Joe Tells Police to Shoot Suspects in the Legs

From Fox News:

Law enforcement groups blasted Vice President Joe Biden for again suggesting training police to shoot suspects "in the leg" is a viable way to avoid fatalities, decrying the proposal as dangerous and ignorant.

During an ABC News town hall Thursday, Biden gave the shooting advice while talking about broader police reforms, which have been on the public conscience since the killing of George Floyd sparked nationwide racial unrest.

"There's a lot of things we've learned and it takes time, but we can do this," Biden said. "You can ban chokeholds ... you have to teach people how to de-escalate circumstances. ... Instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do is shoot to kill, you shoot them in the leg."

Police officers and law enforcement groups pounced on the suggestion that officers would train to shoot someone in the leg rather than "center mass," the largest part of the body that has long been the firearms training target.

John Evans, president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, told Fox News that Biden's suggestion is "absolutely ridiculous" and "incredibly ignorant."

"The guy's clueless," Evans said. "And I know he's just trying to appease his left-wing base but it's a really foolish statement."

And more from Just the News:

Multiple law enforcement officials argued to Just the News that Biden had strongly misjudged the logistics of police use-of-force.

"It's a myth," Dana Schrad, the executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police, said of Biden's notion that leg shots are a practical alternative to current police training.

"We have a continuum of use of force policies that we follow," she said of police officers. "Officers are trained to de-escalate situations, to use the minimal force necessary, to contain a situation, and to bring it to a peaceful conclusion."

"If an officer is forced to use lethal force," she continued, "that means there's imminent danger. If there's that level of danger that would force an officer to use a firearm, he's trained to shoot to body mass."

"It takes some really special equipment and a real good marksman to disable someone by shooting them in the leg," she added.

Biden's remarks on Thursday were not the first time the politician has given controversial law enforcement advice. He made the same shoot-for-the-leg argument at a community meeting in June of this year.  Several years ago, the former vice president also suggested that utilizing a double-barreled shotgun and "fir[ing] two blasts outside the house" would be enough to scare away would-be criminals.

Lawrence O'Toole, a Lt. Col with the St. Louis Police Department, said Biden's remarks on Thursday were "ridiculous."

"Why don't we train the military to do that?" he asked sarcastically.

"Obviously we shoot for the larger part of the body because we have the highest percentage of being able to hit the target," he argued. "We shoot to stop the threat. You could be endangering the public by shooting and missing."

O'Toole also took issue with Biden's premise that police officers "shoot to kill" when drawing their weapons.

"Nowhere have I ever heard in police training that we shoot to kill," he said, repeating: "We shoot to stop the threat. We do not shoot to kill."

It's bad enough that the Radical Left has villainized Police to the point of utterly destroying their morale in many parts of the country. 

Many cities being terrorized by the Leftists and their insane policies on crime are seeing record numbers of Police resignations. 

If they win in just a few weeks they will surely implement policies nationwide which will get Police Officers killed.