Teen girl shot dead by Los Angeles police firing at suspect in clothing store

DMR officer did a "make way, coming through" thing to get by the other responding cops, says one article. A 9mm can pass through 3+ drywall rooms, so I might not say the rifle was a deadlier round for overshoot. But unless the fatal round passed through the perp and then through the wall, you have to wonder how a DMR officer could miss at 20ft and perforate a wall. I could easily miss a moving target, but that’s not my job. Hope to God they don’t chamber FMJ…

Or maybe sources are wrong, and it was just an average cop with a patrol rifle, who qualifies yearly for stationary shooting. Just as I’d prefer a rifle over a pistol, I can’t fault the choice of weapon.

The reporting I saw says the fatal bullet ricocheted off the floor, then into the dressing room. So not just a miss, but a bad miss unless the perp was already on the ground. At which point shooting was probably unnecessary anyway.
 
Cops shoots 14-yo, in her mother's arms.

Job one?
Trauma first aid to the victim?
No?
Drag the mother away from her daughter.

Is that because the dead assailant's bike lock might re-animate,
and deliver more beatdowns to innocent bystanders?


Hey, that's the mother's story, but who knows what the body cams will reveal.

Would any among us would refuse to be dragged away from that?
 
The dispatch repeatedly sent out information that was a 'shooter' scenario. Horrible outcome for the girl, her family and the cop. f***ing POS criminals.
 
If the cops thought it was an active shooter, I can’t fault them at all.
Seeing the bad guy swinging the bike lock I’d say a good shoot based on that.
Tragedy about the young girl, but that’s on the bad guy.
 
If the cops thought it was an active shooter, I can’t fault them at all.
Seeing the bad guy swinging the bike lock I’d say a good shoot based on that.
Tragedy about the young girl, but that’s on the bad guy.
Triage at an in-progress active shooting is leave the dead and mortally wounded, self-evac any walking wounded in the warm zone, and stop the shooter. The tragedy was the identification of this event as an active shooting - responding police were playing from their rules of engagement. If there was a command officer present, protocol may not have allowed them to down-class the response from an active shooter without a full scene assessment.

LAPD cut $150 million from their budget post-Floyd, and only in November added $$$ back as liberal mayors are doing nationwide. Retention, hiring, training no doubt suffered.
 
The cop seemed to skeedaddle once he heard a girl crying.

I also can’t imagine that having that acog helped in this situation. He was so close I doubt he could even see everything going on that well.

Also I bet he regrets rushing infront of the squad.
 
Saddest part is that the kid and her mom were huddled on the floor and the stray round came through low on the dressing room door. If they'd been standing up they might have been hit in the knee at worst.
The police response looked like a Chinese fire drill. Spraying rifle rounds in a store with customers present produced a predictable result.
 
Those officers were so sloppy it’s scary. That looked negligent to me.
Go back and read my post in another thread about 'training'.

I'm done watching these videos, it gets my blood pressure up and there's nothing I can do about it. So I can only react to other posts. This sounds like a SNAFU that went straight to FUBAR. IF the round skipped off the floor, I can't find words. If the officer took what he thought was a legit shot at what was initially called out as an active shooter and missed, not that I 'accept' the miss, but it's more understandable if it was a straight miss on a moving target. Hitting the floor, while standing, while shooting at a target inside of 50 yards? You don't even need a damn sight for that, much less an optic, to not skip a round.

Even if additional information was dispatched, if you've ever been in a patrol unit at high speeds, there is a ton of noise from crap rattling around. It would be easy to miss a follow up radio call. I used to jam stuff into the M4/Shotgun locks when it wasn't occupied to mitigate the damn rattling just driving down the road.
 
The dispatch repeatedly sent out information that was a 'shooter' scenario. Horrible outcome for the girl, her family and the cop. f***ing POS criminals.

Serious question for the NES cop contingent, because I honestly don't know: is recon a thing in the PD?

My experience is all light infantry, but one of the cardinal rules of this sort of thing is that you always do a reconnaissance on the objective before you finalize your plan and open fire. The recon doesn't have to be a long, involved process; it can be as simple as a quick eyes-on just to confirm or deny that your initial intelligence was correct.

Are police trained to make sure there's an actual active shooter before they bring in a rifle and click off safe? Or do they just take the initial dispatch as gospel and go in guns a-blazin? I mean, that seems to be what they actually do; I'm just curious about how they're trained.
 

