German police shoot dead a U.S. soldier in Bavaria

Heres the military newspapers report on the shooting.

The time of day this occured (11pm) clearly increases the possibility that alcohol was a major contributor. Sad story for all involved, especially the soldier's family and the officer(s) that shot him.

This reminds me a lot of the "severed head incident" that occured after the first gulf war. Maybe this ex-girlfriend was cheating on him/got knocked up while he was away.

I hate to say it, but I know it is not extremely rare for military wives/girlfriends to mess around while the soldiers are away. If every soldier who came back from deployment to a woman who had cheated killed her...Yikes!

Maybe she just broke up with him just before or during the deployment. We don't know, do we? A mentally healthy person would not tie up an ex for whatever reason to threaten them with violence.

They use the G36C (K has no picatinny-rail), the MP7, the UMP, the 33, the PSG1, the G90 and various specialized sniper rifles.

SEK (or basically any non Hollywood, well trained SWAT team worldwide) only uses 9mm or SMGs in hostage situations (or if any bystanders are close) or low penetration ammo -> pistols and SMGs. The rifles are only used in open field or sniping situations.

threaten them with violence? This sounds a bit like WMD? What did you think he was going to threaten her with , flowers?

Considering that there was a thread yesterday on how women should react when their husbands cheat on them with hookers and some of the women felt that castration/maiming/torture was a reasonable reaction I'm rather surprised...

course we don't know what's behind this story... well not yet...

I was just paraphrasing the article.


http://www.spiegel.de/international/german...,541458,00.html

You may also find that I didn't even reply to the topic nor do I agree with anyone saying it is okay to physically abuse a spouse or partner for cheating. Not all women think the same way about issues like that.

And of course there is also a difference between saying a man deserves his balls cut off for cheating and actually cutting off a man's balls (just as an example).

The severed head story. Warning: It's an icky story

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/headless.asp

From that link:


The wife was pregnant with the lover's child. This happened in the German town of Fulda in December 1993.

Tremendous. You understand what the difference between threatening violence and actually carrying it out. Some would say justifying it is worse than threatening it but there you go...

Tying up somebody is already physical abuse. On the other hand, saying something on a forum is not necessarily threatening something (seeing as this seems to be more about the other topic now than about this one).

(In other words, apparently I do understand the difference between threatening something and actually carrying it out, but you fail to see the difference between saying something and actually threatening something, or did I miss something? Where did someone explicitly threaten to cut someone's balls off?)

And where exactly am I justifying anything and what is it that I am supposedly justifying? If it is that you think I am justifying someone threatening to do harm to someone else, well, I am not doing that (if you disagree, please show me where I am doing that), and you should have figured that from the paragraph just before the one you cited (i.e. the part of my post that you conveniently decided to ignore).

CNN: German police kill U.S. soldier



Topics merged by admin

Son of Fritz Pleitgen ...

Which would you choose via-a-vis one's "boyfriend": Being shot with a combat weapon, or being stuck on a toilet seat for two years?

I feel sorry for this soldier and his family. No American soldiers should die for any German girlfriend(they are not worth dying for at any cost).

Classic

Had a bad experience then invisibleman, huh? I'm sure your local bar tender will be happy to hear you out.

How that soldier got his weapon and ammo maybe he was on QRF(Quick Reaction Force).No one knows what really going on. I know one thing German police are happy trigger finger. I think 2 yrs ago german police shot a farmer because the farmer threatened the police with a rake and they shot him. The German police is only good for setting up camera to take picture of speeding car and too scare to stop car for speeding not like real cop .

Let me guess... umm... you're American?

The more I think about this man's death the more I realise that it is a case of unjustified homicide - nothing else.

Alright BattalionBoy, let's look at it from a different perspective shall we? Suppose our man wasn't pointing an M4 at the police but it was an AK47... and he was wearing a headscarf?

The Met shoot to kill for wielding a loaded table leg. This GI deserved to get shot merely for crossing a line into the danger zone of total twatishness. One less Darwin Award contender as far as I can see.

