Terrorism against Chinese targets

Brumby said:

The issue of law enforcement in the use of lethal force is a common topic of debate and is not unique to China as in this instance. My understanding even in Australia is that if you don't want to be shot than don't do anything that would justify a law enforcement officer in drawing his or her weapon. They are trained to shoot to kill and not to disarm. If they have to shoot there is no question that it is to remove the threat and that is by lethal means. There is no pussy footing around.

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The issue of using lethal force is a well debated one, and I myself hold fairly conservative laws regarding the armament of police -- I do not think standard police should be armed with lethal weapons, and only armed police squads specifically trained for it should carry firearms as part of their standard equipment, and armed police squads should only be deployed in unique scenarios or circumstances.

They aim for the heart double tap. Once the threat is removed further release of a weapon is just bad publicity with no corresponding benefit.

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I think it goes without saying that once the threat is removed, further discharge of a weapon is not necessary, but sometimes it is difficult to fully ascertain the degree of threat which remains, and when an immediately heightened threat which is removed in the space of a split second, it may also take another whole second for the brain to recognize.

Sometimes that extra second may make the difference between the emergence of bad publicity or not.

Brumby said:

I think the main problem is as you acknowledged is when he was downed they continue to spray bullets on him. Once the threat is removed, the reasoning is that there should be a corresponding withdrawal in the use of lethal force. The justification to continue would then be to demonstrate somehow that the threat still exist in some shape or form.

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I've watched that YouTube video multiple times just to get an idea of what you guys arguing back n forth. Seem to be the Pap guy on the far left is acting very pro by firing warning shots... and the Pap guy on the far right also acted very professionally even though the flying axe was aiming at him, he never kept his eyes off his targeted threat (luckily the axe landed near his shoe). Now, about the Pap guy in the center, it looked like he has freaked out after the two shooted and was the last one to open fire and was the only one kept firing on the guy after he was down. Rematch the video again to see this more clearly, thanks.

Edit: actually all three fired about the same time, but the other two stopped while the guy is down.

I think there are so many variables that it's not as simple as black and white.

In San Francisco there's a controversy over a police killing of a man holding just a knife. The man stabbed someone. The police caught up with him after he fled the scene. He wouldn't drop his knife and the police opened fire killing him.


The guy already used a deadly weapon against someone. Activists are arguing that they should've used Tasers. Tasers don't always work. The guy refused to yield.

Those of you debating the right or wrong of this obviously lived a very shaltrted life.

From the video, it's crystal clear that the suspect dropped the knife (on his weak hand) as a ploy to try and trick the police into relaxing. So that he might catch them unawares when he went to throw the axe.

That most certainly constitutes a genuine threat to the lives of the officers, and any police officer anywhere in the world would have opened fire.

Police only shoot at someone to kill. That's how they are trained, and PAP, which is more akin to western SWAT, are even more predisposed to shot you dead and make sure of it.

Given how close the suspect was to the officers, once they started shooting, they are going to make sure he is dead before stopping.

In the west, all those examples of police being brought up on charges and jailed invariably happen because the officer was not justified in opening fire in the first place. Where the perp was either non-aggressive or they were far enough away to not be in any imminent danger.

Generally if police are threatened enough to start shouting, they don't stop till they exhaust the clip.

Had the officers reloaded and then continued to shoot the guy on the floor, they would have crossed a line. It's fair game up to that point.

You also need to remember that wasn't just some street perp, but a terrorist suspect. The kind well known for using suicide belts.

Personnally, I wouldn't have had a problem if they police did reload and carefully placed a few in his head after he went down to make sure before approaching to check rather than get blown up.

Bltizo said:

I think they were fully justified in firing their weapons at 0:13, given they did not know in that split second if the suspect was trying to charge at them with the axe or "only" throw his axe. Therefore it was very reasonable for them to assume that he was acting in a threatening way intended to do them harm with the potential for harm, and to respond with deadly force.
It is also ridiculous to expect them to have been able to predict that the suspect's axe throw was not in a "life threatening trajectory" and thus to not respond with deadly force.

In other words, your premises for saying the PAP should not have opened fire on him relies upon two key assumptions:
1: the police were able to judge in a split second that the suspect stepping forwards and brandishing his axe was not seeking to charge at them with an axe and was only seeking to "throw" the axe (as if that is somehow much less threatening)
and 2: the police were then able to judge in the same split second that the axe was not on a "life threatening trajectory"

Given this entire critical moment occurs within about 0.5 seconds of time, I think your expectations of the PAP in this specific situation (or indeed any other police anywhere in the world if they faced a similar situation) are immensely unrealistic.


