point. If "lunging" was the only thing knife welding psychos could do the world would be much nicer place.

UK police routinely deal with this by talking the person down, use of TASER, or baton strike. http://www.quora.com/How-do-British-police-officers-manage-t... (There used to be an excellent police blogger who talked about doing this from firsthand experience, but he was de-anonymised and his blog taken down).

UK police get stabbed a lot too but they have much better armor.

Yes, talking people down works in every situation.

Not to say that guns work every time but if someone has the intent to get all staby It's time to go lethal.

I think it would be eye opening for everyone to get a taste of how things can go wrong in police situations themselves.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#139
post #133
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you would be interested in how fast someone can move in with a knife. Anyways, you give them space and they bolt away and stab or take hostage the next person they encounter. There are so many what ifs in these situations then end badly that you don't even want to let it get to that point. If "lunging" was the only thing knife welding psychos could do the world would be much nicer place.

UK police routinely deal with this by talking the person down, use of TASER, or baton strike. http://www.quora.com/How-do-British-police-officers-manage-t... (There used to be an excellent police blogger who talked about doing this from firsthand experience, but he was de-anonymised and his blog taken down).

As a former UK police officer I can assure you that if armed police officers came across someone with a drawn knife at least one firearm would be aimed at them. One of my officer safety trainers was a qualified close protection officer (i.e. bodygaurd) who ran through one of their scenarios whereby someone with a knife faces off across the diagonal length of a basketball court sized room with someone with a holstered gun. Even trained officers can't reliably get a shot off if that person starts sprinting towards them.

Believe me no-one wants to try and tackle a knife wielding suspect with a baton, at that point you're using defensive tactics and your partner will use their CS/PAVA to try and disable them.

Fortunately, in the UK, the vast majority of people with knives aren't actively homicidal at the point at which the police turn up.

Nightjack was amazing, the Times is in my permanent bad books for their nonsensical justification for outing him. He thoroughly deserved the Orwell prize that he won for his blogging.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#140

I'm so past fed up with police in America. The drug war is pathological. The notion that a cop can kill an unarmed suspect with impunity (especially if they're black or homeless or mentally ill) is disgusting. The belief that "law and order" is a value worth allowing one group the exclusive privilege of breaking any law and causing any disorder they like without consequence simply has to end. I'm at the point where I…

America isn't the problem, Americans are. Everyone who voted for this is to blame. From what I understand you can even vote for some of the local judges or prosecutors too! There's no excuse but to recognize that your neighbors are responsible for the problems due to their own selfishness. They want the police to be brutal because the drug raid isn't going to be on their home, it'll be on some poor person's home and…

It's not like there are any other countries where there isn't a drug war.

Every first world country outlaws addictive drugs for the same ignorant reasons. (not harm-reduction)

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