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At the MTV/BET town hall meeting a person mentioned that

Police killed the majority of the people at pulse that night

to which the moderators replied "hmmm".

On the No Agenda Show, they've analyzed this quite a bit and come to the same conclusion based on the timing and the crazy barrage of bullets that were fired around 5:00 AM. They also mentioned off-handedly that people in local hospitals had been pulling police bullets out of people and not talking about it.

Has there been any independent investigation in to the numbers of people killed by police in the Pulse nightclub on the morning of June 13th 2016?

jwodder
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Peter Turner
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    what about the survivors who described the goings on? surely they'd have noticed and spoken out if the police barged in and started gunning down people in there? – user1666620 Jul 14 '16 at 20:14
  • @user yeah, I haven't heard much about that. All I've heard is "the guy said he was with isis" and "his gun jammed" and he messaged his therapist and wife on facebook. The survivors that I'd heard first-hand accounts from seemed to have been trapped in a bathroom. I'm guessing there's an opportunity for all the people in one room to have died and all the people in another to have been rescused. – Peter Turner Jul 14 '16 at 20:18
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    Survivors won't necessarily have a complete picture of what happened - it was loud, crowded, and chaotic, and it's not like people jumping under tables and fleeing for their lives are going to stop and notice if the angle of a bullet hole indicates it came from outside instead of from the front of the room. – Dan Staley Jul 14 '16 at 20:25
  • @Dan, I'd think they'd have a pretty good indication if nearly no-one was dead before 5:00. Regardless of survivors testimony, it should be easy for a medical examiner to tell whether a person was killed by a police bullet fired through a wall or whatever the perpetrator had. – Peter Turner Jul 14 '16 at 20:28
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    Did they say anything about how people in the local hospital identified the bullets as "police bullets"? I'm sure forensic ballistics experts probably could, but this seems like a good place to start testing the theory: there would need to be some obvious distinguishing feature that a nurse or surgeon could recognise with the naked eye. – user56reinstatemonica8 Jul 15 '16 at 12:57
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    No and I read that the guns that the police use and the gun that Mateen used could be loaded with the same caliber ammo. I would be skeptical of the ability for medical professionals to identify two different types of bullets (or bullets entering bodies from two different trajectories - as in two swat team members shooting a person) - but I don't think it's out of the question. – Peter Turner Jul 15 '16 at 13:24
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    All: this line of comments isn't helping to improve the question or provide useful context. Don't make assumptions about what people "surely" would have noticed or done. –  Jul 15 '16 at 15:13
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    The question of whether the police killed more people than the shooter is unresolved, but [the police have apparently admitted that they may have accounted for some of the shootings](http://thefreethoughtproject.com/police-admit-officers-orlando-shooting/). It's that classic problem of "good guy with a gun" whether you're talking about a citizen with their legal handgun or a police officer on the scene. Both have a high probability of shooting the wrong person. – Sean Duggan Jul 20 '16 at 12:43

1 Answers1

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Maybe not

It seems unlikely that the majority of fatalities were caused by police bullets.

However, as others have mentioned above, it's difficult without expert knowledge to determine who fired which rounds.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina is quoted as saying,

“But I will say when our SWAT officers, about eight or nine officers, opened fire, the backdrop was a concrete wall..."

Source

Without an official police report, it is hard to tell if these remarks are merely intended to downplay the possibility of friendly-fire casualties, or if it is known that such casualties were small in number.

Robbie Capps
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    I don't think we can say "probably not" based on the evidence you present. I think you need better evidence to start with. – Sklivvz Jul 23 '16 at 10:39
  • Yeah, frankly it'd be hard to determine either way. As I said, you need expert opinion, which will likely not be available. – Robbie Capps Jul 24 '16 at 16:13