LAPD Officer Killed During Training Exercise Was Investigating Cops About Rape
reason.com
reason.com
The current sheriff was a member of the “Grim Reapers” [3] and the battle against the thugs has been on going for fifty years [4]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Baca
[3] https://www.dailynews.com/2022/07/01/former-top-aide-to-vill...
[4] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/06/the-la-county-...
it was the LAPD that opened fire on two old ladies in a truck that was the wrong type and color in the middle of the day when they were trying to murder their colleague that put out a manifesto about how corrupt they were. Sure he was killing cops that he thought were corrupt but that's against the fold and a sign that they hold themselves to be unaccountable. dorner was the guy who they eventually burned to death in a cabin in the mountains.
the old saying about the rotten apple is not that there is a rotten apple that is alone in the doings it's that the rotten apple spoils the barrel. you see one bad cop and if you don't have a system that stops that you will have a barrel full of rotten cops.
Dorner didn't just publish a manifesto and kill corrupt cops. He also murdered Monica Quan who's only 'fault' was being the daughter of a retired LAPD cop, and he murdered Keith Lawrence who's only crime was being Monica's fiance, with her when she was murdered.
Your whitewashing Dorner for rhetorical effect to make the LAPD look worse. Don't do that. The truth is bad enough, it doesn't need to be 'enhanced'.
It's utterly bizarre to see every time someone mentions Dorner's killings or manifesto, people come out of the woodwork to make sure we don't defend the honor or whitewash Dorner or whatever perceived sin you see of accidently somehow not saying enough bad things about Dorner.
There's a paragraph that starts: "“Why would a group of deputies who are charged with protecting people from violence and upholding the law choose a symbol of death?” he asked. Del Mese replied that he didn’t know."
Reminds me of: "Have you looked at our caps lately? .... They've got _skulls_ on them. Are we the baddies?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
Everyone gets that he represents the brutality of the justice system. It's just that most people in the justice system don't see his behavior as a fault or criticism; just reality.
Like a lot of people, you have an idea of the character which is not the definitive version of the character.
If you read the Punisher and you come away from it thinking that vigilantism, murder and so forth is good then there is probably something very wrong with you.
To your credit, as a non-Punisher patron of geek arts, you're probably right. The spirit of the original comics is likely expressing a deeper message than most people could understand from a cursory glance and watching one of the dumbed-down movies.
To your discredit, the population at large generates a mythos that transcends the character and strips away all sense of subtlety. To anyone who doesn't know the comics intimately, The Punisher is a guy who's like Batman with more brutality.
And, at the risk of redundancy, I'm convinced this is true of pretty much any character, fictional or non-: caricaturization of their greatest qualities, then memorialized as a god of [subject matter expertise]. The _only_ time I've ever seen a deviation from this is when a character is hard to place because they're all over the map (e.g., Ben Franklin, Christopher Lee).
I daresay "desirable".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_blue_line#Symbols_and_var...
I mean, The Author Is Dead; this is a fair interpretation. But I'm skeptical that the kinds of police who put a Punisher skull on their uniforms feel this is some kind of Full-Metal-Jacket-duality-of-man commentary as opposed to just fantasizing about murdering [who they imagine to be] criminals.
Zack de la Rocha and the others don't typically receive the same criticisms unless their actions are lumped in with Morello's under the banner of "RatM did X".
Great show, funny how that works out. I'm sorry that it isn't remotely accurate it seems (when it comes to the rest of the cast).
I'd be interested to know if there are any documentaries focused purely on the LAPD, however.
Sure sounds less like a simulation and more like an actual event.
It's really not easy to have someone die during an exercise with this many injuries caused by physical contact. Things like drownings, falls, and collisions can occur in a hugh risk training event- but this extent of injuries from falling on the ground seems real tough to spin as accidental or unintentional. At best you'd have to be extremely negligent, at worst this was a deliberate choice.
You'd really think someone would notice the person they're training with is actually hurt and stop to check in on them, presumably there are measures in place to pause the exercise which people are aware of before starting- were these ignored? I guess we'd have to have a discussion on the intent of the exercise and the extent to which force is used with no regard for safety during training, which is a whole other issue.
I don't remember anything about liver lacerations but a quick google does say it happens: looks like the sternum can slice your liver during compressions[1] (warning: graphic).
No idea on head injuries or a broken neck from "grappling" though.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245224731...
It's not so much broken ribs (though those are possible), but separation from the sternum. Not pleasant, but not particularly problematic (people walk out of the hospital at times within 3-4 days of cardiac arrest as subsequent ROSC (return of spontaneous circulation) after CPR/defib.
And if you survive to ROSC, you're getting a stay in ICU as it is, where things like internal lacerations, aspiration can be treated.
> Gage claims that Tipping wound up with three broken ribs, a lacerated liver, head injuries, and a broken neck. "His heart eventually stopped working because of his injuries" and "he was paralyzed….He had subdural hematomas at three places on the left side and three places on the right side. There is no way that grappling would have caused those injuries the way the LAPD portrayed it."
This is not a failed breakfall. Any questions?
When you're training injury does happen but not in more than one area of your body unless you were literally being beaten to a pulp.
So yes, I'm 100% sure it was a malicious intent if they're claiming that he died during "bicycle training" which oddly included grappling.
Despite protections and whatnot shit happens. Usually in one place, or in an unfortunate combination of two.
Being driven over, pushed through a window, crashed by a piano and drowning is not usual in one session. Looks like this is more or less what this guy had happening to him.
That seems like standard procedure by now. When something happens, conveniently the video footage that should exist, magically doesn't.
These body cams are useless if the video can go conveniently missing whenever it needs to.
> There was little doubt that fence cutting would be criminalized, but what was to be done about ranchers who were fencing over public roads and lands? Here the Texas Legislature stood with the rich, making fence cutting a felony punishable by two to five years in prison, while for the cattle barons who encroached on public land, the punishment was a misdemeanor and a small fine of $10 to $100.
ie levying a slight tax to enable it rampantly through surface-level law and order
Just upload the video automatically to some central server. Then the corruption on police station level can't get to it.
You could do the upload via mobile network if a "bang" is heard too.
Better to reform the official checks & balances on police power so they are more effective.
Trying to sue the government from inside the prison system is just naive. And even when it works, it doesn't work. We sued because we were housed in inhuman conditions. Because only inmates in one wing of the prison sued, the ruling only applied to inmates housed in that wing, even though the rest of the prison was exactly the same as what the Court had just ruled inhumane and unconstitutional.
Qualified immunity is a made up right by the courts (it doesn't exist in law) and places SOME animals above other animals when it comes to accountability. I thought we were all equal? All Americans should be responsible for their actions, government employees > accountability simply because they have a special 'job' should not be a thing.
This is because the standing they had was tenuous to begin with, his claim was that the issue was he'd be taxed on the 20K in cancelled debt and couldn't opt out. So it was clarified that he could, and suddenly he is no longer harmed. You don't have standing to sue if you aren't harmed.
Student loan companies have a somewhat less tenuous argument, but the real issue is that Biden's actions were probably legal, and checks and balances don't exist to prevent the government from doing legal things.
Cops are above the law. They are the violence arm of the local government.
It's perfectly fair for the law to allow certain groups to do something that's illegal for other groups to do. For example, illegal for people not sanctioned by the government to drive on public roads.
Most (almost all?) police officers in the US have a union negotiated contract where the employing agency indemnifies them. Not only do you not need QI to avoid the liability you're concerned about, but the infrastructure is already in place.
