Lessons from the Botucatu, Brazil pizza shop shootout

We’re going to warn you in advance that this video is not safe for work (NSFW).

This video of a pizza store robbery in Botucatu, Brazil has gone viral in recent days because both robbers were shot and killed on camera by a responding police officer.

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The crime rate in some parts of Brazil is absurdly high and that must hold true in Botucatu, as the pizza shop employees emoted no reaction at all to the gunmen coming into the store. Even the robbers seem to treat the robbery as routine, up until they attempt to leave and the gunfire begins with a rain of glass at the 53-second mark.

The robber in black holding the revolver doesn’t seem to register that he’s being shot at until both panes of glass at the front of the store have been shot out, and he’s hit and driven off camera in a hail of gunfire, fatally struck.

His accomplice, the money man in the white tee shirt, is also caught be surprise, and take just a few shuffling steps before he is jammed up by his partner’s body, and drops violently to the floor with what looks like a central nervous system hit that paralyzes his legs. He attempts to push himself up, but his lower body won’t respond, and the police fire continues to bore in. The final and most visible hit is a through-and-through hit through his lower abdomen, after which he stops moving and the cop enters the store with his gun drawn.

There are several real-life lessons to be drawn from this film.

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  1. Gun fights tend to be over very quickly. From start to finish, first shot to last shot, is just ten seconds.
  2. Gun fights tend to be lopsided. Typically, the person who makes the first good hits wins the fight.
  3. Trained shooters will defeat amateurs with better tactics and training the overwhelming majority of the time… and they will cheat to win.

The police officer in this situation took advantage of being in the dark, wearing a dark uniform, to close the distance to the shop and ambush the robbers as they approached the door. Fair fights are for movies.

The officer took the most obvious threat (the robber in black with a gun in his hand) first, and then took down his partner once the first robber was hit and going down. He continued firing until both threat stopped, and then only then entered the store to secure the scene.

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