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Yes, I think they could have.
Going by the distance the Perp threw the axe, I calculated the distance between the perp and the PAP directly in front of him to be about 30+ feet. It would take the perp at least 3-4 seconds to get within touching distance of the PAP. Google says the avg response time to visual stimuli is 0.25 secs. There would have enough time for the PAP to decided whether it was necessary to shoot.

I would also suggest that one would be a pretty poor marksman if one couldn't put a bullet through the torso at 30 meters without the aid of a scope

plawolf said:

Those of you debating the right or wrong of this obviously lived a very shaltrted life.


That most certainly constitutes a genuine threat to the lives of the officers, and any police officer anywhere in the world would have opened fire.

Police only shoot at someone to kill. That's how they are trained, and PAP, which is more akin to western SWAT, are even more predisposed to shot you dead and make sure of it.

Given how close the suspect was to the officers, once they started shooting, they are going to make sure he is dead before stopping.


You also need to remember that wasn't just some street perp, but a terrorist suspect. The kind well known for using suicide belts.

Personnally, I wouldn't have had a problem if they police did reload and carefully placed a few in his head after he went down to make sure before approaching to check rather than get blown up.

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C'mon wolf I think you are over dramatizing the situation.First I dont think there was any mention of him being a terroist.
He could have just as easily been a malcontent who "flipped his lid" after losing his job, or cheated by land developers.and if the PAP really felt he had a explosive vest, then why get so close?

I note that in the years 2013-2014 there were no shooting fatalities in the UK and the avg is only about 2 during decades as a result of a concious effort to try and reduce the need to kill. through the use of plastic and rubber bullets.



Futhermore its rather interesting that the British Police did not shoot down those two Muslims who butchered Lee Rigby.

As for the cops in the videos posted by Vincent and Mace, if they actually feared for their lives by the situation that presented itself in the video I would say they are definitely in the wrong line of work.

B.I.B. said:

Yes, I think they could have.
Going by the distance the Perp threw the axe, I calculated the distance between the perp and the PAP directly in front of him to be about 30+ feet. It would take the perp at least 3-4 seconds to get within touching distance of the PAP. Google says the avg response time to visual stimuli is 0.25 secs. There would have enough time for the PAP to decided whether it was necessary to shoot.

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Yes okay, 0.25 seconds -- it took them 0.25 seconds from when the suspect first began stepping forwards and swinging his axe up, to determine he was most likely a threat and to shoot. Unless you're saying that the PAP should have waited another 3 seconds before deciding whether to shoot, not knowing whether after that 3 seconds one of them could have an axe buried in their neck?

Let's get real here, the guy had an axe and he quite obviously charged at the PAP, and asking them to have judged in that split second to risk waiting an extra 3 seconds to see if shooting "was necessary" is absolutely unfair and unrealistic.

If the PAP had shot the suspect without the guy first charging at him and brandishing his axe (say, if he'd just been standing there), then I'd fully agree that the use of lethal force was unnecessary (such as in Assassin's Mace's and Vincent's examples).
But in this case, the use of lethal force should be considered fully justifiable based on the immediate threat posed by the suspect.

I would also suggest that one would be a pretty poor marksman if one couldn't put a bullet through the torso at 30 meters without the aid of a scope

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Sure, but in this situation it would make sense to get closer to the suspect to apprehend him and to also prevent other civilians from getting close to the suspect, which is important to avoid getting civilians in the crossfire if shooting has to occur.
But as it's been mentioned before, we don't know enough about the context and preceding events of how this event happened to judge if it was handled well or poorly that led things to shooting.

B.I.B. said:

C'mon wolf I think you are over dramatizing the situation.First I dont think there was any mention of him being a terroist.
He could have just as easily been a malcontent who "flipped his lid" after losing his job, or cheated by land developers.and if the PAP really felt he had a explosive vest, then why get so close?

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The title of the video does use the word "terrorist" and some other pages have said it occurred in Xinjiang. I trust that you are aware of the recent wave of violence in the region in the last few years and the high state of security there?
Certainly this incident occurred somewhere where PAP were available enough such that they were rapidly able to respond to the threat, suggesting it was an area of high alert, even if it may not have been in Xinjiang province itself.


Like it or not, this suspect had deliberately sought to not only act aggressively towards the police but also unambiguously deliberately attempted to attack PAP with a deadly weapon, with virtually no time for the PAP or any human being to stop and consider "hmm I think I'll wait another three seconds and see if he's actually capable of killing me with that axe or if he's only trying to maim me".

