Ok, no, it is not attempted murder, and no, it has nothing to do with them realizing they could "get away with murder."
Now, it was a case of "Shoot first and ask questions later". However, it isn't a case of it becoming "SOP" either' one event in highly unusual circumstances does not an SOP make.
The circumstances were that they were protecting a residence of a person who had specifically been threatened, and had known intelligence about the threat; specifically what vehicle he was driving, the fact that he was well trained, and had evidently already killed 3 people. In addition to that, we have the fact that the newspaper vehicle was, inexplicably, driving around with its lights off.
Quote:
Driving a blue pickup truck with its lights off, the newspaper carriers slowly approached the officer’s house before dawn.
Now, that does not somehow make it ok to shoot up the pickup truck. Let me explain why, sicne we have the usual "ZOMG THEY THINK THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH MURDER!!" rather than actual thought going on.
Let's pretend for a minute that the pickup actually
did contain Dorner. Would it have been ok to shoot it up at the first sign of him? No. It would not. The fact that it was some dumbasses delivering newspapers with their lights off does not somehow make it any worse. If it had been Dorner, he would have been shot at a point where he was not presenting any active threat. There is no telling what he might have done. He might have fled, he might even have not noticed the officers and been surprised and arrested successfully. We can't know, but even if it had been him, simply shooting him on sight would isn't acceptable.
The problem arose because the officers were terrified of this guy, and that is because he represented a threat outside the scope of police training. Police are not soldiers; they do not normally defend static positions where a known threat is going to try to kill them. For police officers, danger is always out there but it's more of a case of it appearing by surprise from one out of a thousand similar incidents. The one drunk driver that has a gun and doesn't want to go to jail, or the day some unobservant robber walks into the gas station while they're getting a Coke from the fridge and tries to stick up the teller.
Because of that, police are used to being in what we call a "yellow alert" state when working; you're paying attention to your surroundings, but still relaxed because there is no threat.
Police are not used to a threat that they know in advance is coming. They are not trained for that. That's the job of the military; incidentally it's also why soldiers do poorly at law enforcement; they are trained to deal with a known threat where the unknown is really what the threat is going to
do. This is the line insurgents try to skirt, but I digress.
The effect of this duty posting and this information on these officers was to jack them into a "red" (there's a threat) state and leave them there for hours, but without a threat to deal with. It is therefore hardly surprising that they reacted the way they did when some idiot drove down the street with no lights. That doesn't make it ok; they still should know better than to shoot without a threat actually presented. That's basic firearms training.
The point, however, is that this is not a case of cops just shooting people for the hell of it because they thought they could, no matter how many stupid one liners Coro wants to post. As to the article, the police administration is clearly trying to cover its own ***. What do we call a department that hires murderous lunatics, and people that can't follow a basic precept of "don't shoot until you see an actual threat"? We call them incompetent. Yes, these officers should be punished, but it is not a matter of observing what happens to them and deciding ahead of time it's going to be a relative slap on the wrist. What we need to see is who above them gets fired.. because someone should, and it's not the Lieutenant or Sergeant that was in charge of them that night.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