Hello, I live in Europe. We don't have qualified immunity here, but we have police officers. How do you explain this?
Germany is by the way far more litigious than the US, so no, don't go pulling this, "But we have more lawsuits" thing.
----
Is there a way to stop you guys doing this? "It's impossible to do X" when in fact you are the only country that doesn't do X? It's simply embarrassing after decades and generations of this.
Is there a particular reason for that? (fast courts for instance, or the ability to gain tengoble money from the litigation? (something we do not have in France))
For example say a rich person murders their partner. The cops show up and the killer says "if you arrest me I will drag all of you into court personally for years to come and bankrupt your families." Without QI the officers need to make a decision if justice is worth the risk of personal loss.
Or if a rich person wants to build a new deck which is denied a permit, QI is what prevents them from personally dragging everyone involved to court personally.
QI does not eliminate personal liability when a crime has been committed. If an officer shoots someone and is charged criminally, they can then be sued personally.
I take it you believe the US became a functioning democracy in 1967, then?
That's when Pierson v. Ray was decided and QI was invented.
Because there was a specific reason QI came to be, and it was not a matter of a long-established doctrine being formalized.
I'll wait.
Should give you a good context and background going back to the 1800s.
No it doesn't. The case will get thrown out on some other grounds when the officials sends in their report on why the permit was denied. Likewise, not responding to the lawsuit could result in a default judgement regardless of QI.
We can keep frivolous lawsuits by people pissed off with bureaucracy from happening while also allowing government officials to be sued for the actual economic damages they inflict on people.
> Even departments with few problems are experiencing rate increases of 30 to 100 percent. Now, insurers also are telling departments that they must change the way they police.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...
(/s)
I think their is another kind, used more in cities, with bodycam uploading the video directly, with 3 modes (low-res, lowframe, low-res, normal framerate + audio, and high res high framerate).
You're assuming that malice is the reason why there isn't video footage if there was supposed to be. I think that's a fair assumption, and I think that this is most likely the case.
But it's not necessarily the case. It is possible that negligence or incompetence is the reason the cameras weren't recording. The whole thing sounds like a murder to me, and I assume the video footage was deliberately disabled/destroyed/lost/etc. But at this stage I don't think anybody can be certain of that. There is only circumstantial evidence for somebody preventing/destroying the video footage.
There doesn't have to be malice.
There has to be accountability.
> "When something happens, conveniently the video footage that should exist, magically doesn't."
Magic doesn't exist. When something is said to "magically" not exist, that is a sarcastic way of saying that somebody deliberately made it not exist. I believe that is the most likely explanation, but it's not necessarily true.
I see sarcasm is one of your strong suits.
Indeed, and I stated such :)
> so what is the point of your response?
What is the point of yours? The "magical" nonexistence of footage whenever 1. there would ordinarily be footage and 2. that footage happens to record something for which someone doesn't want evidence demonstrates a pattern; that pattern is in and of itself a problem, regardless of whether it's explained by incompetence or malice. Assuming that someone else assumed malice and quibbling on that particular point is a pointless distraction from the actual problem in this case.
Based on other comments here, there seems to be a plausible reason that this type of exercise might not normally be recorded.
But if there's supposed to be a recording, and there isn't, then in the very least that's a plausible angle for investigation.
Meanwhile if it really is the case that the exercise wouldn't normally be recorded, then there's also an open question as to why this guy was assigned to an unrecorded training with somebody he was investigating for rape.
Police investigations and juries aren't logical proofs, that's why there are juries, character witnesses, etc.
Still, I don't know the facts, and if this "bicycle training exercise" was in a small yard of the police academy, and if "often" means "nearly always", then yeah, this would be pretty damning circumstantial evidence of malice.
IMO LAPD is actually pretty good about using body cams when they're supposed to. Way better than LASD and other law enforcement agencies in the area. In California they're required to release footage (if it exists) after every OIS (officer involved shooting) or LERI (law enforcement something injury, like if a cop hurts someone without shooting them via tazing/dog/baton/bean bag/punches).
If you look at their Youtube channel [1] pretty much every OIS and LERI video does have body cam and/or dashcam footage. The events that don't are mostly compliant with their policy (although it sounds like their policy should be amended to include training activities. Both for safety and to make the training more realistic). When I looked at a sampling of 30 LAPD incidents, 28 of them had body cam footage recording during the incident. The two that didn't involved off-duty officers[2]
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/c/LAPDONLINE1/videos
[2]: Here's the videos if you want to see for yourself, but FYI the first one shows some unpleasant aftermath: Attempted car theft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgESIr-MIUg Cop shoots at someone after a drive-by on his neighbor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXWJIX2rL4Y
However that doesn't imply anything about situations where they aren't required to use body cams.
If my body cam is off, this is one of the possible explanations.
If there are fewer other explanations for my body cam being off, then it is more likely that it was because i was committing murder than in the other case
Am I reading this wrong or is this a very biased sample? Of course videos are more likely to have video.
Doesn't say a lick about what they omitted from YouTube.
I don't know if LAPD releases much of that BWC footage in unedited form, but where I live (Chicago), a civilian oversight board reviews use-of-force incidents and makes BWC footage and other materials public [0], and in my experience as a homicide researcher for UChicago, officers were initially skeptical of BWCs, but now they consider them a valuable piece of personal protective equipment, as they are often exonerated by their BWC footage.
I do not know of a "critical incident" that doesn't have a corresponding video (except for deaths in prisons and negligent discharges that don't result in injury). If there's no actual media to go with it, they'll still show a talking head reading a statement listing off the address and police version of the narrative (you can see examples if you look at LASD, since they've halfassed their body cam deployment). I'm curious to hear if you know of any exceptions (excluding events within the last 45 days or so, before the deadline).
LAPD releases a list of all of the critical incidents and the videos, so should be easy to cross reference and see if anything is missing.
They're meant for cops to turn them on when they feel like they need evidence against whoever they're detaining, arresting or otherwise dealing with.
In this case, video surveillance was working as intended.
In some police departments, there is a requirement that body camera (OBRD, BWC, different departments like to use different terms) footage be uploaded after every call for service or reported incident, officers are audited against this requirement, and missing footage is an infraction subject to suspension without pay. In some departments, there is no policy at all, and no interest in creating one.
The biggest vendor, Axon, has a fairly well-designed system for video management where the auditing system makes it fairly easy to determine whether or not footage exists and why (e.g. cameras log all deletion of footage e.g. due to full storage and report it at the next upload, the management system reports on cameras that have not uploaded for more than two shifts, video once uploaded cannot be deleted until the end of routine retention even if not associated with any incident). This is not to portray Axon as a saint, because there are questions about the auditability of their evidence.com product specifically when it comes to preparation of video footage for court or public release, and this can be a material problem. But it also makes it even more troubling that some departments, district attorneys, etc. make no effort to use the auditability features that exist, or routinely accept sketchy excuses that are not consistent with the audit record.
These aren’t technical limitations, and there are a lot of police agencies - a few who are on top of things and see it as a way of keeping their officers honest and getting to the truth, and a lot of them looking to CYA.
In other words: defenses on the grounds of his death being an "accident" are not sufficient. What matters is the totality of circumstances, and those include the implicit threat of violence against any cop who dares to out the crimes of their peers.
