TexasCHLforum.com

jimlongley wrote:

sjfcontrol wrote:

Excaliber wrote:Well, I see why no one has been able to point me to the source of the assertion that 11% of police shootings involve an innocent victim while only 3% of citizen shootings do the same. I had to look high and low to find it.

Here's where it apparently comes from:

It is cited in Gun Facts 6.0 . The "fact" appears on page 28 where it says:

"Fact: 11% of police shootings kill an innocent person - about 2% of civilian shootings kill an innocent person."

The footnote references a paper titled Shall Issue: The New Wave of Concealed Handgun Permit Laws by Clayton Cramer and David Kopel. That paper was published in 1994. On page 41 it says:

Another study examined newspaper reports of gun incidents in Missouri, involving police or civilians. In this study, civilians were successful in wounding, driving off, capturing criminals 83% of the time, compared with a 68% success rate for the police. Civilians intervening in crime were slightly less likely to be wounded than were police. Only 2% of shootings by civilians, but 11% of shootings by police, involved an innocent person mistakenly thought to be a criminal.

The short version is that this statistic, which would be truly startling if it were a national figure and true today, actually came from a single study in a single state at least 18 years ago. It was never true nationally, and a lot of things have changed in the 18 intervening years.

This is a good illustration of why it is important to provide source references when we cite statistics in our posts. It lets others evaluate where the data comes from and determine if it is of any use or not. Posting statistics without sources so has a high potential for misleading others, which I'm sure no one on this Forum would deliberately do.

Don't you know that 72% of all statistics are made up on the spot?

And that 56% of those are wrong.

speedsix wrote:...at least 2% of us can... http://articles.businessinsider.com/201 ... llionaires" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

...latest from the Chief...he's frosted...

http://digitaltexan.net/2012/austin-loc ... icle31998/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

C-dub wrote:

speedsix wrote:...at least 2% of us ... http://articles.businessinsider.com/201 ... llionaires" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

...latest from the Chief...he's frosted...

http://digitaltexan.net/2012/austin-loc ... icle31998/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Chief has a point about the slain officer, but it looks like they are going to gloss over the main problem of Officer Griffin's contact in this incident. Why did he draw his gun on someone that was not threatening him or anyone else? I still think that even if he'd had his gun holstered when the dog came out he would have drawn and shot first and asked questions later.

Excaliber wrote:

C-dub wrote:

speedsix wrote:...at least 2% of us ... http://articles.businessinsider.com/201 ... llionaires" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

...latest from the Chief...he's frosted...

http://digitaltexan.net/2012/austin-loc ... icle31998/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Chief has a point about the slain officer, but it looks like they are going to gloss over the main problem of Officer Griffin's contact in this incident. Why did he draw his gun on someone that was not threatening him or anyone else? I still think that even if he'd had his gun holstered when the dog came out he would have drawn and shot first and asked questions later.

If I read the chief's letter correctly, he's indicating that they're doing a thorough after action review to identify all of the issues brought to light by this incident. Just like any disaster, it almost certainly has a whole bunch of bad things behind it that came together at that time.

I expect a good review would include the officer's decision to lunge into a domestic dispute call with no second officer present, drawing and pointing his firearm at an individual who didn't match the person described in the call, the department's use of force policy, its training program, etc.

If this is what's going on, it's the exact opposite of glossing over the problem - it's looking for all the contributing elements so they can be effectively addressed. An effort of this type won't be finished by tomorrow or the day after either. It will take time to do it right to prevent a repeat incident in the future.

speedsix wrote:...I feel old...I used to get my best information on the wall of the phone booth...

Keith B wrote:I am 100% right all of the time. No way would I ever vote for the left.

And, we are way off topic, need to get back on.

C-dub wrote:

speedsix wrote:...at least 2% of us can... http://articles.businessinsider.com/201 ... llionaires" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

...latest from the Chief...he's frosted...

http://digitaltexan.net/2012/austin-loc ... icle31998/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Chief has a point about the slain officer, but it looks like they are going to gloss over the main problem of Officer Griffin's contact in this incident. Why did he draw his gun on someone that was not threatening him or anyone else? I still think that even if he'd had his gun holstered when the dog came out he would have drawn and shot first and asked questions later.