The officer may have to wipe left handed for a month, I would call that significant but agree not critical.

I assume he was a student?

I assume so, since the sword itself seems to be a replica of a sword present in the anime, Bleach.

I'm gonna hazard a guess and say that the suspect was having a bad acid trip and thought he was fighting ghosts or something.

It is getting to look like the nuts are proliferating in Colorado, must be caused by an altitude high.

Dr. Jim said:

The swordsman was most likely high as a kite.

I have been known to carry a sword around and have never taken drugs. In fact the whole neighborhood knows, and it's become something of a joke--a couple of the neighbors swear they'll come to my house if there's a zombie apocalypse!

Russ H:

Not necessarily. Depends on whether the knife/sword is sharp and whether the gun is loaded--and whether the two people holding said knife and gun are out looking for trouble.

Ever think they might just be comparing recent purchases at a gun and knife show?

"Anytime you see someone walking around with a sword and swinging it around, you want to take precautions.”

Yes, I read that in Heloise some years ago and have tried to live by that advice.

"... I would call that significant but agree not critical."

I would call you a critical dick.

Ah, the ol' "brought a sword to a gun fight" morons strike again! Although the cop should have tried to maintain a defensive distance from Samurai Sammy, he's lucky it was just a finger!

doctor jim59

The swordsman was most likely high as a kite. This will be a tough thing to swallow for his parents.

It will be tough on the parents, but they had to find out sooner or later that their kid couldn't hack it.

It's very critical if you can't give the finger.........................In display or in use.......foreplay is a must.

There are these things called arteries. Some of them run into your fingers. If one of them is cut, it's a serious injury. You could die within minutes from blood loss.

i sell a wide variety of swords, and this one does NOT look anything like one of the
"bleach" swords.

actually, this is a low-end samurai sword ---- only one step up from the cheapest available ---- probably not even very sharp, unless he sharpened it himself, which he must have done, considering the outcome.

Amanda, it's called the 21 foot rule, or the Tueller Drill.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_Foot_Rule

It isn't exactly applicable here since the officer likely had his weapon drawn and aimed outside of that range, but I'm still behind the officer based on the information here. I'll treat anyone who is poised to attack me with a deadly weapon from a kitchen knife to a firearm as a deadly threat and respond accordingly.

i sell a wide variety of swords, and this one does NOT look anything like one of the
"bleach" swords.

http://www.trueswords.com/ichigo-bankai-sword-inspired-anime-tensa-zangetsu-p-2556.html

Yep, sure doesn't look anything like the sword in the picture provided by the article.

the mans name was jeff, no he was not a student, he was mentally ill. what i want to know is how the hell did he get the sword ?? and why no one noticed he had it walking around with it......

Excellent work officer, another scumbag bites the dust. I hope you recover from you wound. I know some will say the guy was acting crazing (duh) and off his meds, etc. The good news is that the state won't have to spend anymore money on his medication. The bad news is that the state will have to pay for burial. I think the dumpster is cheaper myself.

This incident was no where close to the Aurora theater shooting. 20 miles maybe?

You can find a sword store at any mall these days.............There was a time when you had to order them through magazine catalogs.

actually, it's one of the items i sell.

Well, you wouldn't want to see somebody chase you with a three-foot dildo.

lol

Well, you wouldn't want to see somebody chase you with a three-foot dildo.

Especially if it was on fire...

Flaming Dildo of Justice!

TMNT or Highlander would be my guess.

Obviously they were close, the swordsman got his finger.

I know cops are suppose to handle these things a bit different than the-man-on-the-street but all things considered I'd feel that the shooting as justifiable. It may have only been a sword but there just is no call for that kind of foolishness.

Shooting someone in the leg wouldn't put them down right away. The attacker is already within swords reach and has already swung at least once. Pretty justified, in my opinion.

