Gunman kills himself after police refuse to return fire

Yesterday’s news coverage was dominated by the story of police surrounding two gunmen who had met each other on the net robbed a pachinko parlor. One man quickly surrendered to police, while the other spend 8 hours unsuccessfully attempting to convince police officers to shoot him:

Ken Kaneko, 55, died at a hospital after threatening police with a handgun and tossing smoke canisters and 10,000-yen bills at them. The incident forced the emergency evacuation of 130 households, police said.

[...]

The incident started when police investigating a robbery at a pachinko parlor in the nearby city of Konosu early Tuesday tried to question passengers in a silver sedan around 1:30 a.m. at a stoplight on National Highway 16 in Kawagoe.

A man in the car shot at a police officer but missed. The car sped away and was found parked 11/2 hours later in the Imaizumi residential district about 750 meters southeast of JR Minami-Furuya Station, police said.

Hasebe surrendered to police and was arrested on suspicion of obstructing police duties. He told police that Kaneko prodded him to get out of the vehicle.

But Kaneko refused to leave the vehicle. He taunted police, daring them to shoot him, and occasionally pointed his gun out the window.

He also shouted that he wanted to die or that his life had ended.

Shortly after 11:40 a.m., he shot himself in the head as police swept in to arrest him.

Hundreds of people were forced to flee their homes for hours, and local businesses and schools could not operate because police refused to fire upon a man who was clearly threatening the lives of other people with a firearm. Watching the news coverage of the stand-off filled me with a frustration similar to what I felt when I saw videos from police actions in 1992, 2007 and a recent training exercise.

When a criminal is pointing a loaded handgun at police officers and threatening them, those officers should be allowed to fire upon the criminal, and in cases where a criminal has already fired shots at police, officers should be encouraged to defend themselves. If they had shown this kind of sense yesterday, the incident would have probably ended hours earlier, and the gunman might have even survived to face trial for his crimes.