It could possibly be first degree murder, if California's felony murder rule were applied, maybe using the crime of torture as the felony.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
> (a) All murder that is perpetrated by means of a destructive device or explosive, a weapon of mass destruction, knowing use of ammunition designed primarily to penetrate metal or armor, poison, lying in wait, torture, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing, or that is committed in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate, arson, rape, carjacking, robbery, burglary, mayhem, kidnapping, train wrecking, or any act punishable under Section 206, 286, 287, 288, or 289, or former Section 288a, or murder that is perpetrated by means of discharging a firearm from a motor vehicle, intentionally at another person outside of the vehicle with the intent to inflict death, is murder of the first degree.
Torture seems the most likely to apply in this situation:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
> Every person who, with the intent to cause cruel or extreme pain and suffering for the purpose of revenge, extortion, persuasion, or for any sadistic purpose, inflicts great bodily injury as defined in Section 12022.7 upon the person of another, is guilty of torture.
I think a revenge beating meets that definition of torture, and torture is one of the felonies specifically listed in California's felony murder rule.
Seems like an oversight, witness intimidation is exactly the kind of aggravating felony that the statute had in mind. But that's neither here nor there.
And remember: this is entirely speculation. It's entirely possible that they did intend to kill him; the entire point of my comment was that you can't wave the crime away by claiming that the death was an accident.
- Officer Tipping wasn’t investigating rape, but simply took the victim statement.
- The officer in the training exercise that killed Officer Tipping has the same name as the officer in Tipping’s report, but they are not sure if it is the same person.
- The medical examiner ruled the killing an accident. The article then quotes a tweet that says medical examiners undercount murders by police, implying collusion or coverup.
- There is no recording of the training. The article states that often video recordings are made, implying a cover up.
Abuse of power by the police is heinous. They are supposed to be our protectors, so I hate it as much as the next person.
But we must be led by fact not belief or we are no better than those who believe the Big Lie.
Agreed, just as the usage referring to denial of the 2020 US presidential election was not inspired by its usage by the Nazis.
My point is only that "Big Lie/Liar" or some variant thereof has been a phrase used rhetorically for millennia.
I find it difficult to believe that American journalists, an otherwise well-read and historically informed community of people, would conjure the concept without intending it as a reference. And certainly in that fashion more than as a prosaic form of “this lie was extra big.”
Edit: For example, here is an NPR article that explicitly makes the connection between the two Big Lies[1].
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1065277246/trump-big-lie-jan-...
I agree that if the actual location of the truth is disregarded they are similar.
However, in these cases, the truth is on the opposite side of the accusation from each other.
Hitler untruthfully accused Jews of promoting a lie, and hence blaming them for Germany's defeat in WW1 and problems afterwards.
Whereas the former president has truthfully been accused of promoting a lie that he won the previous election.
When the truth is on the opposite side of the accusation in either case, they are really quite different usages of the phrase.
> I find it difficult to believe that American journalists, an otherwise well-read and historically informed community of people, would conjure the concept without intending it as a reference
I don't think there is any intentional journalistic allusion happening by using the term. "Big" and "Lie" are such utterly common words by themselves and together in English that people readily understand them in the immediately relevant context. Calling it a "Great Misrepresentation" or something else would be beating around the bush instead of just calling it what it is.
In both cases, the direction of the lie is the same. Your confusion seems to stem from the fact that the original Big Lie is a lie about a lie. But this doesn't change the actual structural, namely: a Big Lie is a gross distortion of truth, so gross that its believers take its size to be evidence of veracity itself.
Both Hitler's and Trump's Big Lie conform to this exact structure: the lies of International Jewry and a Stolen Election are so great, so inconceivable, that they stagger the listener into consideration.
> I don't think there is any intentional journalistic allusion happening
I gave you a link to an article where the allusion is direct and explicit. Or do you think they came up with the phrase themselves, Googled it, and retconned it into place?
Just going on the wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie) page, feel free to rebut it if you think it's incorrect:
"Hitler claimed that the [Big Lie] technique had been used by Jews to blame Germany's loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist political leader in the Weimar Republic."
So the term "Big Lie" in that case wasn't Hitlers lie as you claim, but the technique he (untruthfully) claimed that the Jews used in his efforts to scapegoat them.
If the wiki page is correct, the usages we are discussing have the opposite truth structure. If the wiki page is incorrect, then I'd recommend you suggest an edit to correct it.
> Herf maintains that Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi Party actually used the big lie technique that they described – and that they used it to turn long-standing antisemitism in Europe into mass murder.
In other words, there are two Big Lies that originate with Hitler: the claimed Big Lie, and the actual Big Lie.
A propaganda technique which fooled the world into a forever war that never should have happened in the first place which Wikipedia won't mention or tell you about.
"Accusations of faulty evidence and alleged shifting rationales became the focal point for critics of the war, who charge that the Bush administration purposely fabricated evidence to justify an invasion that it had long planned to launch."
Why do you believe this implies a cover-up? Could just be systemic bias, a big problem in the justice system.
> "Officer Tipping did not sustain any laceration to the head" and "was also not struck or beaten during this training session," Police Chief Michel Moore told the LAPD Board of Police Commissioners in June. "He did grapple with another officer, and both fell to the ground, resulting in a catastrophic injury to his spinal cord."
> Gage claims that Tipping wound up with three broken ribs, a lacerated liver, head injuries, and a broken neck. "His heart eventually stopped working because of his injuries" and "he was paralyzed….He had subdural hematomas at three places on the left side and three places on the right side. There is no way that grappling would have caused those injuries the way the LAPD portrayed it."
Which is to say: I don't know. A thorough investigation by a competent expert with no conflicts of interest seems necessary.
This is missing something.
CPR often results in broken/cracked ribs and abdominal injuries.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266652042...
Was that your point?
Half of the injuries are likely tied to the CPR.
The other half may or may not be related to the training event fall, or intentional violence.
That's going to need some more review. As a paramedic, I've performed CPR more than 400+ times. In less than 5 of them were any ribs broken. Usually on frail elderly people.
Separation from the sternum is far more common, but will (apropos of other issues) cause bruising and a painful cough for a couple of weeks.
Laceration of the liver? Only once. Also on someone more elderly.
Certainly not impossible. But even with five or more firefighters pounding on someone's chest for 10-20 minutes or more, these injuries are rare - let alone all of them in one patient. These cops must have been trying to drive his ribs through the floor with their compressions.
Unlike comparison.
You're a paramedic, and at 400 times, I'd say you are an expert.
Highly doubt cops get that much experience.
And it doesn't sound like these were the only two cops there. I can see a wall of silence or a couple cops taking out another. But for random cops at a training exercise to sit there while one gets beaten to death seems to be quite a stretch.
Broken rib to liver laceration makes sense.
Even a broken neck is plausible, but everything together... I don't know
Combine that with the attorney's claim that one of the accused officers was at the training, and you have ample motive, cause, and setting. A court case would reveal more details, and that's precisely what the Tipping's family appears to be seeking.
It appears you did not finish reading TFA. There was an investigation that confirmed the same officer was at the training:
"Gage could not confirm that the officer accused of rape was the officer directly engaged in the training exercise with Tipping. But he said 'our investigation indicates that yes, it was.' "
And frankly, if you don't think it's suspicious that an officer who investigated four LAPD officers raping a woman later getting killed in a freak bicycle training accident isn't suspicious, you may need to reset your baseline for what is "speculation and innuendo." What happened here was extremely suspicious. Even before considering that one of those officers charged was at the training.
(One may even wonder why a police officer accused of rape was not only still on duty, but even training other officers.)
What? Mind reading. GP was mostly stating facts, not commenting about their own state of mind
My personal thoughts are very closely aligned with yours, btw
Because accusations are cheap enough to be weaponizable as a denial-of-service attack.