Why is it that every time someone is shot by a policeman or a campus cop, people say, "Why didn't you just shoot him in the arm/leg? He didn't have to die!" No, anyone that directs a LETHAL WEAPON at another individual and runs the risk of killing them is asking for the same result in return. If you have a sword capable of being plunged through someone's heart (which this man could have done, had he switched his angle of attack), then you yourself are asking for the same amount of attack to be done to you with someone else's weapon (in this case, a gun).

There is NO way that every policeman is a sharpshooter with medical knowledge who can miraculously, in the heat of a confrontation, aim for an arm and a leg in the HOPE of disabling a suspect. You hit the wrong part of the body part, graze an artery in the leg, and the suspect is dead in minutes.

You've been watching too many Hollywood movies where the good guy shoots the weapon out of the bad guy's hand, if you think that you can disable someone with a single gunshot. Turn off the TV, put down the remote, go to a gun range and test your own abilities at "disabling" a suspect... then bear in mind that the paper target you're aiming for isn't an emotional, screaming, armed combatant coming at you out of the blue during your work day.

shoot the guy in the leg

OK anatomy 101 hope this slows down the shoot him in the leg crowed a little.

Femoral artery is located in the LEG, if its hit you will most likely bleed out in 3-5 min unless you get intimidate medical intervention. So they could still die because the bleeding is internal, a tourniquet isn't applied fast enough or properly, medical personal are kept back until the scene is safe. Know this from 21 years of fire/rescue as EMT-P.

Shooting someone in the leg wont guarantee that they will stop attacking you. It may not even slow them down depending on how much of the pharmacy they have in their system.

So when an officer shoots someone in the leg it's because he missed........

Well, they do. In this day and age.

I practice Kummooyeh--Korean sword disciplines. When we first moved into the neighborhood a year ago and took my swords out to the field beside the neighborhood church to practice, I was accosted by a cop who said he got a report from neighborhood watch about a crazy kid waving a sword.

I explained (and demonstrated) to him that it was a form of martial arts, I practiced, and I wasn't hurting anyone and the swords were not sharpened. I asked the cop if it was going to be a problem, should I not practice outside? He said that wasn't necessary, I was free to do as I liked just to not openly threaten someone with the swords (and he told me to please don't take the sharpened swords out of the house.)

So a couple weeks later a different cop stops me while I'm practicing and says he got a call from the neighborhood watch about a crazy kid waving a sword. Again, I explained the situation and demoed the forms. He told me the same thing; it's fine just don't threaten anyone and don't bring the sharpened ones out.

Three weeks later I see someone standing off to the side of the field watching me practice and he's on his cellphone. I sheathed my sword and waited, thinking it's another cop and I have to explain again. This time it was the neighborhood watch captain who had been hearing reports from the other volunteers about a crazy person (hey, at least they didn't call me a kid this time, I'm freakin' 35!) waving a sword, but this time when he called 911 the dispatcher told him it's already been investigated, I was harmless and if he would wait they would send an officer out to make an official introduction.

So I'm standing there watching him, he stands there watching me, neither one of us has the guts to approach each other. My sword still sheathed but I can draw it in a moment if I have to, and I don’t know if he was packing (conceal carry isn’t allowed in my state) but he apparently wasn’t coming anywhere near my ninjato. Then a cop drives up, talks him, walks over to me, then waves the guy over and introduces me to the neighborhood watch captain. So I explain, for the third time, who I am and what I'm doing and since then I have had no further trouble with either the neighborhood watch, or the police, although they did tell me if I have sharpened swords leave them at home (my practice weapons are not sharpened).

I have only taken one of my sharpened swords out ONCE--after Irene blew through the East Coast last year, I took it out to help a couple of neighbors hack apart a tree that blew down between the convent and the church and blocked the way for the nuns who wanted to go to the church and pray.

