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

A GLANCE would have shown the rifleman in this case that the perp was no threat to anyone. ...
Is that a GLANCE after running down the aisle to close within
a yard or two of the perp?

Because the only view the cop had before shooting
was of someone holding a 4'x6" piece of framed artwork
like some kind of medieval shield in their right hand.

What kind of GLANCE would verify the perp didn't have
a handgun behind the painting? In their belt if not in their hand.
 
Is that a GLANCE after running down the aisle to close within
a yard or two of the perp?

Because the only view the cop had before shooting
was of someone holding a 4'x6" piece of framed artwork
like some kind of medieval shield in their right hand.

What kind of GLANCE would verify the perp didn't have
a handgun behind the painting? In their belt if not in their hand.
You’re absolutely correct. The only view the gunman had was of a suspect that did not appear to have a firearm. Luckily he shot first, murdered two people and asked questions later.
 
Is that a GLANCE after running down the aisle to close within
a yard or two of the perp?

Because the only view the cop had before shooting
was of someone holding a 4'x6" piece of framed artwork
like some kind of medieval shield in their right hand.

What kind of GLANCE would verify the perp didn't have
a handgun behind the painting? In their belt if not in their hand.

When the alternative is dead citizens?

I don't think it's too much to ask that cops be sure of their target, and of the need to fire in the first place.
 
You’re absolutely correct. The only view the gunman had was of a suspect that did not appear to have a firearm. ...
[rolleyes]
2AIq.gif


I don't think it's too much to ask that cops be sure of their target, and of the need to fire in the first place.
The last I heard, neither of those things are under debate.
It's what's behind the target that's the problem.
 
Are flash bangs still in use? Might have been a nice alternative. Or maybe a bombot with tazing capabilities. Bean bag rounds.
 
The last I heard, neither of those things are under debate.
It's what's behind the target that's the problem.

Yes... know your target and what's beyond it. That's the sort of "basic safety rule" that NES was HOWLING about when Alec Baldwin wiped out a cinematographer.

It wasn't necessary for this police officer to fire any round at all, least of all a miss into the ground.
 
This is a bad one. True there was an idiot caller that said it was a shooting. But there was no gun and the nut has his hands down even if he was armed. Then wildly blasting away with a rifle. I bet the cop will be charged.

I watched the bodycam video. The LEO wanted real bad to get up front/shoot his rifle/get his first CONUS kill.
 
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.
I mean, losses are part of the game in war. Cops, I hope, don't think like that. The major change after Columbine was a shift from waiting for SWAT to show up vs regular joe cops doing what they can to end an active shooter.

That said, even with the training I got, it was years between full on force on force training that you need to deal with this type of situation. If you've never been through a full on scenario with live actors, it's an eye opening experience.
 
I mean, losses are part of the game in war. Cops, I hope, don't think like that. The major change after Columbine was a shift from waiting for SWAT to show up vs regular joe cops doing what they can to end an active shooter.

That said, even with the training I got, it was years between full on force on force training that you need to deal with this type of situation. If you've never been through a full on scenario with live actors, it's an eye opening experience.

I get that, and I'm all in favor of cops going in heavy when there's an active shooter.

From what I've seen, this guy was not an active shooter.
 
"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.
exactly this. You don't mag dump at a crowd of people because a bad dude is there. The LEO dumped 3 rounds at this guy out of a 20" speedy boi with no idea if there were anyone in the changing room.
 
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.
Swat snipers aren't taking shots beyond 100ds in damn near every encounter. There are plenty of instances where a pistol is a better tool than a rifle. The LEO was out there with some surplus vietnam AR and smoked an innocent 14yo protecting and serving.
 
I get that, and I'm all in favor of cops going in heavy when there's an active shooter.

From what I've seen, this guy was not an active shooter.
From what I've heard, I'm not disagreeing on that point at all. I'm just commenting on the basic tactics, not the implementation of said tactics.

I can't really say much about where the rounds went either, closest I came was probably 12 lbs on a 96D a couple of times. No bang. I'd like to think I wouldn't skip rounds, however.
 
Because there was no shared consensus between all the cops that a longarm should take point.

P. S. They were leading with a 12 gauge shotgun until the AR showed up.
Talk about the wrong weapon for the job. Shotgun guy was a little out of line unless he had slugs loaded.
 
