This crap is officially over the line from 'overzealous' to 'incompetent,

trigger-happy and stupid'.
David Perdue was on his way to sneak in some surfing before work Thursday morning when police flagged him down. They asked who he was and where he was headed, then sent him on his way.

Seconds later, Perdue's attorney said, a Torrance police cruiser slammed into his pickup and officers opened fire; none of the bullets struck Perdue.

His pickup, police later explained, matched the description of the one belonging to Christopher Jordan Dorner — the ex-cop who has evaded authorities after allegedly killing three and wounding two more. But the pickups were different makes and colors. And Perdue looks nothing like Dorner: He's several inches shorter and about a hundred pounds lighter. And Perdue is white; Dorner is black.

And the official excuse is just wonderful:
"The circumstances of the incident known to the responding officers would have led a reasonable officer under normal circumstances — and these were far from normal circumstances — to believe that fellow officers were being shot at and that the vehicle traveling toward them posed a serious risk.
"In the split seconds available to them," the statement continued, "action was appropriate to intervene and stop the actions of the driver of that vehicle."
You know, the vehicle of the WRONG make and WRONG color driven by a male of the WRONG color who'd JUST BEEN TALKED TO BY OTHER COPS...

It's actually kind of amazing, isn't it?  Three people alive solely by either the grace of Deity or the lousy shooting of LAPD(or both), NONE of them or their vehicles matching the description and it's still "Any reasonable officer would have done the same."
Do they not realize just how much that kind of crap damages their reputation and image?  Or are they so tied into "Deny wrongdoing no matter what" that they don't care?

As Insty says, if a private citizen did this kind of crap these same people would be working to hang them.