Gotta disagree with you there. The M16A2 has a single shot/burst function, but the M4 has single shot/full auto. The effective range is shortened because of the shorter barrel, but I did see someone hit a steel target (herad it too) at 800 meters with Iron sughts. Took 4 shots, with a spotter, bbut for an m4 that's good.

..and the MP5 is the sweetest thing I've ever fired. When you fire the 9mm silenced version all you here is the action, it's incredible. They also make a 5.56 version, but it's a bit louder.

Amazing the shit people speak when guns are involved...that and railways...same mindset of mind-numbingly boring fandom...

800m, iron sights, heard it...my arse!

BS, on both of it. Unless your rifle action sounds like a nail gun. Only related HK rifle in 5.56mm is the G33 (and of course the 93).

The dead soldier might not have been the only "nutjob": Ex-soldier offers insight in Schweinfurt death, Stars and Stripes, March 19th. If this is true, the whole story is all the more sad.

wow, that is pretty psycho.

If you want to go all gun nerdy there are at least two variants of the M4. The M4 has a semiautomatic and 3 shot mode and the M4A1 has semiautomatic and fullautomatic settings. Neither of which really has any bearing on what happened.

According to the police, the dead soldier's weapon had 15 rounds in it. The SEK policeman shot at a trained, armed soldier turning towards him. The policeman fired two shots and the soldier was hit twice.

I wonder how different the reactions here might be had the policeman waited another second or two to be absolutely sure that he was being fired on and been injured or killed?

AKA 'last frame analysis'. Always a flawed way of looking at these things.

The natural human reaction is to turn towards things which attract our attention - after all, our eyes are in the front of our heads. Equally naturally, anything we are carrying will do the same. So when the cops arrive, person and gun will turn towards them, regardless of intent.

Since the stupid cops have not provided themselves with cover, they are now potential targets. The only way of getting themselves out of that situation is to shoot first. Idiots.

How about the cops approaching behind bullet-proof shields? This would remove the need to shoot for their own protection. Shooting might still be necessary (if other people are being threatened, for example) but it wouldn't be mandatory as it is now.

How effective are bulletproof shields? How effective in wooded areas? HAve you been watching too much of Gladiator?

Should the shields absorb projectiles or divert them off somewhere else? Downtown towards Mrs. Müller who is just about to munch on a piece of cake, for example?

The stupid cops have not provided themselves with cover because they are trying to react quickly against a mobile, armed person who has no reason to be in that area while carrying a weapon. If the armed person has no intent to use the weapon he can drop it or carry it in an obviously non threatening manner.

They can be very effective, much more so than vests & helmets.


Equally as effective. Perhaps more difficult to carry. And who said anything about wooded areas? Which don't tend to be very populated, by the way.


They absorb most of the energy.


I've never seen bullet-proof shields used in any footage of SWAT-type police deployments in Europe. It's quite possible they don't have them. Their tactics certainly don't appear to give prominence to their use.


The police are trained to shoot immediately if a weapon turns towards them. As I said the natural reaction is to turn towards something that attracts attention. So the person often doesn't have time to make any kind of decision before being shot. Harry Stanley wasn't armed and was shot dead as he turned to face the police.

Live by the sword... die by the sword

Does that include table-legs?

Dude, he was running around with a loaded military rifle. I can't see that there is much blame for the police.

I'm talking about police tactics. Using bullet-proof shields may or may not have helped in this instance - who knows? However police tactics make it very likely that anyone carrying or suspected of carrying a weapon in a public place will be killed. That strikes me as unnecessary.

As much as I regret the loss of anyones life, if you're running around with a gun (or something that could be mistaken for a gun) and NOT responding to "ARMED POLICE! DROP YOUR WEAPON!" (repeatedly) then I have no sympathy for the "victims."

No matter how drunk/stoned/wired you are, please don't attempt to have the last laugh in a situation like this. Because you won't.

Hello earth, this is germany... nobody should carry a weapon in a public place specialy not a M4 or any similar assault rifles. You don't have to defend a moron who had a warning before they shot (at) him unlike the brazilian guy in the London tube... who was unarmed by the way

Bollox...

