On Tuesday, February 10th in 2015, Courtney Topic was shot dead by police standing outside a Hungry Jacks in Hoxton Park in Sydney’s Western suburbs.
She was 22 years old, and had Asperger’s syndrome – a developmental disorder on the autism spectrum which made it difficult for her to register and process other people’s emotions and behaviour.
In the last picture ever taken of her, shortly before the shooting, she was carrying a 20cm knife in her right hand and drinking from a take away cup in the other.
Top Comments
Can't the Police aim for legs?
I suppose they could but it's a lot harder to hit a leg than it is to hit the chest. They are trained to aim for the easiest target (which would usually be the chest), in order to quickly incapacitate the person and to minimise the risk of injury to themselves and to any bystanders.
I'm not saying I necessarily agree or disagree with their actions in this case but that is the reason they don't generally aim for a leg or shoulder, as is often suggested.
Lethal force should be an absolute last resort. This case is difficult because the police tried tasers and then spray which normally would have worked.
Shooting in the leg isn’t as dangerous, I suppose an officer could say they were aiming for the T zone but missed and hit the leg. The issue is the legislation, if a cop fires to wound they are discharging their firearm in an inappropriate way. The argument when they get investigated and sued is if they didn’t need to shoot to kill, they didn’t need to shoot. Same goes for warning shots.
It seems though most fatal police shootings are of mentally unstable people, not calculating armed crims.
If you aim for smaller and harder to hit body parts you are likely to miss. Then you have a stray bullet which could hit someone else.