  1. Panic sucks, but see what happens when you have someone so scatter-brained that they can't croak out "the Burlington clothing store in North Hollywood".
  2. Trusting initial reports always sucks, but it's never clear whether the first 911 caller was ever inside the store, or whether it's just a bystander who sees the store vomiting customers and staff like a kicked-over anthill, is dropping a dime, and is boosting what she's witnessed with hearsay from the refugees about shots fired. And I don't mean "it sucks that the 911 operator took the word of callers who claimed 'man with a gun'". I mean it sucks if the 911 caller parroted gun reports from other idiots.
  3. Can you imagine if the second 911 caller who said that her mother and sister were hiding "behind" the store, "and I don't know if he has uh the gun" was talking about the victim (and her mother)? (Does "behind" actually mean "in the back part of"?) And how brilliant was that mother/sister combo, that the first person they called when they're hiding from an attacker is another member of their family instead of 911?


The police were obviously executing tactics they had been trained
to use in specific situations. "Diamond, guys!" "Slow down!" "Speed up!"
"Let me get in front with my <patrol rifle>".
Maybe they were the right tactics for what they were told.

NES will really deliver if someone links to a PowerPoint
that contains some version of the doctrine they were using.

The cops were hardly a well-oiled machine -
struggling to remember their training;
but Military Operations on Urban Terrain is not their day job.


Saddest part is that the kid and her mom were huddled on the floor and the stray round came through low on the dressing room door. If they'd been standing up they might have been hit in the knee at worst.
If I heard shots in a mall, or a significant ruckus,
my Plan A is to head for the closest exit,
emphatically including those in store back rooms,
private service corridors, and the like.

If it sounded like a full-on terror attack,
I might have the presence of mind
to kick the external door's crash bar to open it,
and stand back in case someone outside
was waiting to snipe at people running.
(And that includes arriving cops).
Otherwise, it's movemovemove.

But if cornered in a store, Plan B is to hide someplace obscure,
such as the storage space underneath
the island counters used to display shirts, towels, etc.

The bullet collimating effect of hard surfaces is the least of my worries.


Assume that the changing rooms are on the boundary between
the sales floor and the storerooms, staff break room, offices, etc.
NFW does that backroom area not have fire exits.

The fundamental mistake the victims made was freezing in place
(albeit inside a changing room locked from the inside),
rather than fleeing an assailant who was in another room entirely
and didn't even know they existed.

Fight or flight (or freeze) is a biological reaction.
They just biologicaled poorly, sigh.


Tox screen on the perp is gonna break the lab computer, I bet.
 
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Did the audio cut out or something? I couldn’t hear the part where the murderer tried to de escalate the situation or give any type of de escalation commands before firing multiple rounds into an unknown backstop.
 
LAPD is responsible for ever bullet leaving their guns. They brought the worst cqb type gun into the mix and the guys with the handguns would have been better suited to deal with over penetration.
 
Did the audio cut out or something? I couldn’t hear the part where the murderer tried to de escalate the situation ...
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Dude had his whole life to de escalate the situation.

LAPD is responsible for ever bullet leaving their guns. They brought the worst cqb type gun into the mix and the guys with the handguns would have been better suited to deal with over penetration.
So a handgun is more than just what you use to fight to where your rifle is at?
 
LAPD is responsible for ever bullet leaving their guns. They brought the worst cqb type gun into the mix and the guys with the handguns would have been better suited to deal with over penetration.

Meh - I still say the perp brought it on himself. Without him, no rounds would have been fired.

Cop will be charged and convicted because 2022 and wokeness. LAPD will throw him under the bus, guaranteed.
 
Did the audio cut out or something? I couldn’t hear the part where the murderer tried to de escalate the situation or give any type of de escalation commands before firing multiple rounds into an unknown backstop.

The audio worked well enough for me to hear other cops telling him to slow down, hold up, and that the suspect was near the dressing rooms. But the cop either ignored or blocked out all of that and killed an innocent girl as a result.
 
Meh - I still say the perp brought it on himself. Without him, no rounds would have been fired.

Cop will be charged and convicted because 2022 and wokeness. LAPD will throw him under the bus, guaranteed.

"Himself" doesn't concern me. The bystander in the dressing room does. The perp with the bike lock didn't cause her death, an LAPD bullet did. And to the extent that LAPD incompetence and thoughtlessness caused that, they need to pay.
 
there will not be criminal charges against the LEO because he is not white (nor should there be charges for what appears to be a freak event).

from what can be ascertained, the officers were told he was armed with a firearm then they see blood all over the ground.…I likely would have assumed the perp was armed. He had a chance to surrender and refused so they needed to stop him. The officers rifle setup was questionable as they should be equipped with a red dot such as an aimpoint pro, something idiot-proof. Not this old ass rifle length stock with mile high optic on a carry handle. Shit setup unless the user has trained with it.
 
