Here’s something more authoritative to read about that NYPD thing…

I’ve had … well, almost … nothing to say about that NYPD mass shooting of a couple of weeks ago. Wasn’t there, don’t know. I got a kick out of the coverage: “Deranged man commits mass shooting outside Empire State Building” became “NYPD may have caused some of the injuries” became “Um…okay, NYPD shot all those people except the original victim,” all in a matter of hours. But that’s just press incompetence.

As to the cops, I didn’t know. From the footage it looked like mighty poor tactics. But the footage is terrible and could be interpreted many ways. It was certainly what you’d call a high-pucker-factor situation, and despite my natural inclination I kept my ignorant mouth shut.

Courtesy of Borepatch, here’s a voice I don’t usually read with a much more authoritative take on the situation and its cause. In this one case I’m gonna step back and let a cop have the floor.

There are at least two areas of incompetence we are dealing with in an incident like this one, Personal and Departmental. In the first there’s an officer who somehow managed to make it past the barriers and requirements and became a street officer without ever showing (or maybe even knowing themselves) that they were a hysteric. The second is an agency, in this case the NYPD, who either knowingly hired and retained a hysteric or completely and totally failed to train him to task and standard such as would have caused a reasonable officer to act in a way that would have avoided wounding 9 innocent people. I don’t want to hear DAO trigger either. Either you’re absolutely competent to do the job or you’re not. Remember kids, in the world of civilian policing there is no such thing as acceptable collateral damage.