Swat snipers aren't taking shots beyond 100ds in damn near every encounter. There are plenty of instances where a pistol is a better tool than a rifle. The LEO was out there with some surplus vietnam AR and smoked an innocent 14yo protecting and serving.
Look, I get it. I'm a pistol in most situations guy. But, going into an unknown situation, unknown threats, unknown armor, I'd at least have one rifle in my group if I was lucky enough to have a group. Rifle up front is pretty basic, lead with the heaviest hitter. Someone posted the presence of a shotty, buckshot stays pretty tight out to 15ish yards, but it's still a decent sized spread when inches count. Not my personal choice in a messy situation with bystanders, unless it's got slugs.

I carried true a true M4, 14 inch barrel with a collapsible stock. It can get pretty short.
 
JFC, I don't know what to make of this one. I was surprised when the cop opened fire immediately. I don't know what he saw that made him do it. I got the impression that he didn't see anything, just jumped to the conclusion that the bleeding victim had been shot, ergo the perp is an active shooter, ergo needed shooting right away. Came across as trigger-happy to me. Ricochet off the floor is not a fluke, but ricochet hitting a bystander hiding in a changing room is. Tragic. To some degree I blame the girl's death on the moron(s) who reported that the guy had a gun when he obviously didn't. WTF. No tears for the dead perp, though. He needed killing in a general sort of way, only I'd rather have seen him beaten to death with his own bike lock.
 
I'm just commenting on the basic tactics, not the implementation of said tactics.

I appreciate that. That's what I was asking about. FWIW, I don't have any problem with showing up at an "active shooter" call with an M16 of whatever vintage, and I don't have a problem with the cops leading with that weapon. If it were me in a situation like that, I'd be more comfortable with a rifle too.

My concern is that having shown up, they went on autopilot and blindly assumed they knew what was going on, when they clearly did not. "Stopping for some time to think straight" was, according to the bodycam, obviously not something this particular group of officers was good at, and now a girl's dead.

Stop. Look and listen. Take stock. Update your understanding of what's happening. I don't think that level of situational awareness is too much to expect from "dedicated public servants," especially when they're MOUTing with a rifle in a store with citizens all over the place. I really just wish I lived in a world where cops were deathly afraid of causing unnecessary fatalities, and behaved accordingly.
 
Just wait until LAPD is under a Chicago-style consent decree,
where a civilian (i.e., BLM) "review board" gets to persecute
cops for anything they've ever done in their career,
regardless of double-jeopardy
(and probably regardless of statute of limitations).

That's how you get Chicago-style police response.
(Fourth (final) section of the post).
Chicago and NYPD are spending their shifts watching Netflix in a parking lot. This isn’t a joke, they are doing the bare minimum to not get fired.
 
BTW, it was actually more disturbing to see the stuff
seemingly discarded by fleeing shoppers at the foot of the escalator,
than to see the smears of blood on the floor,
and the blurred-out evident mess the perp made of the poor woman's face.

When faced with a crime in progress,
the average shambling idiots of today start taking video,
or at worst start texting their peeps
as soon as they've ducked around the nearest corner.
In scuzzier neighborhoods, they stand around giving advice
to the victim and assailant.

If my mother had dropped her pocketbook fleeing an assault,
the stress would have taken a year off of her life.
If the cops thought they were advancing on a scene that had
triggered that level of panic in denizens of la-la land,
that would have set quite the emotional tone.


... They were leading with a 12 gauge shotgun until the AR showed up.
Talk about the wrong weapon for the job.
Tubes gonna tube, man. Oh, checkitout:

LAPD Lingo : Slang: Los Angeles police speak a unique, salty dialect. If it sounds like a TV cop show--well, TV is always copying it.
...​
A “gimme” is a pistol--because they’re often seen in the hands of somebody saying “gimme your money.” And “the tube” is a police shotgun.​
...​

Not that Shotgun Cop in particular,
or any cop deploying a shotgun in general,
would do what the AR guy did in this incident.


Maybe LAPD doctrine has a specific role for shotgun(s)
against an indoor (mass casualty?) shooter.
I don't assume they have some elaborate TOE scheme
for them like "one BAR per squad" in WWII.
So he musta just taken the time to grab it from his cruiser.


For operating cops to whom guns are more than
"the tool they barely train with and virtually never use",
they're entitled to their preferences,
but they've gotta know how to use whatever they choose...

