Another Police Shooting Death

[EDDIE51]

A 73 year old deputy police man shot a man dead ' by accident' he said he used his gun instead of his Taser.
http://gawker.com/***-your-breath-video-of-inadvertent-police-shoot-1697315874
73 and still in the police with a gun?

[jim360]

Guns makes us safer though. Apparently.

[THECORBYLOON]

Odd how the other officers hadn't heard the gunshot and surely if they had thought the taser had been used they would have wondered why there were no trailing wires...Main thing is, the old guy apologised.

[wolf63]

There is a story on Chatterbank of a 65 year old lady being pregnant.

It is all a bit surreal.

I found this article http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/video-shows-tulsa-man-shot-deputy-meant-stun-article-1.2181787

[Hypognosis]

@EDDIE51

This has to be the most unbelievable one yet.

One of the commenters said he served a couple of months in 1964 and these days he is just someone who donates equipment to the police, so they allow him to ride along in patrol cars. Yes, elderly, retiree who 'plays' at being a cop.

He's probably been dreaming of a chance like this for years. "Sorry", my 'arris!

[Hypognosis]

Although it probably makes the incident worse, not better, I would like to stress that this was not a rank amateur, 'riding shotgun', these reserve deputies go through intensive training, to the extent that they can perform certain duties (directing traffic, parking patrol) without oversight.

But there's the nub of the case. He was only authorized to use the Tazer (he may even have donated it to them); the pistol was his own. So it was "pay to play" in the sense that his donations got him off the boring duties the auxilliaries were brought in to fill and onto the exciting car chases.

I do not wish to disparage our PCSOs but I'm curious about how closely their role parallels that of reserve deputies or whatever this man's job title was.
This is only with the aim of putting it into a UK perspective. Our gun laws preclude a private weapon getting into a police stop situation.