chowderhead

That is crap. Both victims were unarmed and shot at. The police officers need better training. I hope the victim's families sue the city and win a big settlement. That is the only way police department will change their culture of shoot first and ask questions later.

TomOpus

Yes.

CaptainMarvel

Oh come on. Let's have some perspective.

Most officers never fire their weapon at a suspect in their entire career. Most departments don't even have a single officer involved shooting per year (fatal or otherwise). Some states don't even have a single officer involved shooting in a year. I'm not sure you can blame police shootings on culture.

Yes, some particular departments have more shootings. Those unsurprisingly often correlate to areas that have a lot of violent crimes. But even there, shootings aren't epidemic. LAPD for example, which is often maligned as a "brutal" department, has like 10,000+ officers, and they handle around 2 million emergency calls for service a year. They had 63 incidents where they fired weapons in 2011.

Edit: I just looked up the numbers for the LA Sheriff's Office (the agency involved here). They have roughly the same amount of officers. They had 43 shooting incidents in 2010 (down 14 from 57 in 2004).

chowderhead

What about on 2/7/13 when Los Angeles police officers fired approximately 100 shots at a Toyota Tacoma hitting two women delivering newspapers when they were looking for a Nissan Titan driven by Christopher Dorner. Or, when they deliberately crashed into and shot at a Honda Ridgeline the same day.

Just don't be a hostage in LA or drive a truck if the police are looking for a cop killer.

CaptainMarvel

Maybe using an exceptional incident like the Dorner manhunt and treating it like it's indicative of any sort of trend is a bad idea? You can look up the numbers yourself if you wish. Regardless of whether it's your impression that there's a "culture of shoot first and ask later," that is just empirically not the case.

[FWIW, 1) both the incidents you mentioned happened at roughly the same time in roughly the same location, 2) the LAPD officers involved were found to be in violation of department policy and are facing sanctions now, and 3) the second shooting was by an entirely different department.]

aktick

Sanctions for shooting 100 times at a vehicle with a couple small Asian women in it, when they were looking for a large black man? Bullshit. You'll be hearing from our union reps.

fujishig

About the Dorner officers:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...#axzz2ycOUXHQx


I realize this is tangentially related to a TV show but shouldn't this be moved to other or merged with this thread?

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/other-talk/...thread-43.html

Giantrobo

It really sounds like you're saying, "Yeah we kill innocent folks from time to time but it doesn't happen that often so chill out...".

This "Them and US " mentality is what gets folks beat up and/or killed by cops. But hey, It's cool. We'll just shut our mouths while you guys have your way with us and gun us down while you shit your pants in fear....

DaveyJoe

You only live once and when the people sworn to protect you kill innocents I think it's impossible to blow it out of proportion.

CaptainMarvel

Well I suppose if you can't read, then I can understand why what I wrote might sound that way to you.

I wasn't addressing the merits of any individual event. I didn't defend what happened here. The assertion was that there's a culture of "shoot first ask questions later."

My response was the example that out of several million emergency calls for service in a given year, there were well under 100 incidents where shots were fired. That's all incidents where shots were fired, including all the legitimate ones. Obviously illegitimate incidents would make up a subset of that already low number.

And that's at one of the departments with the worst reputation for being violent. That's awfully weak proof that there's some sort of pattern or culture of reckless shootings.

But whatever. I suppose you can read something I didn't remotely say into what I wrote and straw man away at it. Back to the regularly scheduled circle jerk.

superdeluxe

It's getting pretty big coverage here because he is from the town that we live in, Puyallup

Troy Stiffler

Knowing Tosh, I fully expect him to parody the incident.

Deftones

Tosh did tweet out his condolences today so there's that.

Giantrobo

I can read. That's why I said "it SOUNDS LIKE...".

I didn't say you said that.

Rex Power Colt-Robot Man

Do you give people who preface something stupid they are about to say with "I dont want to sound racist but..." a free pass?

Abob Teff

So ... There is a job opening at Comedy Central?

Norm de Plume

I see this as a sign that the stupid, unfunny show should've been cancelled years ago.

actionjackson29

It gets better ratings than the Daily Show.

buckeyes8604

Those settlements are paid with taxpayer dollars, so they don't feel any hurt.

What needs to happen is murder charges brought against officers. This is happening far too much around the country.

CaptainMarvel

Well that would certainly be a tremendous waste of money in this case, because even in California you're virtually guaranteed to get at least one juror who isn't moronic enough to see this as murder, given the facts.

van der graaf

And are there any idiots in your state stupid enough not to call it criminally negligent manslaughter, given the facts?

Norm de Plume

Really? Now that's sad.

CaptainMarvel

I think California calls criminally negligent homicide "involuntary manslaughter", and I could totally see it being a tenable charge, depending on the testimony given. But I can also see it being difficult to overcome "defense of others" as a criminal defense. That defense typically applies even if the use of force is mistaken, as long as the mistake is reasonable.

The story we have is:
Police get reports of a man with a knife holding people hostage. Police get a description of the culprit, including clothing. Police knock at door, and an obvious victim with spurting knife wounds flees from apartment, with another person matching the description of the culprit in close pursuit arm's length behind him.

If those facts panned out upon investigation, even a semi-decent defense attorney wouldn't exactly have a tough time articulating that it was reasonable to believe at that instant that the victim was being chased by his attacker, especially given the split second decision making such an incident would require. These incidents aren't reviewed with the comfort of hindsight added in.

My take from reading the articles on this is that there should certainly be civil liability for the stabbing victim being shot by accident and highly likely liability for the death of the producer. A criminally negligent homicide charge is a possibility for the shooting of the producer, but even that seems up in the air given the circumstances. Murder, though, would only be on the table for people with absolutely no clue about what they're saying.

Giantrobo

Here we go...sigh.

Depends on what comes after it.

GuessWho

My friend's Facebook update today: