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The possibilities look like this: • Attacker doesn't have bombs, police blow him up: Dead attacker, everyone else OK. • Attacker has bombs, police blow him up
by chroma 10y ago
The possibilities look like this:
• Attacker doesn't have bombs, police blow him up: Dead attacker, everyone else OK.
• Attacker has bombs, police blow him up: Dead attacker, everyone else most likely OK. (Only not OK if attacker has a certain kind of dead man's switch.)
• Attacker doesn't have bombs, police try to take him alive: Maybe dead attacker, maybe cops hurt/killed.
• Attacker has bombs, police try to take him alive: Maybe dead attacker, probably cops hurt/killed, probably civilians hurt/killed.
A dead man's switch is very unlikely, because it's hard to make reliable. If not set up to allow for intermittent interruptions, it's guaranteed detonate explosives early. If it's only set up to transmit "detonate" when let go of, its destruction can prevent detonation. Also, the shooter would have mentioned if he actually had a dead man's switch. I'm betting he didn't think of that.
It wasn't likely that the shooter had explosives, but considering the possible outcomes, incapacitating him as quickly as possible was the best of the crappy choices available. I think the cops made the right decision in this case.
- wavefunction 10y agoWhy would you go to the trouble of placing "bombs all over the city" if not to use them? I would take that threat and the fact that they had not been detonated to signal that the shooter had no bombs in the first place.
- chroma 10y ago> I would take that threat and the fact that they had not been detonated to signal that the shooter had no bombs in the first place. Are you so sure that you'd be willing to bet the lives of potentially hundreds of innocent people? The Dallas PD wasn't. It's easy to be confident now that we have more information. At the time, the guy had already shot a dozen cops. He had body armor. He'd held off SWAT in a firefight. All actions that attested to his preparation and training. His claims about bombs were quite plausible at the time. Likely exaggerated, but still plausible. Let's say the police thought there was a 1 in 50 chance that he had planted one or more bombs. Would you want them to risk a 2% chance of potentially hundreds injuries and deaths just to take the guy alive? I wouldn't.