In the aftermath of many officer-involved shootings, suspect families will frequently be quoted in the local fishwrap wondering why the police didn’t use “less lethal” options to take down their now deceased relative. Or just shoot him in the leg! In most of those cases, the dead miscreants were holding guns, presenting an immediate threat to the officers and any bystanders. That usually doesn’t leave LEOs with a lot of options in the immediacy of an incident. In the case depicted above, Martin Salazar Hernandez had attacked a Walmart employee with a baseball bat and a knife yesterday before wandering outside where members of the Lubbock (Texas) PD found him when they rolled up . . .

In this situation, the officers had the advantage of time and distance. Tueller drill aside, Hernandez appeared sufficiently stationary (hoping for suicide by cop?) to give the 5-0 time to pull a beanbag-loaded shotgun from the trunk. That isn’t always the case.

Even then, it took four rounds to bring him down. And they only dropped him, according to the the LiveLeak report, when a bag caromed off of Hernandez’s arm and plunked him in the melon.

All in all, this one went down about as well as could be expected for all parties involved. But the boys in blue won’t always have the luxury of the kind of time they did here. [h/t CC]

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47 COMMENTS

  1. That apparently worked out the best for the LEOs involved. Except now for the tax payers. They have to pay the bills for who knows how long?? For medical and treatment of this klown who wanted suicide by cop.

    • They should have aimed those bean bags at his crotch and knocked the wind out of him. Plus it may help prevent future generations of criminals from procreation.

  2. That definitely looks like either the guy was high as a kite, or he was attempting suicide-by-cop. Looks like the Lubbock PD handled this one just about perfectly.

    • One thing that particularly struck me was the absence of cops yelling their heads off at the guy with a bunch of incomprehensible but tough-sounding, profanity-laden gibberish. I mean, it’s almost like they wanted the guy to be able to understand their commands…

      • Maybe that’s because they didn’t have a mouthy suspect yelling about police brutality and racism and what their rights are in their little fantasy land.

      • ^^^. Totally agree. So many times we see LEO escalate the situation by screaming and cussing and acting foolish.

        Zimmerman: miscreant? Mostly mentally ill… Not the same.

        God bless Trump for saying mental health, not guns are the problem

  3. I couldn’t really tell but it looked like he was shrugging off bean bag rounds, until the last one. Was that a groin shot? 12 gauge to the nuts would drop most men. I agree with the above assessment this guy was most likely high.
    Nevernind it looks like the officer top right in the video used his tazer.

    • “it looked like he was shrugging off bean bag rounds”

      And I thought that they were more effective than that. A BB round is the first up in my HD shotgun (after all, this is Massachusetts and deadly force by the peons is bad). I may have to rethink that.

      • If it’s a pump-action, it’s very easy and fast to pump and chamber a lethal one. I put a BB in mine as well – there are different situations, not all of which warrant lethal force (even if you’re entitled to use it).

  4. Admirable restraint by these particular cops; Mr. Stabby McBats Hernandez there is definitely lucky, in that he was standing in front of a large business the cops also didn’t want to ventilate.
    Had he been in a less public area, I expect he’d have assumed ambient air temperature with a quickness.

  6. Moron. Won’t see that on the news. Looks like he didn’t think his life mattered…oops…dare I say that?

    • Yep, bet the farm this one won’t be mentioned in the Obamanista media. It doesn’t bleed, so it sure won’t lead, but most important – it isn’t the correct (news) feed.

  7. I’m amazed the people in the drive through had to be told to leave. Once I figured out I was down range, I’d have been out of there.

  8. Once again, I hate the mass media. If you read the story on the news-station’s webpage, they sound all upset that the jackwagon with the bat suffered an eye injury. The police are in a no-win situation with the scumbag leftists in the mass media, even in a place like Lubbock, Texas. Would the mass media have been happier if the jackwagon with the bat was allowed to keep going until someone with a concealed handgun permit shot him? Maybe that’s what they’re really upset about, it turned into a non-story and now they have to find something else to report on.

  10. Am I the only one that thinks that cops shouldn’t bother pulling out the less lethal toys for suicide-by-cop candidates and use them for the occasions where the offender is not deliberately trying to get their stupid butt killed. Cops killing people they shouldn’t and not killing people that they should. That’s the problem. They’re doing it wrong.

    • We could modify the 14th Amendment by removing the anchor baby clause and replacing it with a right for suicide by cop. I think that would help bring the country together.

