I heard that the police snipers are taught to kill target

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I heard that the police snipers are taught to kill target regardless of who is.

I've heard that a police sniper must take a shot no matter who the target is.

Apparently the sniper does not matter whether the target l is a 90 year old, 12 year old kid, a priest, a rabbi or a man in a wheelchair,

Is this true?

I would say it probably depends on what country and its policies.
In the US and probably most other countries the standard practice for a police marksman is to shoot to neutralize. Many times, though, killing is the only practical way to neutralise a threat. If you have a hostage situation the first priority is saving and rescuing the hostage, not the people that made a decision to take hostages.
Example: You have a very unstable bad guy with a pistol to a hostage's head. The most risk free way to end that situation is normally to put a bullet right in the brain of the bad guy shutting him down instantly. To try anything more elaborate puts the hostage at undue risk.

I do have some concern that some police agencies are dropping traditional police marksman rifles (e.g. .223, .308) in favor of rifles with much greater maximum ranges (e.g. .338 Lapua Magnum). When scenarios arise where police marksmen come into play, the distances are rarely much more than 100 or 200 yards, often less than 100. These are within the range of a precision rifle in .223 and well within the range of a .308, which can defeat most common body armor at 600+ yards. A .338 LM has a max effective range of well over 1000 yards with 1500+ yards being considered normal. I question the law enforcement agency need for the capability to neutralise a threat at 1000+ yards.

What is the disadvantage of the .338?

Isn't a sniper primary role to observe?

They would shoot, if they witnessed a threat to life.

They are often in a position to observe and report but also to provide precision rifle fire if needed. A police sniper is not quite the same as a military sniper.

No real disadvantages, per se. I've found it to be an excellent walrus hunting round.

Other than costing $7+ per round? Heavy recoil, massive over-penetration at typical police engagement range, huge muzzle blast, the requirement for a larger and more unwieldy rifle to handle it, the extra cost of said rifle, etc. Personally, my main problem is that the police in this country are acting more and more like an occupying army rather than as peace officers, and giving them military hardware unsuited to their intended role only heightens the problem.

Given my way, I'd equip them with lever action carbines in pistol calibers, single stack automatics in .45ACP, and 12 gauge pump shotguns, plus have them start walking more beats and doing less driving. Not only would this make them safer, as traffic accidents are by far the biggest on the job killer of cops, but it would help them to connect with their communities, and to restore the mindset of 'serve and protect' that has been sadly neglected in recent years. That, and giving them weaponry with a more deliberate manual of arms might help them focus a bit more on marksmanship and a bit less on volume of lead thrown if they do need to use force.

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Forget the .45's and just give them DA revolvers with speed-loaders. Honestly, they'll f**k up enough with revolvers, let alone with anything semi-automatic.

If we talk about the police and the army what do you think about Andersz Breivik, I wonder why the Norwegian police to stop him, it took up so much time, and why he only got 20 years in prison. In my country, Poland, the maximum penalty is life imprisonment, though, in my opinion the best punishment for the most serious crimes should be the death penalty.

Last edited by pawelk1986 on 24 Mar 2014, 12:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

I forgot the details but I went to this wikipedia article for the short version.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik#cite_note-Andresen-65

I don't know what Norway's policy on armed citizens is but it's probably not very conducive to armed self defense. This is why I'm in favor of armed citizens. Somewhere in that shooting of 69 kids he could have been stopped with a few bullets. I won't go into details and possible scenarios because it's getting late and I don't feel like inviting all the protectionists into a pointless debate that we've already debated numerous times at this hour.


If he surrendered then the police couldn't legally shoot him. Ideally, he would have at least pointed his weapon and them and given them grounds to fill him with lead and save the expense of trying and keeping him for 20 years.


Having killed 77 people and probably injuring more (I didnt read the whole thing) I'd find a way to legally reject that insanity reasoning BS. Call me a conservative, but you just don't get to knock off 77 people and then plead insanity.


21 year sentence with a minimum of only 10 for what he did. Regardless of what the demons in his head told him, he deserves to publicly swing by the neck. I dont know what Norway's laws are on the death penalty but in this case I see it as fully justified to put him to death and be done with it.

To be fair, police started increasing firepower in response to incidents where they were clearly and obviously outgunned - which led to some really tragic incidents (See: North Hollywood Shootout). Police snipers have to be able to disable vehicles, and occasionally engage targets at longer ranges (especially when deployed as part of an event protection detail, or protecting motorcades). In those situations, I can see where a larger caliber rifle would make sense.



Obviously this is highly dependent on the community. Anywhere but the most urban centers require officers to be in a vehicle to cover suitable ground.

Unfortunately, throughout the European Union does not have the death penalty, but I think that in some cases the only appropriate and fair form of punishment, but leftists argue that it is inhumane.

You ever hear the old lawyer's adage, 'extraordinary cases make extraordinarily bad case law'? Similar principal, a handful of incidents has been used to justify a wholesale shift in the culture of policing, and not in a good direction. The best example is the SWAT team, once limited to large urban centers and only called out in the direst emergencies, now every small town has one 'just in case', and since people like to play with their toys, now they get called in to deliver misdemeanor pot warrants and bust up poker games, often with tragic results. Google "police militarization" some time, it's enlightening in a rage inducing sort of way.



Maybe if you're talking truly rural areas, but in the burbs and cities, there's no reason that beat walking couldn't be reemphasized, especially if they stopped treating every traffic stop like a possible terrorist incident and sending three cars for backup, or pulled the guys off of speed trap and meter minding and had them do something worthwhile for a change..

I live less than 25 miles from Washington, DC in the suburbs, and a walking officer would be able to cover maybe 10 neighborhoods walking - driving the same officer can hit every shopping center, business park, neighborhood and playground. If you happen to live in a community that is walkable, that works great - but that's truly the minority of the cases. The rest of the time, you have no alternative but to put officers in cars - or maybe triple the size of the police force and raise taxes to pay for it.

As it is known, the police took so long, because of Breivik doing a bomb attack on the capital city at the same time, that caused lots of damage and injured. Additional he himself, wore an police uniform, during his attack, and so many of his victims even mismentioned him for the arriving police.

The reason why he got 20 years is clearly, that 20 years is the maximum penalty in norwegia. But comparable to my country, as far as I know, norwegia has as well the possibility of "closed psychiatric facilities", for people that are of serious threat to the public. So Breivik might go out of jail in 20 years, but because of his mental illnesses, there is not much doubt, that he will afterwards spend the rest of his time in that "closed psychiatric facility" until a team of psychiatric and therapeutics would agree on, that he is no danger to the public anymore. Which I think, will never happen.

As for SWAT, we had complain about Polish SWAT team too.

A few years ago, SWAT squad raided the house of one Polish businessman, they had to arrest him because the tax office finds that there are inaccuracies in the income tax, and that is a member of the Russian mafia, the guy lived in a detached house. It was decided to send SWAT squad, they shot his dog, frightened his children, and then it turned out that they arrested the wrong guy, mobster they were looking for lived in the house next door, a Centralne Biruo Śledcze CBŚ -Central Bureau of Investigation  Polish Police General Headquarters, they compare them self to FBI and Scotland Yard but they screwed up the job badly and arrest warrant entered the wrong address, someone simply wrong. Now this guy is fighting in court for compensation for the destruction of the house, and moral damages, but the SWAT frightened his children and killed dog