(BTW--when the cops got a call from dispatch some months later saying a female subject had caught someone trying to break in and was holding the burglar at swordpoint, they knew exactly who had called and where I lived and came right over. And then spent ten minutes laughing their a$$es off at the sight of a five-foot-coke-bottle-glasses-Asian-chick holding a stoner at (blunt) swordpoint for trying to break in. My Dad, a Vietnam and Korean War vet, had always told me to use the least amount of force necessary to accomplish an objective--had I needed to, I still have his 1966 S&W Model 39 in the house and I do know how to shoot it. A gun was not necessary--two blunt shortswords were sufficient to make the stoner almost pee himself!)

Right there with you. Have a sword and a throwing knife mounted for easy access.

@Amanda: That's pretty awesome. I have a decorative sword on above my TV armoire, but the only weapons in my house are knives.

Oh, and four guns. I'll give anyone that breaks in the benefit of the doubt though. And by that, I mean I'll issue two commands, and if they both aren't immediately complied with, I take that as a threat against myself.

The two commands are:
1) "Get on the ground!"
2) " GET ON THE F***ING GROUND!"

The article clearly stated samurai, not ninja. But hey they all look alike right...................

who cares.

You go at a cop with a deadly weapon

or a cell phone, or a pen, or............

If you try to stab the pen into the officer's neck or chest, sure. Or if you intentionally hold your cell phone like a gun while in a poorly lit setting and point it at them in a threatening manner.

That's right. We need to outlaw swords, daggers, Daito's, Shoto's, and butter knives.

And especially those soft rubber swords kids play with. You never know when one of them might "get hard" and become a threat.

:D

"You never know when one of them might "get hard" and become a threat."

That's what she said.........................

And chop off fingers...lol

Do you actually read anything you post? The guy assaulted a cop with his sword and almost cut off his finger. If you have a weapon and a cop tells you to drop it....and you DON'T.....you are toast. There was nothing about 'lack of communication' about this. It was sheer stupidity.

And for the previous poster who suggested the cop 'shoot him in the leg'? You watch way too much television and you've obviously never fired a gun at a target.

Barney was hopin' for a chance to use his bullet. Plus, he was standing his ground, or maybe too fat to run a few steps to avoid getting his pinky cut, or cut his widdle fingoo when he grabbed the sword.

You don't get to hit a cop with a sword and not expect to get shot.

If the guy was hitting either of you with a sword, and a cop was nearby, would you want him to politely ask the man to stop and then use a taser on him? Or would you want him to just shoot this obviously insane person?

I know which I'd choose, so why wouldn't the cop get the same protection?

Excessive? Attacking someone with a sword is clearly lethal force, the officer would be negligent to use a stun gun in that situation instead of replying with the appropriate, equal level of force. Stun guns do not always drop a target, have limited range, and can't be fired repeatedly, and if he's close enough that he managed to send the officer to the hospital even with the officer using his sidearm, the time it would take to deploy the stun gun means that if it didn't instantly incapacitate the target (which is quite likely) then the officer is dead. And since the officer is dead, the crazy person now has nothing to stop him from killing more people on campus, and can even now use the officer's gun to kill more efficiently. The officer made the most rational call that could be made.

or mentally unstable..................too soon to blame drugs............

Well, the perp is pretty mentally stable now - flat-lined!

Because you're a conspiracy theorist?

no.... because of the lack of witnesses.

the fact that the guy purchased a low-end sword, and sharpened it enough to cut off someone's finger, then brought it with him into a public place, tells me he had some issues, perhaps with reality. ------ however, considering some of the stories lately regarding over-reaction of officers, like here in portland, there might be another side to this story not being presented.

No.... You're just a conspiracy theorist.

And from Portland, to boot. So, worth not listening to TWICE over.

Shooting someone who is attacking you with a lethal weapon (badly enough that you have to go to the hospital, no less) is hardly an overreaction. What would you prefer him to do, firmly request that the man stop slashing him with his sword?

They have that already. The SCA. Society for Creative Anachronism. They do the sword fighting and jousting and such at renaissance fairs.

And the ARMA, the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts, who offer longsword training as well as several free articles about why Hollywood knows nothing about long pieces of sharp steel.