Stop with the Lawyer Bullshit

As you might imagine, the number of trolls has increased exponentially here since the last shooting incident. We've been inundated with harassing nonsense, none of which we process, mostly because it's simply ignorant rantings of unhinged loons - the kind of stuff that infests the Tribune and other media comment sections without regard to facts, actual law or a sane reading of the facts.

Here is a typical one, based on nothing but "feelings" evidently:

• Scc, it all comes down to how many shots the officer needed to subdue this young man. The actions here were excessive. It seems indisputable to me. And yet you try to defend this as a good shoot. No.

Well Asshat - do you mind if we call you Asshat? - the number of shots has exactly ZERO bearing on anything. It takes as many shots as it takes, plain and simple. Police are taught to shoot to eliminate the threat, and if the threat is still advancing/moving/threatening, then more shots are needed. This isn't Hollywood, where a single shot from a .38 snubbie immediately incapacitates a crazed assailant with a bat. You know how often that happens in real life? Here's a clue - think of a percentage of less than 1.

Then there's the science. Dozens, maybe many dozens of studies show that people under attack in high stress situations aren't bothering counting shots. Even reporters who used to go through the "Shoot, No Shoot" scenarios never kept track of their shots and were constantly amazed that they fired as many times as they did when instructors ran the tapes back. On a good day, we can empty a 15-round magazine in well under 5 seconds. We've seen people do it in under 3.

Then there's the fact that no one, not a single media source or Department source knows exactly how many shots were fired as of yet, nor how many hit the assailant. The only number we've seen is "at least 2." So Asshat, you want to explain how two hits is "excessive" by any stretch of the imagination, seeing as how most police shootings involve many many more shots than that? That kind of makes your "indisputable" look indisputably asinine.

So this is the ignorance we've been weeding out here, not only because it's wrong-headed, uninformed and indisputably dumb, but we don't want to have to moderate an extra 100 comments from others telling this idiot to "go fuck yourself" or painfully explaining what we can in a main post, all while ridiculing the idiocy of someone who's never done our job trying to tell us how to do our job, based on nothing but a "feeling" the police were "excessive" in putting down an assailant.