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]