    • I couldn’t agree more. This guy gets shot with a bean bag, he gets out jail and kills someone. Meanwhile an unarmed person protesting the government taking our rights away gets shot 18 times. This is sad.

      • “Meanwhile an unarmed person protesting the government taking our rights away gets shot 18 times. This is sad.”

        Which one was that?

  11. I went to the KCBD story & the LiveLeak page as well, and neither of them have one single word about the condition of the employee that was attacked by this turd. And KCBD uses quotation marks around the words “less lethal” as if they’re implying the bean-bags really aren’t less lethal. Good grief. The mainstream media is a joke.

    I’m guessing the Walmart employee was not critically injured in the attack, but to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were seriously injured & it just didn’t make the story because Cops! Shooting people! Oh, the humanity of it all!

    I hope the employee is okay.

  12. “Shoot em in the leg”

    Hahaha that’s the best one.

    The dipsh**s that say that don’t realize that the femoral artery, which is in the leg, is a major artery and it would be no different than the jugular in the neck.

    • Or that the leg is a stupidly narrow target that will most likely be moving, or that WHEN not if the round misses it skips off the ground and into the bystanders. Right after Ferguson I took my nephews to the range and made them try to shoot a nazi zombie target in the arm. The BLM socialists convinced them that Browns arms were up when he sustained the shots to his forearms, so I told them they could get a game if either one could make the shot from 15 feet. Yeah, they will never fall for that nonsense again.

    • Too many people saw Lethal Weapon and thought Murtaugh’s “shoot him in the leg” line was sage advice.

  14. Why is this guy still alive? Shoot him. If he had beheaded one or more people and he stands in an open area taunting the authorities, should they take their time talking him down? If he still had the machete in his hand covered in the victims blood? This already happened in London.

    If he drops his weapon and truly surrenders then put him on trial. No surrender, then put a bullet in his head and save the taxpayers the court costs and prison costs.
    The police don’t need to loose their life or get serious injury over this evil person.

  15. Cops did this one right and perhaps got a bit lucky that he didn’t force the other two cops to shoot him with real bullets. Behavior does indicate an altered state of perception of whatever kind, almost like he thought he was some sort of Samurai warrior. Much cheaper to put him in lockup rather than intensive care.

  16. Less lethal??? Tell that to the 95year old WW2 vet murdered by a cop in Park,Forest,Illinois-and the cop got off because”he threatened us with a knife” and we wanted to go home safe…meanwhile nursing homes don’t kill everyone who’s 95 and alzheimered(word?). The cops did ok here-and for once I agree with the idiot Brits who don’t kill everyone asking for it…

  17. A 1 ounce (about 437 grain) 12-gauge bean bag round at a muzzle velocity of 320 FPS delivers just under 100 foot pounds of energy. While that usually isn’t lethal, it certainly can be. If it was in this case, it would have saved taxpayers a whole lot of money.

    Some bean bag rounds run faster than that, but they all slow considerably with distance. Our rounds drop 8-10″ at 25 yards, but the effective range is a stated 60 feet. What that means in real life varies considerably. If I get a chance I’ll run our rounds over a chronograph.

  18. I betcha’ you wouldn’t have shot the old guy in the nursing home accur81-BTW many years ago I/we subdued very large mentally retarded men(and women-who could be worse) in a state facility-without shooting/without weapons-without leaving a mark.

  20. Seems like it was critical that the cops had a couple of minutes to prepare a less-than-lethal arm.

    Cops are not going to be happy about OCing a 12-gage shotgun on patrol or each time they leave their cars to answer a call. So, usually they arrive on the scene with pepper spray, a taser and a handgun. Approaching a perp with pepper spray or taser calls for a delicate application of the 7-yard standard. At 8 or 9 yards the spray/taser marksmanship has to be very good.

    Do the family members want cops to carry 12-gage shotguns everywhere they go? What will the hoplophobes say? Will they “really feel” safe with cops OCing long guns?

  21. The issue is not the choice of weapon, lethal or less lethal. The issue is that they choose to press the issue. Form a permitter and wait the guy out. Why is that so difficult.

    The other problem is not that less lethal weapons are used to take down people with very lethal weapons, like in this instance.

    The problem is that less lethal weapons are used against non-violent but non-compliant people as pain compliance devices. Just because a cuffed arrestee won’t get up and walk to the car themselves is no reason to taze them. And then of course, who can forget this:

    https://youtu.be/6AdDLhPwpp4

  22. In the aftermath of many officer-involved shootings, suspect families will frequently be quoted in the local fishwrap wondering why the police didn’t use less lethal options to take down their now deceased relative.

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