The penalty for false accusations is something pathetic, like 1 year.
Simple as that. Even capital offences.
This doesn't mean that if a jury can't convict, the prosecution gets the punishment. Still need to be legally proven to have made false accusations.
Initiate the violence.
Don't pay your property taxes, and ignore summons, etc? Eventually someone will show up at your door to toss you out of your house. If you just sit on your couch and say "nuh huh" eventually they will violently throw you out. If you use self defense to stop the violence, they'll simply kill you or incapacitate you.
Grow a funny plant in the wrong state? Eventually, if they find out, men with guns will bust into your house. They won't be 'self-defending' you into your custody, they will be initiating the violence against you to take you.
While self defense is 'violence' I think a lot of us just almost "don't count it." Self defense is more like stopping the violence, IMO.
You may not be a fan of killing over stolen property, but depending on the situation and state it is completely allowed. I think some states even allow you to kill a person who stole something from you while they are running away.
This means the initiation of physical violence can be initiated by you as well and be considered just.
Laws regarding weed are more nuanced, but it doesn't change that individuals can under certain circumstances initiate physical violence towards somebody legitimately.
I'm not aware of any state that allows you to use violence to collect on a contract, however. IF you see taxes as satisfaction of the social contract or whatever. It's hard for me to argue failure to pay taxes as theft; I'd call it more of failure to pay for an involuntary contract. IMO it would be much more appropriately be classified as a civil offense than a criminal one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBUUx0jUKxc
And get away with it as a "justified" killing. Any regular person in the same situation would have been convicted of murder.
If you are civilian and are detaining a person for a just cause like they were trying to kill you or something (Daniel had been pointing a gun out of a window so it is reasonable to think he may try to kill somebody) and the person reached to his back like that you might not be convicted if you shoot them.
It seems to me like you are making the assumption that a civilian would be convicted. Do you have any examples for the same situation?
Oh, and cops are civilians, too. They just like to pretend otherwise, with that whole "sheepdog" insanity. And, unfortunately, in US, we've normalized this. But anyway, a non-cop would be convicted of assault already at the point they aimed a rifle at another person and told them to crawl. That aside, if by some miracle a similar situation did emerge, I can't see how the shooter wouldn't be convicted, since the usual standard for self-defense by lethal means is "imminent threat of death or significant bodily harm", which is eminently not the case in the video. The fact that the cop customized his AR-15 with an engraved dust cover that said "you're fucked" is a cherry on top that does give you a hint regarding the general state of mind of that cop.
FWIW I carry myself and know many other people who do, and they were all universally appalled at this case, even more than your average person.
The victim clearly wasn't in a good position to shoot the cop even if he grabbed a gun. The cop would likely have had time to shoot, if necessary, if Daniel had pulled a gun. (Assuming the camera is the same perspective as his head).
There obviously wasn't an actual threat in this case but there was a perceived threat. The cop was there because Daniel was being reckless with a gun. I think that is the key reason why I am not sure there should be a conviction. Being reckless with a gun then reaching for your waist band / back when being told not to is clearly not a good thing to do.
I do think the cop is at fault for not giving clear directions, for contradicting his directions, etc. I'm not trying to victim blame or anything like that. I am saying I am not sure what the average person would do. You know he has a gun and he reached for the waist band. I think the average person would quite possibly shoot. I don't think the average person should be a cop just like I don't think this guy should be a cop.
Just to be clear you have the right to protect yourself or others from unjust violence not all violence. If you are about to murder somebody, another person does not have the right to stop a good Samaritan trying to stop the murder.
>> Because accusations are cheap enough to be weaponizable as a denial-of-service attack.
> Police officers are not held accountable commensurate to the incredible amount of power and influence they enjoy. They should be held to much much higher standards
Surely the context of this exchange is whether a police officer who has been accused of a crime still should be on active duty? Also I didn’t say ”punish”, I said ”get rid of”, which is effectively what happens if a cop is taken off duty pending investigation and potential court case.
It's definitely suspicious. But it needs to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
Second, it is against the HN guidelines to accuse others of not reading the article.
Because, third, I did read that your quoted paragraph. I took it to mean, they believe but are not sure. As in “[he] could not confirm…”
Sadly, I struggle with your other points as they as suffer the same issues as the article. E.g., again, this was not a bicycle training, have the officers been formally charged? was the accused officer the trainer or a participant?
I haven’t quite figured out why there are so many staunchly pro-police people on a site where a lot of posters seem to lean kind of libertarian, but it’s an interesting and kind of amusing phenomenon.
An old joke: a libertarian is just a conservative who likes to smoke weed.
There are some posters that will use their perceived skill at language to do somersaults of logic in order to eventually land at “the police are the arbiters of truth” or something similar. The primary tactic is to use high school debate club language to put words in other people’s mouths in an attempt to discredit any view that doesn’t align with their premise of “the police are arbiters of truth.”
Do you think that that phenomenon does not exist?
I can agree that some people try to reason using language skills rather than reasoning from first principles
It is indeed weird how people use that trick to attempt to stamp out any detractors to the idea that the police are perfect stewards of truth.
I also didn't think it was a well-written article, though. The fellow's injuries do not seem accidental if the article reported them accurately, but the connection to the rape case was pretty tenuous. It could be that, or something else that got him killed, or the article just got some facts wrong. The article didn't really give me confidence.
On other platforms people will outright say “I back our boys in blue! I have a Punisher themed gun tattooed on my pubic mound!” On HN, instead of directly supporting the police and their narratives, there are posters that will pop up with no opinion other than “You are wrong” about anything that’s counter to police narratives. Instead of arguing for a narrative, they argue against any contrary narratives, usually on silly parliamentary grounds. This way they can support the police without appearing to support the police. It’s a fun little parlor trick!
It's not just for police, HN is overwhelmingly a very pro-empirical community, much like the population it represents. One of the biggest weaknesses empiricists have as a mass movement is that they are extremely easily manipulated, so long as you are able to control the flow of information (which the police usually do).
A positivist must, by his or her principles, serve to bolster support for any likely genocidal dictator, murderer, what have you, until the bodies are actually found.
> But he said 'our investigation "indicates" that yes, it was.' "
“The officer in the training exercise that killed Officer Tipping has the same name as the officer in Tipping’s report, but they are not sure if it is the same person.”
Talk about grasping for incongruities… The article even mentioned it was, so why the misrepresentation from your end? Why present a view of moral skepticism for the accused on the one hand, while falsifying evidence for the accusers on the other?
“Gage could not confirm that the officer accused of rape was the officer directly engaged in the training exercise with Tipping. But he said 'our investigation indicates that yes, it was.' "
“Seems to correlate” “Could not confirm” “Indicates”
The two may indeed be the same person, but a fair reading is that they are presently unsure.
Many articles and discussions on police criminal activity carry a tone of surprise, but in my view nothing here is surprising considering that large numbers of questionable individuals who passed some subjective selection process are armed with guns and placed into what are essentially life-long appointments where lots of money and power is at stake. In my mind it would be surprising had there been no criminal activity within the police under the current system. It would be just as surprising if dictators stayed benevolent and never abused their authority.
I'd say the solution to this problem is to have the public democratically elect police just like politicians, and to also have them be subjected to term limits just like politicians.
So far this system has successfully prevented most people who should not be politicians from becoming politicians or maintaining political power, and I argue that in the same way it would prevent lots of people who should not be in the police from becoming or remaining police officers.
Doesn't seem to stop people from electing horrible sheriffs time and again.
