the officers involved need to be fired and prosecuted. And any brass who make excuses for them need to be fired.
I'm going to borrow Pournelle's post:
For fifteen minutes the Long Beach Police watched Douglas Zerby sitting on an interior courtyard stoop playing with a toy gun. They never announced their presence. There was no danger to anyone. They never announced their presence. There were at least five police officers there. Then, after fifteen minutes, two or three of them opened fire with shotguns and pistols. There was no warning, and no command to drop the weapon. Apparently his first notification that the police were present was to be shot dead.
This, according to the LBPD, was to protect the citizens and make certain no one got hurt.
Heroic.
The levels of- not fail, incompetence and idiocy- involved here are just flat disgusting. Reading through stuff, it appears that not only did they not announce themselves, they were concealed from him right up to the time 'Zerby reportedly pointed the black metal-tipped nozzle at one of the officers' and they killed him.
Yes, it could be there's something else not being reported; frankly, I hope so, because if there's not then this was the murder of a citizen by the people sworn to 'serve and protect' followed by attempts to cover it up by their brass.
4 comments:
And to make it completely fair, they need to hold the inquest in Las Vegas
I read somewhere else that what he actually had in his hand was a garden-hose nozzle.
According to this news article it was a pistol-grip water hose nozzle:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-long-beach-shooting-20101214,0,2734214.story
And the cops never ID themselves:
http://www.scpr.org/news/2010/12/14/long-beach-shooting/
Murder under color of law.
It is murder plain and simple.
But the inquest will clear the officers of wrongdoing. The thin blue line will close ranks and protect each other, and they will destroy the character of the man holding a hose nozzle.
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