• PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I’m glad that’s “all” it was - a routine car break-in or stolen vehicle. My first thought was that some fucking domestic terrorists/Trump cultists knew exactly what they were doing. Glad it wasn’t that.

      • kautau@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The fact that the car was unoccupied was their saving grace here. One of the agents fired a shot and “missed” which was almost certainly a warning shot. Had someone been in that car, the attempted thieves would almost certainly be dead.

        • ultranaut@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Warning shots aren’t really a thing in modern law enforcement. Policy is generally if you need to shoot at someone you’re supposed to be trying to neutralize a threat with your bullet and not just attempting to scare someone with it.

          • kautau@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            True, but this is the Secret Service we’re talking about, not local cops. They are trained to protect high level US government assets. If they were shooting to kill there would have been far more rounds fired, more than one agent would have been firing, and there would be more bodies

            • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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              1 year ago

              True, but this is the Secret Service we’re talking about, not local cops.

              Yes ,which is how we knew that whoever fired fucked up. They don’t do warning shots.

              • kautau@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Unless its “we need to exit the area now, firing a shot into the pavement may scare off the offenders and let us get into our vehicle immediately” or “we fire a bunch of rounds at three people surrounding our exit vehicle who may be armed, potentially damaging the vehicle and causing them to shoot back.” The secret service’s number 1 job is to protect their assigned assets. In this situation, thinking tactically, they may have determined that trying to deter would be car thieves with minimal confrontation so they could evacuate those involved to somewhere secure was most important. If they wanted to shoot to kill, the thieves never would have made it to their getaway vehicle, but the possibility of getting in a street-level shootout is far more dangerous when it comes to their job rather than scaring guys off and driving away.

                • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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                  1 year ago

                  …firing a shot into the pavement…

                  I can’t even deal with the level of absolute ignorance you are displaying. Anyone who is firing guns “into the pavement” needs to be disarmed immediately as they are a CLEAR threat to literally everyone around them. This is not the expected behavior of a maximally trained Federal Law Enforcement Officer.

                  Here’s another Pro-Tip…you don’t fire warning shots horizonally or into the sky either as those bullets are going SOMEWHERE and you have no idea where. It’s completely possible that your “warning shot” ends up wounding or killing someone 2 blocks away. This is why no one with any serious firearms training does it and why no serious trainers recommend it.

                  I’ve done training and scenario shooting with everyone from NRA instructors to Law Enforcement to SPECOPS guys. NO ONE with real training does warning shots.

                  You are trying to create some wildly improbable hypothetical scenario in order to justify reckless and unsafe actions by Federal Law Enforcement. Stop it.

                  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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                    1 year ago

                    And yet every animal on the planet instinctively demos its weapons when threatened.

                    Regardless of what the law says about warnings, it is an effective technique as evidence by the behavior’s survival and ubiquity in the context of the ruthless optimization of evolution.

                    Demonstrating destructive capability is an effective means of protection, and I would expect Secret Service to be more focused on the rules of reality than the guidelines of law, given the weight of their assignment.

                    Like, indiscriminate ordinance is also illegal, but it gets used all the time in a state of war because that’s a context where law takes a back seat to survival.

                • StorminNorman@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  “Thinking tactically”… You’re literally some anonymous person on the internet. I guarantee you know dick all about how the secret service operate in these circumstances.

                  As for the “shoot to kill” comment, the secret service hasn’t killed anyone in quite a while, yet they have shot a few. The evidence doesn’t corroborate your stance.

                  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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                    1 year ago

                    So how do you explain the Secret Service shooting people without killing them?

                    Is it:

                    (a) They lack the firing skill to hit center mass

                    or

                    (b) Their methods do not correspond perfectly with the legal guidelines given in a concealed carry course?

                • SCB@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  potentially damaging the vehicle and causing them to shoot back

                  Fun fact, the vehicles are bulletproof and can take direct RPG hits. My sister’s ex husband works on them for a living.

                  50 Cent has (had? Idk with his bankruptcy) an SUV with flamethrowers on the sides and rear

            • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              I’d sooner believe a miss in a situation like this then I would believe that secret service is flinging wild shots into the air in order to make sure they’re as kind as possible to someone trying to break into the car of someone they’re protecting.

          • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Which is obvious because scaring someone that you’re going to murder them just means they will fight back

          • kautau@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I didn’t say it’s a good idea, just that a single shot fired from a team of three secret service agents was probably intentional. Most likely they fired at the pavement or something, so the sound of the shot would scare off the offenders. Their job is to protect their assets at all costs when on guard duty, not begin placing arrests or detaining suspects (unless that will help their goal in said situation). In this situation, preventing that vehicle from being stolen was important in case they needed to exit the area quickly. All the suspects fled in a red vehicle where the description was passed to capitol police.

      • Konala Koala@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well, if it was that and Joe Biden’s daughter was in the vehicle, then you might hear random demands being made on her life to either surrender the country to Russia or to the Taliban so it can be changed to either the Russian States of American or the Taliban States of American, which would really have us feeling a mass armed uprising or another civil war is coming.

    • aceshigh@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Imagine being an idiot in DC and not knowing how government cars/ protected cars look like.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You’ve got to pretty unobservant in reality. Like hey this car has a police radio and extra antennas. I should definitely keep going, this won’t go bad at all.

      • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Do they have any obvious identifying marks anymore? My understanding was that they are intentionally pretty non-descript vehicles, not drawing attention

        • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Yes, they have very distinct license plates which say “US GOVERNMENT VEHICLE” on them.

          And this isn’t some diplomatic plate or shit. Any car with the actual fedgov plates is moving VIPs or on their way to do so.

    • Dem Bosain@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      I’ve spent enough time in arcades to know that’s just the plot to a kickass beat-em-up side scroller.