>So far this system has successfully prevented most people who should not be politicians from becoming politicians
Is your comment satire?
> Doesn't seem to stop people from electing horrible sheriffs time and again.
There are some problems with the current election system in the US in that many potential voters don't register to vote to not get summoned for jury duty and similar issues, while lots of police vote in blocks guided by powerful police unions. These problems can be fixed, and overall the US election system is better than in countries like Russia.
> Is your comment satire?
Even US politicians who are massively disliked are way better than their counterparts in countries without fair elections. Furthermore, these massively-disliked politicians get voted out at the end of term if a better politician runs against them. And even if they don't get voted out, they have to leave eventually due to hard term limits.
I'm not saying that democratic elections with term limits for police will keep absolutely all bad people out of police, but what I am saying is that there will be an order of magnitude less bad people in the police, and they will also be an order of magnitude less bad than under the current traditional employment scheme.
Calling him a success story is completely insane.
I agree with your general statement, but I think Ahmadinejad is a bad example. Ahmadinejad was voted into office, and a few years later was voted out of office. Ayatollah Khamenei is probably a better example.
Are there not corrupt politicians?
There are, but there are a lot less of them in countries with fair democratic elections, and those who are corrupt are on average a lot milder than in countries without fair democratic elections. On average we're talking theft vs murder / genocide.
There are. And democracy makes politicians seem more legitimate. Democracy in the wrong place can make corruption worse.
Hiring cops should not be a popularity contest (i.e. democratic) in my opinion.
And since the current status quo involves rape and murder, I argue that even if it sucks it would still be a huge improvement.
Why would we want cops to have less experience on average?
The same reason we elect mayors but not every single single person who works in city call. Or cabinet members under an elected president.
Effective governance and public and administration still require experience. Elections are great for changing leadership who set policy, agenda, and direction and term limits help there. But they can't replace people with experience. We typically do have some elected positions with oversight over police.
This is NOT to say that there isn't a massive need for more accountability with police forces. But term limits ain't it.
Furthermore, I think good cops may be corrupted with time, but bad cops are never redeemed with time. So all else being equal, I expect experienced cops to be more corrupt than novice cops, and more effective at being corrupt.
A bicycle exercise for regular police spontaneously morphed into a mob control exercise spontaneously morphed into a grappling match definitely sounds fishy on its own.
I hate that I’m in the position of defending a possible cover up of a possible murder to cover up the possible rape by police officers. But damn people. Stick to verifiable facts.
> According to Gage [the family lawyer]...The training at which he sustained injuries "was supposed to be bicycle training," but somehow wound up entailing the "grappling exercise" that the LAPD says killed him.
I think that they article shows that there's confusion as to how bicycle training lead to a grapple exercise. Even the Police Chief is reporting grappling:
> "He did grapple with another officer, and both fell to the ground, resulting in a catastrophic injury to his spinal cord."
When you see a legal document the onion made explicitly to make a point about legal documents, you know more or less what to expect, and how you are intended to interpret it.
Is that true of a hacker news comment? Every hacker news comment?
This community often directs its ire at abuses by the secret federal police, but as with many other political problems, the biggest problems in your life are often[1] not in Washington - but rather, next door.
[1] But not always.
Compare this to many other comments in this thread who delve into the story. What do we know happened? What makes this suspicious? What are the compounding concerns? What is only speculation thus far?
It is unclear if you responding because you've familiarised yourself with the story? Or is it a simple dismissal because "Fuck LAPD"? A shallow quip directs the conversation to cheer around generic platitudes like this and everyone gets to go home with their own biases reaffirmed without any new knowledge gained.
It's the worst of Twitter
Edit: probably an unnecessary rant, but it's been on my mind a while.
If he sustained those injuries during an attempt to save his life, those officers definitely need to be taken off the street anyway. More dangerous "helping" people than just sitting in their cars.
Rib fractures occur during CPR if CPR is being done correctly. The rest sounds like it was caused by the "grappling", which I suspect is a euphemism for the other cops beating the life out of him.
"In the general population, a well-described complication of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), liver laceration and injury, is reported at a rate of between 0.5-2.9% after CPR." [2]
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27896328/
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29097198/
The ribs/liver is not the suspicious part to me. It's the multiple subdural hematomas on both sides of his head in addition to the spinal cord injury. Something about that doesn't sound right.
Maybe, maybe not. Considering where human livers are located (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver#/media/File:Liver_01_ani...), any lower rib or sternum fracture probably has a risk of injuring the liver. Professional CPR training might make this less likely, but I'm far from convinced.
Anyway, in the scenario I imagine, the 'first responders' who first did CPR are the cops who just beat this guy up and realized he stopped breathing. Technically trained as first responders, but certainly not level headed paramedics. So maybe CPR only lacerates livers when done incompetently, but maybe the first responders were less than competent.
Firefighters were way better, go on way more medical calls and even still you have to watch them carefully.
This is a common myth. They can occur when CPR is being done, correctly or incorrectly, but do not occur in all cases and are not a good indicator of proper CPR technique. Sternal fractures or sternocostal separation may occur instead, and a small but significant part of the time, no injuries at all occur.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft
"Adrian Schoolcraft (born 1976) is a former New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer who secretly recorded police conversations from 2008 to 2009. He brought these tapes to NYPD investigators in October 2009 as evidence of corruption and wrongdoing within the department. The tapes were used as evidence of arrest quotas leading to police abuses such as wrongful arrests, and that emphasis on fighting crime sometimes resulted in under-reporting of crimes to artificially deflate CompStat numbers.
After voicing his concerns, Schoolcraft was repeatedly harassed by members of the NYPD and reassigned to a desk job. After he left work early one day, an ESU unit illegally entered his apartment, physically abducted him and forcibly admitted him to a psychiatric facility, where he was held against his will for six days.
Schoolcraft alleges in the lawsuit that NYPD spokesperson Paul Browne was present at the 31 October 2009 raid. Browne is a "top aide" to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. According to the Village Voice: "If proven true, Browne's presence at Schoolcraft's home on Oct. 31, 2009 suggests that Commissioner Kelly was aware of the decision by Deputy Chief Michael Marino to order Schoolcraft handcuffed and dragged from his own apartment just three weeks after he reported police misconduct to the unit which audits NYPD crime statistics."
I had a friend who became a cop and he changed in a bad way, the power went to his head. After two incidents, one involving him pulling out his off duty gun in a crowded bar I cut him off. I did not report him out of fear of retaliation.
"Retaliation"? I talked to another friend, a former cop painted a hellish picture of the police: "Its a power struggle internally with everyone forming cliques and hierarchies trying to brown nose superiors to garner favors, overtime and promotions. Anyone who breaks rank will be targeted for harassment. If you report him there's a chance you'll be "randomly" pulled over one day and suddenly there's drugs and/or a gun in your car. They will ruin your life. Just keep your mouth shut."
I am genuinely scared of cops.
"At about 5:30 am (PST), at least seven[98] LAPD officers on a protection detail of an unnamed LAPD official's residence in the 19500 block of Redbeam Street[99] in the Los Angeles County city of Torrance opened fire on the back of a light blue Toyota Tacoma and shot its two occupants, Emma Hernandez, 71, and her daughter, Margie Carranza, 47,[98][100] delivering newspapers for the Los Angeles Times.[10][101] The vehicle, according to officers, was spotted exiting a freeway and heading to the area of the residence that officers were protecting, was thought by police to match the description of Dorner's 2005 gray Nissan Titan and was moving without its headlights on.[97][102] Hernandez was shot in the back and Carranza received wounds to her hand. Their attorney claimed police "had no idea who was in that vehicle" when they opened fire, and that nothing about his clients or their vehicle matched the descriptions given of the suspect or his truck.[103] The two women stated that they were given no warning prior to being fired upon.[104]" -- wiki
LAPD will happily attempt to kill anyone vaguely matching the description of someone they have beef with.