Shotgun guy was a little out of line unless he had slugs loaded.
Ya know, I've never seen "what do police use in their patrol shotguns?"
discussed on NES. But they can't sit around the locker room
debating rock salt vs. slugs like NES does, can they?
Mustn't it be a pretty well settled question?

There was spare ammo, er, clipped to the side of the shotgun.
Maybe some operating NES shotgunner can figure out what it was.

JFC, I don't know what to make of this one. I was surprised when the cop opened fire immediately. I don't know what he saw that made him do it. I got the impression that he didn't see anything, just jumped to the conclusion that the bleeding victim had been shot, ergo the perp is an active shooter, ergo needed shooting right away. ...
⬆️ This. What a contrast with this month's "shouldn't be a cop" cop
who was getting chased by a thug that put down a gun, then picked it back up.

... Came across as trigger-happy to me. ...
Maybe it was purely a personal choice. But you make me wonder:

Must we consider the chance that LAPD is nearing the breaking point,
and that this behavior is about to be emergent - effectively "Death Squad Lite"?
(See my second bullet point in that post).


Bah, they thought they'd cornered an active shooter,
and were jumpy as hell.

Chicago and NYPD are spending their shifts watching Netflix in a parking lot. This isn’t a joke, they are doing the bare minimum to not get fired.
I've (unexpectedly) read more about CPD,
and I can totally see where that's coming from.


Some minimalist (I don't know who) had written,
"Why do cops race around town, looking for crimes to solve?
Firemen don't race around town, looking for fires to put out -
they sit in the firehouse until someone reports a fire".

Maybe some dumpster-fire jurisdictions under staffing and regulatory pressure
will show us the literal answer to that figurative question, sigh.
 
FWIW, I watched a stream with Branca and Rackets where I think Branca stated the perp had a leg wound, which is probably where the through and through skipped off the floor. So I don't think we can definitively say the LAPD missed. Don't think there will be any criminal liability, but I'm sure the kid's family will get a payout from the city.
 
I get that, and I'm all in favor of cops going in heavy when there's an active shooter.

From what I've seen, this guy was not an active shooter.
Which was discovered after the fact thanks to the a-hole who made the 911 call falsely claiming an active shooter.
Now they make entry.
People running , blood all over the floor as you can see in the body cam.
Ya , I can see them being amped up.
Without a doubt that could have gone way better , but the fact is they were in overdrive because of some shithead.
Now if the call was some nutcase bashing people with a bike lock and it went down like that then there was no possible excuse.
Now on the other hand if it was an active shooter and they took their sweet assed time , any additional deaths would have been their fault too.
Why anyone would join LE at this point is a mystery to me.
 
Because there was no shared consensus between all the cops that a longarm should take point.

P. S. They were leading with a 12 gauge shotgun until the AR showed up.
I haven't been able to watch the footage yet but the question bouncing around in my head has been, "Does the LAPD own an effing shotgun?!"

This situation seems like a perfect place to use one.

I bet there would be a lot fewer pissed off people right now if mom and daughter were in the hospital for two days recovering from a couple .32 pellets being removed.

Maybe the person in the next dressing room should just be thankful this guy did not have a 7.62 in his cruiser.
 
I bet there would be a lot fewer pissed off people right now if mom and daughter were in the hospital for two days recovering from a couple .32 pellets being removed.

No doubt, but I wouldn't underestimate the bad possibilities using a shotgun with these marksmanship and judgment skills. The round that ricocheted should never have been fired. If the ricochet wasn't the last shot, the cop's marksmanship is horrifically bad, and right there, that's your problem. But assuming it was the last shot, it was bad judgment to keep shooting as the suspect fell. The winning move was to stop shooting once the guy is falling because you shot him twice. They're probably trained to fire 3-rounds, but surely they're not trained to keep firing that 2nd and 3rd round, tracking the perp to the ground in order to finish the set.
 
No doubt, but I wouldn't underestimate the bad possibilities using a shotgun with these marksmanship and judgment skills. The round that ricocheted should never have been fired. If the ricochet wasn't the last shot, the cop's marksmanship is horrifically bad, and right there, that's your problem. But assuming it was the last shot, it was bad judgment to keep shooting as the suspect fell. The winning move was to stop shooting once the guy is falling because you shot him twice. They're probably trained to fire 3-rounds, but surely they're not trained to keep firing that 2nd and 3rd round, tracking the perp to the ground in order to finish the set.

Or?

Just don't shoot people who aren't shooting back at you, in the first place...
 
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