This particular tragedy my below statements may not apply, my sympathy to grieving friends and family for a life cut short. I know there is a place for a firearms unit in some situations, but the police in the US train with escalation to use of deadly force as the first or second option far to often both on the road and when interacting with people.
Firefighters and paramedics are taught to be aggressive in attacking most non-human problems but to back off to a safe area and wait for help when there is a danger they are not equipped or trained to handle directly.
The police continue to seek ways to aggressively handle human situations as though they were playing GTA with cheats turned on.
If the police did not have everyday permission or tools to escalate to deadly force as was the case in the UK perhaps they would be more inclined as in the UK to find a solution that didn’t involve frontal assault and aggressive attitude.
Shoot first. Get around to asking questions later. Eventually. Maybe.
Oh man this is so ridiculous. LAPD and police in general have been out of control for awhile now. When I read this all I can think is “It’s coming right for us shoot it!”. I just don’t understand if you arrive on a scene not knowing anything and you first instinct is to just start shooting at whatever and whoever is moving?
To Protect and Serve. Or something. That’s some great police work, Lou.
It’s particularly disturbing that the police response on this is that they continue to use language that makes the victim look like the perpetrator - why is it so hard for the police to say “we thought he was lunging but we were wrong” or simply “he wasn’t lunging, but we shot anyway. It was a mistake and we’re deeply sorry”
Long since outmoded. Now it’s “To Apprehend and Punish.”
And of course, “apprehend” is just another way to say: begin application of violent force until the target is subdued, incapacitated, or killed.
Anyone who wants to be a cop is likely among those least suited to actually doing the job.
First rule in a litigious society. NEVER Admit fault. NEVER use language of apology which could be used to indicate culpability. EVER. Even if you and everyone else knows you did what you are accused of doing, NEVER EVER say or do anything that could give any jury the idea that you actually did.
I think that is why painting a victim as an aggressor is the default response. It is a personal and institutional defensive posture.
Please let Winkler’s family sue the department out of existence. Don’t just seek monetary damages, seek closing the department and firing of all patrol staff, too. No more wrist slaps, no more paid vacations for fuck ups, just fire their criminal asses.
Just a friendly heads up - it’s Tosh.0, not Tosh 2.0
The police and their families are safe. That’s all that’s important.
This case from last year was startling when the LAPD randomly shot up a pickup truck delivering newspapers…
Two women were shot and injured a year ago this week in the town of Torrance, CA when their vehicle was erroneously assumed to be driven by Dorner, a 33-year-old ex-cop suspected of killing a police officer in cold blood only hours earlier in the nearby town of Riverside.
The women were delivering newspapers just before dawn on the morning of February 7 when their blue Toyota Tacoma was mistaken mid-route by police for the grey Nissan Titan that Dorner was spotted driving hours earlier. At a news conference on Tuesday this week, Chief Charlie Beck of the Los Angeles Police Department recalled that an officer confused the sound of a paper being thrown against the pavement with that of a gunshot, and opened fire on who he presumed to be the disgruntled former cop. Seven other officers then began shooting.
By the time the smoke had cleared, the officers involved had fired more than 100 rounds at the women’s pickup truck. Emma Hernandez, 71, suffered two gunshot wounds to the back, and her daughter, 47-year-old Margie Carranza, was injured by auto glass shattered during the early morning encounter.
The UK comparison is more due to simply the lack of weapons available to the police rather than policy and attitude. There’s certainly plenty of examples of the officers that are armed in the UK with adopting the shoot first and ask questions later stance that the US seems to. And the ones with “non lethal” weapons demonstrate that they still use first before truly assessing the situation (e.g. the blind guy in Lancashire tasered because his white stick was mistaken for samurai sword?!?!?).
It’s “Kill 'em all and let God sort them out” in action. Kind of terrifying to think of all the things that can get you killed by the police (i.e., being non-white, having a wallet, etc.), you can now add, “Fleeing the knife-wielding maniac who’s threatening you” to the list.
I remember that one.
I’m still at a loss as to how they managed to fire over 100 rounds and only get two on target.
In this particular case, their poor marksmanship prevented a tragedy from being even worse, but it still leaves me wondering what happened to the other 98+ bullets.
Of course, there was also the case of the police in NYC (as memory serves) who decided to shoot at a mentally disturbed man in broad daylight. They didn’t manage to kill him, but they did shoot at least one bystander.
Naturally, the bystander’s injuries were painted as the fault of the fellow at whom the cops were shooting.
Remember, only cops are professional enough to carry firearms ;o)
“Only imperial storm troopers are so precise”
It’s time to update the adage: When all you have is a gun everything looks like a target.
Perhaps the reason why only 2 shots hit the target was that most of the police officers didn’t actually want to kill anybody.
It’s not the same kind of situation, but in the civil war it was found that most of the soldiers aimed over the head of the enemy because they didn’t really want to kill them. Can’t remember the source I got this from though.
I keep hoping it’s only a few bad cops that make all the other ones look bad, but I’m no American, so I really have no idea what your average cop is like over there.
Just for the record, West Hollywood is its own city, and they use LA County Sheriffs for their police force, not LAPD. So, this was a county sheriff involved in the shooting, not an LAPD officer. As someone who lived in a city who used the LA county sheriffs instead of a city-based police force, for the most part, those folks seemed okay. However, the West Hollywood sheriffs are a different division, and I haven’t heard anything particularly nice about them.
