Los Angeles police bomb truck explodes following fireworks raid

I like how the truck was propelled forward from the blast…
good thing it happened there and not while they were driving it to a safe detonation spot…

2 Likes

Obligs:

9 Likes

And they wonder why people call for defunding the police. This is what happens when police have the funding to buy military-grade equipment without proper knowledge of how to use it properly.

Absolutely this. They were probably itching to try out their new toy and the minute they heard the magic words “illegal fireworks cache” they sprang into action. No matter that those bomb boxes are designed for small explosives, not 2 1/2 tons of it. And now the guy they arrested will probably get extra charges for assaulting police officers, destruction of police property, etc. Meanwhile the city will buy them a brand new bomb truck with an even bigger, shinier, more expensive bomb box that still isn’t designed for that much explosive power.

Lots of businesses in the area too who can’t open now for who knows how long because their windows all got shattered. If they’re lucky they’ll have insurance for the damage, but no way they’re going to get fully recouped for all the lost business.

14 Likes

Ohhhhhh, you wanted the anti-bomb truck?!? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

7 Likes

Maybe the LAPD should have consulted with these guys before trying this.

12 Likes

My favorite twitter comment on this was something to the effect of the official tween on it make it sound like a coincidence rather that incompetence

2 Likes

The impacted public (and lawyers if need be) should get TV news reporters involved, televise the damage and at-the-scene interviews, make it a point of mentioning mayor Garcetti and governor Newsom more than a few times.

3 Likes

nnAvUHM

10 Likes

“total catastrophic failure of that containment vehicle”

Big Ba-da-boom!

image

6 Likes

There was only 10 pounds in the containment vessel.

2 Likes

As others have noted, this really seems like someone didn’t read the manual.

If it didn’t mean that the next one would come directly from the taxpayers, I’d love to see their insurance company deny the claim due to improper/unintended use (I’m pretty sure there was a safe maximum that was exceeded greatly).

On a more serious note, 10 officers and 7 “civilians” (Guess what! You’re not the military. Technically the count is 17 civilians…) were injured. People who had no decision influence in this one got hurt, and that sucks.

4 Likes

In Reservoir Dogs, they refer to cops as cops, and everyone else as “real people”.

1 Like

TFA said 5000 pounds, but even 10 pounds of modern explosives is going to do ugly things to anything you can drive on streets. HEAT warheads are smaller.

3 Likes

Mistakes were made.

2 Likes

Per other news articles, the vessel should have been able to contain 15 pounds of explosive. Of course, no specific explosive type was specified in the articles, so it may have been like a metric vs. imperial measurement mars lander mismatch.

10 gang members and 7 members of the public? /s

2 Likes

I’ve also felt that way about the police use of the term “civilian,” but some fire departments use the term, too, so I guess it’s meaning is broader than simply soldiers vs non-soldiers.

Argh, I can’t believe the lack of information in the post, and therefore the misreadings of what happened here.

No one put 5,000 lbs. of fireworks in the containment vessel. Ten pounds of unstable explosives, referred to here as IEDs, were placed in the containment vessel, which is rated to contain detonation of 15 pounds of IEDs. Therefore the vessel should have contained the explosion without difficulty. The question is, what went wrong? Will LAPD tell us? Stay tuned.

Sure hope they kept the receipt for that truck and the shipping carton. Amazon will refund them. :slight_smile:

Hate to break it to you, but I unfortunately know a couple of guys from my childhood neighborhood that became cops (and yes, the last people you’d want to have become cops…).

I believe it’s common amongst that career field to say “there are cops, and there are perps”.

something something “presumption of guilt”…

1 Like