I don't know anything about this incident, and will not comment on such.
I just wanted to point out the number of shots fired here from 7+ individuals is not unusual in the slightest, and is not an argument point that should be used to convince anyone of anything.
Too often uninformed folks throw around the number of shots fired as-if it means incompetence/maleficence/or worse. It rarely if ever does.
EDIT:
Allow me to add an edit here since no one seems capable of understanding the nuance in my original post above.
DO NOT Use round count as an indicator of anything, or as a cornerstone for an argument. You will be trying to imply something that is just flatly wrong, and it will reduce your argument to being an uninformed person.
DO Focus on the facts of the events and ensure outrage is placed where it should be. Round count is not it.
With that said - allow me to further clarify my original disclaimer. Should the events of that day taken place? From my uninformed opinion (having only read the above quote) - no, they should not have.
In summary, don't quote round counts like it means something. It doesn't, and it only serves to make you look uninformed.
what's the normal number of shots one should expect to be fired at a completely uninvolved party for no reason by 7+ police officers? I've got a number in my head.
No, 107 shots is not unusual. The events under-which these shots were fired was unusual, but 107 shots being fired from 7+ individuals is not unusual.
Averaging about 15 rounds per individual (if only 7 were present, the quote says at least 7), this "firefight" (I realize there was no return fire, just using generally accepted terms) was over in seconds.
Anyone with any iota of firearms training can attest to this.
If I had to guess, one individual initiated fire (jumpy, poor training, thought they saw something, who knows), and then the rest fell back into their training and opened fire as well. That is exactly how it is supposed to work, and not just for LE.
In all firearms training - be it military, law enforcement, and even civilian - you are trained to fire until you are certain there is no more threat. This isn't the movies, you don't "just shoot them in the leg" or whatever uninformed slogan is popular these days.
As I previously made a disclosure that I was not commenting on the events themselves, only the specific comment that sought to use the round count as some sort of outrage data point.
> the rest fell back into their training and opened fire
> That is exactly how it is supposed to work
> you are trained to fire until you are certain there is no more threat
This is very unusual! I don't give a single shit that they were trained to do it! If the training is to just start shooting and let God sort it out- THAT'S BAD!
I find it very unusual that you can just randomly be annihilated by a death squad while driving to work!
Good because that's been my disclaimer all along.
What is not unusual, is given that there was a shooting, 107 rounds from 7+ individual is completely normal.
Do not use round count as a data point to attack events like this. It only diminishes your actual argument, which I assume is this event never should have happened in the first place.
If this is how they're trained then it's bad training! Please kindly fuck all the way off!
Nothing I've said says anything about shooting bystanders.
What I have said, over and over again, is using round count as some sort of point is very misguided. Given the events of that day already occurred, it is very unsurprising 107 rounds were fired. That does not make it right that any rounds were fired at all. I'm sorry if you cannot understand this nuance.
You have said that over and over again. You aren't supporting that point in any way though, you're just saying it over and over.
You seem to think that "police training" or "firearms training 101" or whatever is a fundamental, unchangable law of the universe. "Of course they shot at a random bystander 107 times, gravity is 9.8m/s^2, what do you expect?"
In reality this "training" was developed by psychopaths who want to ensure that cops are held to a different set of standards than the rest of us unwashed masses. It's not a natural rule of the universe! It can be questioned and changed!
Imagine if after the single "jumpy" cop took one shot the other cops said "hey knock that off, there's no threat here." That seems to be wholly against this precious training you're willing to go to the mat for, but I'm expected to believe it would be a worse outcome than shooting innocent bystanders 107 times? Get the boot out of your mouth.
A gun is a tool, used to remove a threat. The best way to accomplish that is to use it until there is no more threat.
There is no other possible training for this - so yes it's a lot like your gravity analogy, although much colder and unforgiving.
This is not the movies. I can't say that enough. The movies have really warped people's perception of reality when it comes to firearms.
Before you respond - consider this: Why are we focused on the round count and the possible implied lack of training that led to 107 rounds being fired instead of focusing on the clear lack of training that led to the situation in the first place? The round count couldn't literally matter any less...
Maybe the other cops should have shot the first cop 92 times, that would be OK I guess.
EDIT:
> The round count couldn't literally matter any less...
Are you actually just stupid? Would you like to get shot at 1 time or 107 times?
We know that now, don't we. Which means your focus should be on how this threat was perceived so incorrectly - not how the threat was ended.
A threat is a term used to describe anything that you perceive (correctly or incorrectly) as an immediate danger to yourself or those around you.
> Are you actually just stupid? Would you like to get shot at 1 time or 107 times?
Clearly you are not interested in learning here... but I'll try again.
The fact that these officers (likely a single officer actually) incorrectly identified this vehicle as a threat is where your energies should be placed. The round count is irrelevant, unless you assume the events of that day could not be avoided?
Given the events happened, 107 rounds is not surprising. Do not use round count like it's some sort of indicator of anything other than the wielder's own uninformed opinions. Just don't do it... focus on what matters instead.
So what exactly are they trained to do? When you hear gunshots, start shooting at something?
In any competent firearms training you are trained to actually assess the threat first, and are absolutely not trained to magdump at the first vaguely-scary-looking thing and then have no ammunition left for subsequent threats.
Yes, this is true. I think it can be very easily assumed once a single officer opens fire at a moving vehicle the rest will assume a threat was assessed. The focus of this thread should clearly be on why the first officer perceived a threat this wrongly - not how many rounds were fired.
> and are absolutely not trained to magdump at the first vaguely-scary-looking thing
That's not what happened here.
> and then have no ammunition left for subsequent threats.
For anyone that has little or no firearms training - people almost never carry only a single magazine, particularly in a tactical environment (meaning you carry a gun for a living). These officers probably had 2 or 3 spare magazines on their person.
The flipside of that is that individual officers have greater opportunity to be more strategic and deliberate with their shots.
> The focus of this thread should clearly be on why the first officer perceived a threat this wrongly - not how many rounds were fired.
The number of rounds fired is itself a problem, on top of them being fired without anything vaguely resembling good cause. It suggests blind fear on the shooters' part rather than actually assessing and verifying a threat.
> That's not what happened here.
That's exactly what happened here. Cops got scared of a cop-killing rogue cop, said cops saw something that vaguely resembled said cop-killer's vehicle, said cops immediately panicked and emptied their magazines at it.
> These officers probably had 2 or 3 spare magazines on their person.
Which one would then have to reload. Reload time might not seem like that big of a deal, but it still adds precious seconds that would mean the difference between life and death - you know, assuming this was an actual threat.
> It suggests blind fear on the shooters' part
> rather than actually assessing and verifying a threat.
I sound like a broken record by now - but this isn't a movie.
Like, this is basic shit that even your average moron shooting Jim Beam bottles off fenceposts could tell you. That you seem to think that basic firearm competency is the stuff of Hollywood is yet another thing that is in and of itself deeply concerning.
If a shot was fired, and the mag wasn't dumped, something is very suspicious.
