I'll back you up on that...The aim (pardon the pun) is not necessarily to kill a threat...It is to STOP THE THREAT. That does not allow the luxury of stopping, taking a time out to check and see if the threat is gone most of the time. In armed confrontations you do not know if the guy is dead or not, so they were not just firing at a dead guy, they were firing at a known threat. This guy had ambushed the officers during this engagement and it was necessary to stop him at all costs. Having not been there, I do not care to Monday morning quarterback the officers on their response to this deadly threat. Having been in shooting situations while in Law Enforcement, I know the stresses and adrenaline involved....These guys did nothing wrong in my from experience book.

Origins: Just before noon on 28 September 2006, Polk County Deputy Doug Speirs pulled over a speeding rental car bearing Kentucky tags in Lakeland, Florida. That vehicle was being driven by Angilo Freeland, a 27-year-old Antiguan man who had been arrested on various charges in 1999 but had afterwards skipped bail. When Freeland handed Deputy Speirs a fraudulently obtained drivers license bearing another man's name, something about the proffered I.D. bothered Speirs, so he called for backup. Deputy Matt Williams and his police dog, DiOGi, were dispatched to the scene.

Likely sensing things weren't going well, Freeland broke from the officers and ran into the woods. He took cover in the densely forested area near a fallen oak tree that made him all but impossible to see. The two officers and the dog went into the woods after him, Williams and DiOGi working one area, and Speirs another.

As DiOGi closed on the suspect's hiding place, Freeland shot the dog in the chest from close range at an upward angle, killing it. He then fired on nearby Deputy Williams, wounding him

in the right wrist, left bicep, rear left thigh, right leg, right buttock, and upper right arm. One of the shots penetrated to the officer's spine. Freeland then approached the immobilized man and delivered two shots to Williams' head at point-blank range, finishing him off.

Deputy Speirs heard the shots from a nearby ridge, moved towards the sounds of the gunfire, and was shot at by Freeland. The two exchanged fire, and the deputy was wounded in the leg. He radioed for help and made his way out of the woods.

Every available unit and canine team descended on the area. Freeland briefly appeared at the perimeter of the woods to fire at the officers but then took cover again. He dug in under another fallen oak tree and hid there. Later that afternoon the body of 39-year-old Deputy Williams, a father of three, was found and carried from the wooded area. Officers noted that the slain man's gun and ammo were missing.

Freeland remained under the oak tree overnight, where a 10-member SWAT team found him the next morning. When they saw Freeland raise his right hand clutching a gun (one they would later learn belonged to the dead deputy), nine of the ten officers fired, hitting him with 68 of 110 shots. Freeland was dead at the scene.

Afterwards, when called upon by the media to make a statement about the manhunt and its outcome, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd explained: "You have to understand, he had already shot and killed a deputy, he had already shot and killed a K-9, and he shot and injured another deputy. Quite frankly, we weren't taking any chances." Sheriff Judd was variously reported as adding, "That's all the bullets we had or we would have shot him more" and "I suspect the only reason 110 rounds was all that was fired was that's all the ammunition they had."

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/crime/cops/judd.asp#jHdtjiELZPzLS0EJ.99



A SWAT TEAM missed him 42 times!

I don't understand, sarge, because his sentence has no verb, and therefor, no meaning.

Furthermore, my point--which everyone ignores--is that after you kill a man forty-five times, it is childish, immature, and unprofessional to kill him twenty more times. He has long passed being the wounded enemy you suggest.

My larger point is this: a police force that pepper sprays handcuffed suspects, not to assume control of a situation, but because they enjoy doing it, or tazering people who pose no threat, because they enjoy doing it, or shoot a dead body 68 times because they like to hear their guns go off, is not a police force a citizen can respect...or trust.

If anyone disagrees with that, we have pretty different ideas of 'society.'

First, thats not battle, as you experienced. It was a ten member Swat
Team, with special equipment and training, using (presumably) long guns.

They were against a single adversary, with a pistol.

After the first ten hits, he had to be dead--then they emptied their weapons shooting recreationally into a dead body--58 additional hits, and many, too many misses.

If a buddy of the perp stood up, he would face 9 swat team members without ammo. How sound is that?

Mighty unprofessional...

Poor leadership of the sheriff to encourage his men in this.

I don't understand, sarge, because his sentence has no verb, and therefor, no meaning.

Furthermore, my point--which everyone ignores--is that after you kill a man forty-five times, it is childish, immature, and unprofessional to kill him twenty more times. He has long passed being the wounded enemy you suggest.

My larger point is this: a police force that pepper sprays handcuffed suspects, not to assume control of a situation, but because they enjoy doing it, or tazering people who pose no threat, because they enjoy doing it, or shoot a dead body 68 times because they like to hear their guns go off, is not a police force a citizen can respect...or trust.

If anyone disagrees with that, we have pretty different ideas of 'society.'