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Concept
Contagious shooting
Summary
A contagious shooting is a sociological phenomenon observed in military and police personnel, in which one person firing on a target can induce others to begin shooting. Often the subsequent shooters will not know why they are firing, unless they are infantrymen, in which case they are expected to do so. For instance, if someone was a member of a fire team following the point man and he suddenly begins firing his weapon, there is a good chance that their element is in contact with the enemy.
While commonly accepted in popular culture and police jargon, there has been yet no scientific evidence "to prove the existence of a contagious shooting dynamic", which law professor Eugene O'Donnell said was a "debatable notion".
Additionally, a former CIA employee and FBI firearms instructor observed it in training. "Consistently, in every class, officers would shoot at their target upon hearing others shoot, even when their particular target board did not contain the called target." He suggests that one reason it occurs is because of muscle memory: "[T]he targets turn, or the whistle blows, and all the officers shoot together until a cease-fire signal is given."
O'Donnell partially reinforces this, saying that in classic cases involving contagious shooting, "a gun was shot before any officers fired", and thus "the officers involved began shooting because of fear or because of the sound of a colleague firing".
2013: In California, officers involved in the search for Christopher Dorner mistakenly fired at least 100 rounds at a truck occupied by three people, none of whom had any connection to the suspect. Each of the two women injured received $2.1 million in a settlement with the city of Los Angeles.
2012: NYPD officers responded to a report of shots fired with one victim killed in front of the Empire State Building. Officers fired sixteen rounds, wounding 9 bystanders and killing the shooter.
2011: On Memorial Day in Miami Beach, several police officers fired until their magazines were empty on a stopped car after the driver smashed into other cars, killing the driver and injuring seven bystanders.
Official source
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