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Serious question for the NES cop contingent, because I honestly don't know: is recon a thing in the PD?

My experience is all light infantry, but one of the cardinal rules of this sort of thing is that you always do a reconnaissance on the objective before you finalize your plan and open fire. The recon doesn't have to be a long, involved process; it can be as simple as a quick eyes-on just to confirm or deny that your initial intelligence was correct.

Are police trained to make sure there's an actual active shooter before they bring in a rifle and click off safe? Or do they just take the initial dispatch as gospel and go in guns a-blazin? I mean, that seems to be what they actually do; I'm just curious about how they're trained.
I wonder this too. How do you shoot someone without actually being in danger or seeing a firearm??
 
there will not be criminal charges against the LEO because he is not white (nor should there be charges for what appears to be a freak event).

from what can be ascertained, the officers were told he was armed with a firearm then they see blood all over the ground.…I likely would have assumed the perp was armed. He had a chance to surrender and refused so they needed to stop him. The officers rifle setup was questionable as they should be equipped with a red dot such as an aimpoint pro, something idiot-proof. Not this old ass rifle length stock with mile high optic on a carry handle. Shit setup unless the user has trained with it.

When the rest of the cops are telling you "Slow down, hold on, etc." while you push them out of the way to get in front. Then you open fire, without a word of warning, no telling him to stop, or get on the ground, or put his hands up. On someone who was not a direct danger to anyone, backing up from the victim while you have 8 dudes getting angles on him you are the a**h***, the cause of the problem, and 100% wrong.

That girl did not have to die, and the actions of that cop are the reason she is dead. With any luck they throw the book at him, he deserves it. This is not a situation that calls for instant action and immediate gunfire, there are an unknown number of customers in that store, and you have the suspect corralled and away from the nearby victim. This was a predictable result of just opening fire before thinking.
 
LAPD is responsible for ever bullet leaving their guns. They brought the worst cqb type gun into the mix and the guys with the handguns would have been better suited to deal with over penetration.
It is confirm that you are.. The LAPD we will see about that one
 
Serious question for the NES cop contingent, because I honestly don't know: is recon a thing in the PD?


Are police trained to make sure there's an actual active shooter before they bring in a rifle and click off safe? Or do they just take the initial dispatch as gospel and go in guns a-blazin? I mean, that seems to be what they actually do; I'm just curious about how they're trained.
Active shooter? No. It's GOOOOOOOOOOOOO, and end the threat. The first class I took 15ish years ago, you needed to be in good shape, we were running through a building clearing it. It never felt right to me, but it was the training.

It has toned down a bit the last time I took a class, and how it's taught at my old agency. Now it's if you hear a 'stimulus', GOOOOOO. Otherwise, slow and methodical.

Unlike the military, if it's a legit active shooter, people are dying. Right now. More will die in the next few minutes. The military doesn't really bother with losses so much as winning ground or an objective, so time lost isn't as big a deal.
 
LAPD is responsible for ever bullet leaving their guns. They brought the worst cqb type gun into the mix and the guys with the handguns would have been better suited to deal with over penetration.
I'm not completely disagreeing with you in concept. But a M4 is a better mid/long range option when you don't know what you're walking into. If there was a shooter on the other side of a Walmart, I'd rather have a rifle, even if I'm capable of hitting a human sized target at 100 with a pistol. Just because I can doesn't mean I shouldn't have the right tool on hand.
 
Unlike the military, if it's a legit active shooter, people are dying. Right now. More will die in the next few minutes. The military doesn't really bother with losses so much as winning ground or an objective, so time lost isn't as big a deal.

Well... not in my experience. A HUGE part of conducting a leaders' recon of your objective is to avoid blue-on-blue incidents. It's always seemed to me that the police should have the same concern, times a million. Since the vast majority of the people downrange of them are "blue," from the standpoint of shooting. But I digress.

A GLANCE would have shown the rifleman in this case that the perp was no threat to anyone. It does not need to be a lengthy process. Clearly, I'm preaching to the choir, but it maddens me that men are sent in with so little information and not expected to update their situational awareness, especially since that information is bound to be old, from an unreliable source, or both by the time the cops get there.

And don't get me started on the fact that the fatal shot was a horrific miss.
 
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