Australian Police Take Down Gunman With Rubber Bullets, Showing American Cops How Policing Should Be Done

Chris | InformationLiberation
Jan. 24, 2014

In this is amazing footage out of Australia, police use restraint for which American police would never think of and have a 90-minute standoff with a man with a gun threatening to shoot himself and waving his gun at others. Eventually, the police move in by shooting him with rubber bullets, which causes him to drop the gun, then they swarm him and detain him without causing any major injuries. It turns out the gun wasn't even loaded.

Compare this incident to the one from yesterday where a man detained by police in the U.S. was shot and killed with his back turned to the cops and hands up in the air in surrender. Rather than fault his officer for shooting an unarmed man in the back, the local sheriff said he himself would "likely have shot him" even sooner.

Here's the backstory from 9 News:

Security footage shows the moment Gunman Lee Matthew Hillier was shot down by police in Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall in 2013.

The new footage released by Queensland Police shows a shirtless Lee Matthew Hillier waving around his gun and smoking a cigarette as he walks through the mall after terrified shoppers and workers had been forced to scramble away.

He begged police to shoot him during the 90-minute standoff and is seen in the video repeatedly holding his own gun to his head as heavily-armed officers try to talk to him.

Eventually armed SERT officers fire a volley of rubber bullets into Hillier's side, causing him to leap wildly into the air. He appears to try to shoot his own weapon before it is flung from his hand and he falls to the ground.

Within seconds he is swooped on by half a dozen armed police. Other footage of the event was posted previously showing elevated footage.

Hillier was just sentenced to four and a half years jail in the Brisbane District Court this afternoon for the siege on March 8 last year.

He yesterday told the court he never intended to harm anyone but "things just spiralled out of control", the Courier Mail reports.

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