In NYC, You See, Only The Highly Trained Can Carry A Gun

Cop shot in thigh at gun range

"A gunsmith (armorer I suppose) at the NYPD's target range accidentally shot and wounded a fellow officer yesterday, cops and sources said.

Officer Vincent Krill was trying to unjam Detective Charles Enright's 9-mm. service weapon when the gun accidentally fired, sources said.

Enright, a 23-year veteran assigned to Gov. Paterson's New York City security detail, was shot once in the right thigh. The slug hit the detective's hipbone and shattered, with bullet fragments exiting through his groin, sources said.

Enright was in stable condition Tuesday in Jacobi Medical Center's intensive care unit, sources said.

Krill, also a department veteran, was "devastated" by the accident, which is now under investigation by the NYPD, a source said.

Officers are required to practice at the NYPD's City Island range twice a year."

NYPD Lt. Michael Pigott, who gave fatal Taser order, couldn't bear to let 3 kids see him in cuffs

"A veteran NYPD lieutenant, humiliated by the prospect of prison, killed himself just eight days after ordering a fatal Taser blast on a naked deranged man.

In a gut-wrenching suicide note, Emergency Service Unit Lt. Michael Pigott wrote that he put a bullet into his head Thursday to spare his three children from seeing him in handcuffs or behind bars, police sources said.

The standup lieutenant also took full blame for the botched death of Iman Morales, absolving the officer who fired the Taser of any responsibility.

"His note was heartbreaking," one police source said. "He said he didn't want his kids to see him cuffed up and jailed. He also said not to blame the other officer. ... He said it was his fault."

One could generate a doctoral thesis on either of these stories, or better yet, a dark comedy. We've all said time and again that guns do not "go off", but law enforcement in particular seeks excuses for clumsy behavior and a willing media tags along. And if the Lt. in the Taser instance was in fact a standup guy, he'd have taken his punishment like a man, and done his level best to understand what went wrong and how such tragedies could be averted now and forever. Instead, he takes the cowardly way out, thinking to exonerate the officer who did the actual tasering. Last I looked, no one held a gun to this officer's head and forced him to do so reprehensible a thing, but we're back to excuses being the order of the day again.

Couldn't bear to let his kids see him in cuffs but it's okay for them to see him in a casket. Yeah. Real hero. What sort of mindset spawns such actions anyway.