I spoke recently with a swiss police officer that complained they aren't even allowed to taze someone with a knife explicitly threatening life and instead must attempt to talk them down before even being allowed to put hands on the obvious perpetrator. One is training as an officer of the peace, the other is training for a soldier in a warlords personal hit squad. Even actual American soldiers are court-martialed if they even raise their weapon at an incoming hostile without several verbal warnings going unheeded and even then must fire a warning shot before they can engage.
Calling BS on this story, sorry. No one in this world is training to fire a "warning shot". That is from the movies - full stop.
A "warning shot" - where do you fire it? Into the road so it can ricochet and kill an innocent onlooker? Into the air so it can do the same? Into a building with an unknown backstop? This is beyond absurd.
> Even actual American soldiers are court-martialed if they even raise their weapon at an incoming hostile without several verbal warnings going unheeded
You have some fundamental facts wrong here.
It is true, however, that the military has strict rules for when lethal force are permitted. I'm not sure how that counters anything said here, since LE also has very strict rules.
In hindsight, we can all examine the facts and agree the force used in that situation was unwarranted. But that's the benefit of hindsight.
Regardless, we should not focus on how many rounds were fired. We should instead focus on how the wrong decision was made in the first place.
That is the point of this entire thread. Do not use round count to indicate anything. It just doesn't indicate anything...
Shooting at a vehicle not actively causing harm due to a perceived threat because it looks like the vehicle of someone you reasonably expect to be a threat is... well, that's a stretch.
Anecdotally I can say from personal experience there is a lot more restraint being used when guarding people/places relating to national security in place where you can reasonably expect to encounter threats and terrorism than the amount of restraint police here use at civilians domestically.
Those strict rules boil down to 'whenever you feel threatened.'
If it ever goes to court, the prosecution simply has to prove that the officer in question was thinking the wrong thoughts when he pulled the trigger. Which is, of course, next-to-impossible.
Close, but not quite. It's not about what the person was thinking, it's about what a "reasonable person" would think given the same situation.
For what it's worth, this is how it works for civilians too.
The only burden is to convince a jury a reasonable person would also believe there was a threat given the same situation. Reasonable meaning having the same information as the people involved, ie. without the benefit of hindsight or later discovered facts.
Then why are the seven LAPD officers that shot at the pickup truck during their manhunt for Dorner not serving ten-to-twenty?
Because if me and six of my closest friends shot up a random, non-threatening truck with two women in it, there's not a jury in the world who wouldn't convict us, and there's not a prosecutor in the world who would decline to press charges.
They are only held to the same standards as the rest of us in theory. In practice, the bar is so low, it's practically nonexistant.
They did not just get together and shoot up a non-threatening truck with two women in it, as you say. That's what we would say in hindsight, given the facts as-discovered after the incident.
The question you should be asking, but didn't, is why the first officer that opened fire is not in trouble for an obvious (in hindsight) wrong call. I would hazard to guess qualified immunity played into that officer's case. Perhaps that is where you should focus.... not on the number of rounds used.
In no universe were they justified in their manhunt for a 250lb man to open fire at a pickup truck of the wrong model and color, driven by two women.
The first rule of using firearms, regardless of whether you shoot one round, or one hundred and five, is that you need to know what the hell you're shooting at before you do it. Are you saying that they opened fire without having any idea who they were shooting at? What kind of reasonable person would do so? One that is blind? One that has zero regard for human life?
That's not a lapse in judgement, that's not a 'whoopsie daisies', that's not grounds for a civil suit, that's a felony if done by anyone without a badge. A hanging offense if someone were killed over it.
We have the benefit of knowing all the facts now, after the event occurred. We are privy to information the officers did not have at that moment - specifically that it was an unarmed vehicle without the suspect inside.
Very often the outrage from these events centers around post-event facts that were not known at the time the event happened. This is why it often appears like LEO's get "off" without punishment when the reality is they acted reasonably given the information they had at the moment.
Perhaps it should be discussed if the call was actually reasonable or not. That's fine. What's not fine is pretending 107 rounds fired means anything at all... it doesn't.
So no, despite what TV wants you to think, there are not gangs with badges driving around shooting up random trucks for funsies. That's just not reality.
> The first rule of using firearms
To be pedantic, this is not the first rule of firearms.
If the police are looking for a dangerous suspect in my town, I, as a civilian, can feel free to start shooting up any vehicle that is of the same type as that of the suspect?
And I should be in the clear, as long as I can reasonably argue that I don't know who I was shooting at?
Is this the society you think we live in? One where the prosecutor will not charge me, because, aw shucks, he can't prove that I knew what I was doing when I started blasting?
I'm not sure if you are correct. See this Wikipedia article and search for "warning": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_firearm_use_by_country
It looks like several European countries have an established policy of firing warning shots. Denmark at least legally makes them required.
The bullet doesn't just stop... and firing at someone that also has a gun is a surefire way to get them to shoot back.
Regarding rules of engagement, verbal warnings are sometimes first issued before use of deadly force, for example, by the US in Iraq[3].
[1] https://www.unodc.org/documents/Maritime_crime/UNODC_GMCP_Ru...
[2] https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/mgmt/la...
The first is for Martime incidents, which means you can safely fire into the water (this cannot be done on land).
The second source makes it completely clear "warning shots" are prohibited except for when at sea (martime law again), and under very specific cases while in the air.
The third source explicitly states in all caps, "NO WARNING SHOTS" and says you're to "SHOOT: to remove the threat of death/serious bodily injury...".
Further, all 3 documents provided are for military scenarios, not law enforcement.
I do not understand where any one of these sources supports your argument.
> No one in this world is training to fire a "warning shot". That is from the movies - full stop.
That is clearly not true, as evidenced by the two sources I supplied.
As for the third source, that has nothing to do with warning shots, but the fact that the military does prioritize things like verbal warnings before engagement.
They clearly write on page 4 "when possible, use the following degrees of force against hostile actors: 1) Shout 2) Shove 3) Show" with "4) Shoot" followed by several caveats.
I'd still argue "no one" applies here because the listed acceptable cases is extremely small and specific to martime or aviation (both cases where other means of verbal communication can be difficult or impossible - as pointed out in both linked sources).
So it is still true, no one land-based is training to fire warning shots. It's just not a thing people do because it, in itself, is extremely dangerous and negligent.
That "warning shot" has to go somewhere... how can you be sure it won't injure or kill someone? How can you make sure the "bad guy" knows it's just a warning shot and not intended to be lethal? A warning shot does nothing but convince the "bad guy" they should return fire...
Lastly, how do we know these LEO's didn't shout warnings at the vehicle? Anecdotally, every police encounter I've seen where force was applied started off with a massive array of verbal warnings. It's part of their training...
https://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
A few seconds of googling clearly demonstrates MANY circumstances in which the NATO is encouraged or required to fire warning shots.
Seeing as you struggled to discover any information before declaring the other commenter incorrect, let me fetch some for you.
[Above source, page 159, Bosnia 2001] "Further, warning shots were permitted, even encouraged, and the use of deadly force against assailants fleeing an attack was not even covered. "
[Above source, page 161, footnote 24] See infra notes 108-16 and accompanying text for a discussion of how current ROE require U.S. troops to use both verbal warning and warning shots, while the DOJ policy on the use of deadly force does not require the agency's officers to employ either of these actions.
So, while the DOJ has policy which excludes warning shots for US military, they were also ordered that they must use both verbal and warning shots as a part of their rules of engagement.
>Calling BS on this story, sorry. No one in this world is training to fire a "warning shot". That is from the movies - full stop
I'm sure if I looked harder I can find many, many more examples. Please do at least the faintest whiff of research before declaring someone else incorrect - full stop.
