Thursday, December 26, 2013

Unbreakable.

Awesome story in the ABQ Journal about Deputy Robin Hopkins, who got shot taking the fight to a bona fide dirtbag back in October.

I'd be happy being a tenth that tough.
.

17 comments:

Jim said...

Damn ALBQ site is requiring a login or subscription.

My local Galvetraz snoozepaper does the same thing. Which might explain why they ended up selling out to a new publisher last month. Hope they'll dispense with that business model, it's losing 'em subscribers at an even faster rate than they were managing with a free website and a nearly worthless daily paper.



Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX

Tam said...

Jim,

It just asks me to answer a survey question by pushing a button. Didn't have to type anything. Weird.

Robert said...

I looked to see if there were any dash cam videos but none to be found. I guess they have not been released yet.

Tam said...

Why?

Goober said...

Owie. Big time owie.

Glad they got him. Hope she can recover; she's certainly earned it.

Old NFO said...

She's a role model... And yeah, stronger than all of us!

Tam said...

Anytime someone tells you "Why didn't they just shoot the bad guy in the leg?", they need to read this article.

Steve Skubinna said...

Tam, then the next question will be "why not just shoot the gun out of his hand?"

Robert said...

Tam, if your "why?" was in response to my looking for the dash cam videos, I wanted to see that "sawed off SKS" the news story was talking about. How much could you saw off the end of one anyways, 3 or 4 inches?

Tam said...

Robert,

"... I wanted to see that "sawed off SKS" the news story was talking about."

There was no mention in the linked article of such.

In the opening paragraphs it mentioned a "sawed-off Romanian AK-47". Later in the article it said that the dirtbag had a "Cugir Mini Draco, a Romanian-made pistol-grip semi-automatic rifle, with the barrel sawed off."

Being an AK pistol, I doubt the barrel was actually "sawed off", although it would look that way to the uninformed, as a quick google image search would confirm.

What this has to do with anything is completely beyond me, though. A brave person puts her body between a shithead with a gun and everybody else and people want to know what brand it was? That's messed up.

Codisimo said...

I don't remember if BCSO has dash cams or not but a number of the local agencies here don't have them. NMSP does, and Albuquerque Police went to a system were individual officer's wear lapel cameras, but I don't remember seeing a dash cam in an APD or BCSO squad car in quite some time. A little Google Foo confirmed what my wondering eyes while driving had observed, the largest police force in the state of NM has a sum total of 4 dash cameras and the second largest (BCSO) has none. Too many years of relying on the footage from episodes of COPS as admissible evidence in court spoiled the police brass into thinking they didn't need them anymore is my guess.

Paul said...

And here I was thinking about retiring there. Kudos to Robin. But if there are people roaming about shooting shit up that is high on my situation avoidance meter.

Sport Pilot said...

Excellent story and fine example of the will to survive.

Robert said...

"What this has to do with anything is completely beyond me, though. A brave person puts her body between a shithead with a gun and everybody else and people want to know what brand it was?"

I wasn't so much thinking about the brand. I was just trying to see if this was yet another case of the media letting their ingrained bias take over and make up BS about a firearm. And I can assure you that I do appreciate the officers sacrifice.

staghounds said...

Awesome in the best sense. Where is all the national news about HER motives?

Scott_S said...

I'd like to see a reconstruction of the incident. There should be more training for LE on shooting from a vehicle. I forget the troopers name but there is video on youtube of an old man ambushing a texas trooper with a lever gun before the trooper can get out of his cruiser.

It's gut turning video because the shooter "consoles" the trooper by saying something like "you're just dying".

Training and planning for situations like these is critical and seems to be a commonly missed area.

Ed said...


I hate responding to surveys, but something told me to respond to this survey in order to read the story. I did and I did.

Wow! Damn....

Some people think they are tough.
Some people know they are tough.
Some people are so tough that, without acknowledging it themselves, they are considered by us to be tougher than most of the rest us. She is one of those people.

When my sons were smaller, I pointed out to them who I thought was one of the toughest people they would ever meet. At their elementary school was an elderly crossing guard who had lost partial use of his left side due to a stroke. He had to drag his braced left leg to walk, tuck his "STOP" sign under his dangling left arm when he needed to use his right hand and the left side of his face drooped affecting his speech, but he was there every day, doing the job well and with good cheer. I pointed out to my sons that doing well under good conditions was easy, but that excelling under adverse conditions sometimes required toughness.

That officer and that crossing guard have that quality.