Looking over the video again, it seems like bluewater is right in saying the middle PAP seemed to be the one who'd continued shooting after the guy was down, and at worst I'd say he alone should earn some of the criticism -- but even then, he'd only continued firing for maybe two extra seconds at most and switching off the sympathetic nervous system response in that time and processing that the threat was truly down would've taken about that much time to begin with.

B.I.B. said:

C'mon wolf I think you are over dramatizing the situation.First I dont think there was any mention of him being a terroist.
He could have just as easily been a malcontent who "flipped his lid" after losing his job, or cheated by land developers.and if the PAP really felt he had a explosive vest, then why get so close?

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I think you are being deliberately contrarian here. The 3 PAP soldiers warned him repeatedly to drop his weapon, and the guy responded by throwing an axe at one soldier, which very narrowly missed.

No "malcontent flipping his lid" would do that with 3 assault rifles pointing at him. This guy is obviously suicidal, and wants to take someone down with him.

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B.I.B. said:

C'mon wolf I think you are over dramatizing the situation.First I dont think there was any mention of him being a terroist.
He could have just as easily been a malcontent who "flipped his lid" after losing his job, or cheated by land developers.and if the PAP really felt he had a explosive vest, then why get so close?

I note that in the years 2013-2014 there were no shooting fatalities in the UK and the avg is only about 2 during decades as a result of a concious effort to try and reduce the need to kill. through the use of plastic and rubber bullets.

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Futhermore its rather interesting that the British Police did not shoot down those two Muslims who butchered Lee Rigby.

As for the cops in the videos posted by Vincent and Mace, if they actually feared for their lives by the situation that presented itself in the video I would say they are definitely in the wrong line of work.

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This is just getting beyond the pale. You are ignoring key facts presented with the video, since the name of it was police taking down terrorist, and also throwing ridiculous 'what ifs' around that does even pass basic logic checks.

You are firstly being silly suggesting it will take someone 3-4 seconds to cover 10 meters. That's 9km per hour, barely into jogging speed. 2 seconds is the maximum I would reasonably give someone to cover 10m from a cold start.

However, that's the maximum. Factoring in arm reach, he could easily be planting that axe in an officer's neck within 1.5 seconds or less if he was intent on chopping with it.

However, from body posture and movement, it was clearly obvious he meant to throw it, in which case the axe would be out of his hand and stuck in an officer's skill or neck in less than half a second. In that video, as fast as the PAP responded, it still wasn't fast enough to stop him from throwing the axe.

Had they been even a tiny fraction (1/10 of a second or less) of a second slower, they would have not dropped in as he was still swinging and the axe could have been fully launched from his hand, in which case it could extremely feasibly and easily have seriously injured an officer or killed him.

You show that clip to any law enforcement officer anywhere in the world and they will either laugh you out the room and/or give you a piece of their mind for your absurd suggestion they should have waited (for what? Him kill one of the officers first?!) before shooting.

As for why they were that close, well use your head. What good reason would armed police have to getting so up close and personal with a perp armed with bladed weapons when they have rifles? There is no good reason any police officer would voluntarily advance to that close to an armed suspect without him submitting and assuming the position first.

At around the 3 second mark, you can just make out s large white vehicle with strips and flashing lights.

From the positioning and body language of the PAP officers and the two plain clothes officers in the background, it's clear that the perp advanced on them, rather the other way around.

He was most likely trying to sneak up and attack them, but was spotted before he could close to within slashing range, the officers reacted instantly by spreading out a little and covering him with their rifles as the officer tries to shout him down and that's where the video cuts in.

Your comparison with British police is also hilariously poorly judged. British police did gun down Lee Rigby's murderers. Just search for the video on YouTube for goodness sake.

The last shots were fired around 10 seconds after the first. The view is partially blocked, but it's pretty clear they continued shooting at the perps after they were down. But even that is a poor comparison. The police in that instance likely thought the perps were normal people who flipped, as it was the first instances of its kind and would not have been recognised as a terrorist attack in the time it took for first responder police to show up on the scene.

A proper comparison to the kind of threat level and police readiness would have been after the 7/7 bombings, after everyone knew the country had suffered a major terrorist attack. You forget poor old Jean Charlse de Menezes? An innocent man who was not armed and who almost certainly did not make any dangerous or threatening moves towards British police, but who shot him 11 times in the head anyways.

Living a sheltered life and not knowing how the real world works is one thing, deliberately twisting it to try and achieve some pathetic moral superiority is quite another.