That is not just police - that is firearms training 101. Even civilian training courses hammer this into you.
You do not stop firing until it is absolutely clear there is no more threat.
I realize a significant portion of HNers are not familiar with firearms and have had zero firearms training. You'll have to take my word, and that of any other brave voices that this is how it's suppose to work.
The amount of rounds fired is quite literally the least concerning thing about the event. My original point was do not use round count as some sort of hammer to make a point - you only come off as uninformed and it diminishes your overall argument.
> but it is not what they teach you in the army or special ops
What are you even talking about? I hazard to guess you have zero firearms training.
Of course people train to reload their firearms. Of course they train to reload their firearms during combat. It's not a musket for crying out loud.
This might all be fun and games for most of the people here, but for the folks that train and carry guns for a living - it's pretty darn serious. The things the uninformed masses expect, based on Hollywood movies and B-rated TV shows is dumbfounding and downright dangerous.
The gun only comes out for one reason - that is to kill something that you perceive to pose an immediate danger to you or someone around you. The gun does not come out for funsies - if it's out, someone is getting shot until they're not a threat anymore (which can mean different things depending on the situation).
It's not a "mag dump" as some have indicated, it's "fire until there's no more threat, reload and keep firing if there is still a threat".
The gun is a tool for killing. It is that simple. The gun comes out, someone is dying. It's that cold.
This isn't the movies. People don't get hit once and leave the fight... this is real life.
You are, however, trained to fire until there is no more threat (as repeated over and over). That's exactly what happened here. Turns out in hindsight they got the initial assessment very wrong... that should be the focus of the discussion, not rounds fired.
> you're speaking with authority on something
No, I just happen to be the only person here with firearms training that is brave enough to burn a bunch of points trying to help uninformed folks focus on what matters (hint, it's not round count).
Very brave of you. I have some (mild, think seriousmode CCW class) training in the area too, and FWIW it doesn't exactly match your description.
> trying to help uninformed folks focus on what matters
But you're the one who's constantly muddying the waters and turning this into a flame war instead of conversation. Reread the article, then reread this thread. If you come to the conclusion that you're doing something constructive or helpful, rather than that you have ulterior motives or need to seriously improve your communication skills, there's probably no reconciling your POV with anyone else's.
The only point I raised was 107 rounds fired from 7 or more individuals is not unusual. Folks like to run around with some number of rounds fired as-if it indicates malfeasance - but it really doesn't. That was the only point I was making... everything else is "what-if" noise...
Zero judgement was passed on the events themselves, but it seems people want to force you to state an opinion none-the-less.
If you'd said, "we should focus more on how the shooting started in the first place and the sheer incompetence and us-vs-them mentality that allows cops to cross the violence threshold so constantly & without consequences, rather than the specific number of bullets lodged in various things" you might have had a better and more constructive conversation. As it stands, you've doubled and tripled down on that not mattering, and I think it gives an impression to readers.
Very, very off topic, but I do think it's kind of weird to magdump in a public space. We're taught to be extremely cautious of what's behind our targets at all times, and the corollary to 'once the tool comes out, you use it' is 'try not to bring the tool out at all costs', which you conveniently leave out as well. Finally, I don't know how good you are in terms of time to reacquire but squeezing more than 3 or 4 in a row definitely throws my aim off (even with a relatively heavy CZ75 SP01 or my million pound 1911 - I imagine the cops use a more polymer-intensive and therefore lighter weapon) (also assuming still that these are handguns and not long guns of some sort), so just indiscriminately dumping 17+1 or whatever doesn't strike me as a viable approach to hitting your target.
Cops do a very poor job of all of this, and people rightly want their poor performance to be held to account.
Add to that... if they said "you just don't understand -- this isn't the movies, you don't just stab a person once and they die, you have to keep stabbing until they stop moving. I don't think any of you understand, you don't have the training I do to see that clearly this is a reasonable course of action for anyone who is intending to stab someone"
This whole thread is an absolute absurdity, to keep falling back on "you just don't get it, it's not the movies" and "we're focusing on the wrong thing, the number of bullets" when .. no one here is focusing on the numbers of bullets except the person arguing with, in most cases, himself.
> You do not stop firing until it is absolutely clear there is no more threat.
One does not mean or imply the other. "until there is no more threat" doesn't say anything about a magazine.
The only relationship between the two is the presumption that while reloading you will have time to realize your target is already dead, while you might not have realized it a moment before in the haze of gunfire. But nobody is obliged to empty their entire magazine before evaluating the effect they had. Police are trained to stop shooting when the threat is gone and there are ample body camera videos showing police who stop shooting before their magazine is empty. This demonstrates that one is not necessarily synonymous with the other.
To put this in perspective in 2021 the German police fired 139 shots in total against people or things (this excludes shots fired against dangerous, sick or injured animals which is much higher), of which 60 were warning shots. [1]
[1] https://fragdenstaat.de/dokumente/182399-falle-von-polizeili...
The fact that no shots were fired back is the only reason the round count is as low as it is.
> If they teach people in gun classes to empty their clip "just in case" then maybe you should take a hard look at the gun classes
This isn't a movie folks. If the gun comes out of it's holster, there is a non-trivial chance someone is about to die. We can all agree the events in the above story should not have taken place.
I want to be really clear here, uninformed folks passing judgement by number of rounds fired is about as absurd as it can be. It literally has no impact on the story, and it literally does not mean any of the things you might want it to mean.
That in and of itself is a problem.
More info: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/06/the-la-county-...
No, but they knew that the truck contained a dangerous amount of paper with an informationally poisonous substance pressed into it. Who knows what kind of ideological damage could have happened if that stuff was released into the environment. The narrative could crumble!
"“Based on my experience and everything, I said, uh, this is too much to do one shot, we’re gonna break them up, right?” the technician recalled saying to a colleague.
He said his colleagues and his supervisor told him that he was wrong and that he should “relax,” and the fireworks were loaded into the vessel all at once anyway, the inspector general found. Later, he said, he told a colleague measuring out a counter-charge, “I have a bad feeling … this is not good … this is too big,” and was again ignored.
The subsequent blast, on June 30, ripped open the containment vessel and destroyed much of the surrounding neighborhood, damaging nearly 40 vehicles and 35 properties, injuring 17 people and displacing dozens more residents — many of whom have never returned."
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-25/lapd-bom...
Consider it from an evolutionary perspective: a pinned animal is a dead animal. So we should expect animals to resist being trapped to the point of killing themselves / dying from the stress of fighting to break free. It's well known to be true for many animals and its also true for humans.
Anytime a person is forcefully restrained there is a risk of death.
Knowing that people get into this instinctual "fight" mode frequently during police encounters, to the point where they'll exert themselves to the point of exhaustion and beyond, I do wish police had a greater duty of care standard to check on people and assess for medical emergencies during such scuffles.
Indeed. And we should treat forceful restraint as a potentially lethal move-- since we know from the statistics that it is-- and emphasize using other approaches where possible.
It’s only after looking into it much deeper that it’s clear the initial story was a “setup.”
Sarcasm aside, it's insane that after this incident, it's being labeled as a "training accident" when it so obviously wasn't.
The answer is: As long as they are busting the right heads, they are doing their jobs perfectly. It is not about protecting citizens. It is about corralling and controlling them.
You will stew in your decaying cities full of people experiencing mental crisis and drug addicts, and you will not complain as we do nothing.
Seems very non tech related and the type of article that generates heat rather than light.