It was an ASSAULT RIFLE!!! Firing 5.56 caliber rounds rounds. In real life (we are not talking about the movies here) this ammunition penetrates cars, single layered brick walls, any kind of interiour walls or trees and the ammo is especially designed for war situations, where the opponent will wear a bulletproof vest just like you. Therefore bulledproof vests and shields are worth shit against an assault rifle (and yes they do use shields here in europe as well, but obviously not if it doesn't make much sense). Highest penetration with this ammo lies within a 150-250m range (depending on what rifle you're using).

The poor nutcase was a trained soldier. A soldier who actually seen real action. First thing you learn is NOT to point your gun at everything - it could be one of your own.

The police fired two shoots, to stop a guy who could fire 15 shoots out of an most likely full automatic assault rifle. As said before, efective range is up to 600m... this means within a 600m radius around that guy any unlucky bystander could have been killed on open field, within built-up areas still at least 250m...

Poilce had no other chance really.

Empty suitcase
NO disrespect meant by this but your suit case is not he only thing that's empty if you feel that this was an inapropriate response by the police. You shoot the man in the leg and he takes several people with him .The M4 is an semi automatic weapon if not an automatic weapon that has the potential of doing seveare damage to many people.When faced with this type of situation the police has no choice but to take this person out. Or the other side of the coin is sometimes called suicide by police, this person wonted to die but did not have the guts to do it himself and therefor made the police do it. Sorry but that's the only response to a siyuation like this. VERY PROFFESSIONAL

Regardless of what we all think should have happened I know that in the same circumstances, with the same training as the police I would have done the same thing.

I think the general rule in this situation is, if the person is pointing a weapon at you, shoot.

The problem comes when the person was suspected of having a weapon (there are cases that went this way) and the person gets shot.

Its terrible when it happens but the police are also people, maybe with families etc and they have the right to defend themselves.

Its strange that if someone attacks another person with a knife and gets killed in the struggle poeople generaly say 'well, he shouldn't be walking around attacking people with knife' yet if someone points a gun at the police and they shoot him the same logic doesn't seem to apply.

This case, like most other like it is terrible as someone was killed. He wasn't a career criminal, he just lost the plot.

However, if you point guns at people you are eventualy going to get shot.

extremely tragic news for the family of that guy in the USA knowing that there son brother etc got killed by police in Germany.. did know one notice that he was having trouble in his personal life.

Damm sure right I am American an proud of it and I support my troops, when was the last time you see german waiving german flag and are proud to be german? huh let me guess fussball game . My in-law is german and they too agree with me, the polizei are bunch of lazy law enforcement officers you know it true.

If I would have been the German policeman who shot that guy, I would be proud of it.
I support the German police!

Domestic dogs get better treatment in Germany than this guy did.
AnswerToLife42 are you a Nazi?

Oh and what do you suppose might have happened if this had been in the US or UK or any other country for that matter.

I think in Germany dogs that attack people are put down. Like the soldier.
So, no, domestic dogs don't get a better treatment in Germany.
Matthew 26:52 "For all who draw the sword will die by the sword"

I bet if the dog was holding and capable of fireing the gun like a trained soldier, was in the same frame of mind and pointed it at the police they would have shot it.

There is a big difference between being bitten by a little scottie terrier and having a trained soldier point an assault (full auto or not) at you.

If the police turned up and a person was being mauled by a dog I think they may intervine.

They could have called a psyc-ananlyst to talk to the guy, if one could be founf that would stand in fron of a trained armed soldier is a highly emotional state.

This isnt the world of csi, law and order, the closer or any other tv crime drama. The guy pointed a gun at the police and was shot.

Tragic for all concerned and would have possibly gone down the same way in most countries.

A Nazi quoting the bible - that has to be a first.


Another first.

The British Police, the keystone cops, shot a man for carrying a table leg in a bag, as Wheel pointed out. If he even knew the Police were that stupid and were talking to him is open to debate. In this case in this thread it's a more clear cut situation, but in many others the Police seem far to eager to shoot, but it can't be an easy choice to make in all situations.

Hey BB why don't you get a hold of an assault rifle & then go to a random country and point it at a cop, let us know what happens.

If I had an assault rifle pointed at a cop the temptation would be more than I could bear.