Polices officers please answer? and give an explanation?

Question

This case goes back to I think 2003 it happened in L.A. the officers fired off 81 shots and killed this man who they believed had a weapon they also killed a police dog in the process. the young mans name was Deandre Brunston.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akvtGcH_djs

Okay i am a little bit confused because I'm not quite sure what police procedure is, I understand the stress that the police were under given the circumstances but was the force that the used excessive? Did the follow proper procedure?

For anybody that is going to try and turn this into a race issue please don't I just want some input from people who actually know what their talking about

thanks in advance

Answer 1

The deceased created the situation from inception to tragic end.
Any cop knows it is better to be judged by 12 than carried
by 6.

Answer 2

I just watched your video clip. The officers were justified in the shooting as the bad guy had a gun and was threatening to shoot. The the amount of shots, will be due to the amount of officers on scene, if you will pay close attention the dog was released and the guy raised what appeared to be a gun. The officers had no way of knowing if the guy would shoot them as well as the dog, but on the same note the dog is a police officer and entitled to the same protection. It is unfortunate the dog was killed. however also in watching the video I notice the officers shot until the threat was gone, which is when the guy was still and both hands were visibly not holding a weapon. You can not really plan ahead on which officer is supposed to fire, it depends on the circumstances. This guy was committing a forcible felony and was justifiably shot. If you stop shooting after the first shot you do not know how bad the guy is injured and if he is still a threat. The idea is to shoot until the threat is gone and the guy is not capable of shooting back. I hope this helped you understand but if not do some research through case law on use of force matrix, and law enforcement firearms training. and the departments policy on use of deadly force

Answer 3

Ok so I'm going to analyze that. If you watched the video they shot for less than 3 seconds. Here's my analysis and why they were right in using lethal (NOT EXCESSIVE) force.
1. He was a known felon.
2. His hands were hidden and he said he had a gun.
3. He said he would shoot the dog if it came near him, once again implying he had a gun.
4. He made a SUDDEN movement of his hand as if to aim at the dog and the officers.

Now It is terribly tragic the dog was shot. In my monday morning quarterback opinion they should not have sicked the dog on him. They should have continued talking to him. 81 shots was not excessive in any way. They shot at him for less than 3 seconds and stopped as soon as he fell. Unfortuneately the dog was hit. The amount of rounds fired is inconsequential. There are stories of men on PCP who can take 36 bullets and keep walking no problem. Same with some meth addicts. Also if lethal force is appropriate it's because there is a general threat to life and they are attempting to save life. If you ever meet a police officer involved in a shooting, ask him/her something along the lines of,"Why'd you shoot that person 14 times?" They'll reply,"Because I only had 14 bullets."

Answer 4

Maybe I can help you. I was a cop in Ohio for 12 years. There is a guide called the use of force continuium. It is a strick guide that cops follow which illustrates when and when not to use force and how much to use. the common rule here is that the cop is only allowed to use " Just enough force to stop the agressive actions of the suspect" basicaly meaning, you dont keep using force once a suspect is down or submits or is handcuffed. If this guy were to pull a gun on a cop, the cop is trained to defend himself and shoot until the agressive action is stopped. Sometimes a person can get shot, and it takes 8-10 seconds for them to go down. the reason for this is because it takes a few seconds for the brain to shut down and tell the muscles and organs to stop. now, if there was 1 cop that shot the guy 81 times or even two or three, then there is an issue here. But if a suspect is surrounded by 10 cops and he tried to shoot a cop, well then you would have to conclude that each cop will shoot 3-4 times or more. You have to look at it this way. " Would a Reasonable and Prudent man who beleived that his life was in jeopary have any reason to fire 81 shots." On the surface, it sounds like it was excessive, but neither you or I was there so we really cannot judge.

Answer 5

I'm wondering about the police dog that was killed. In some jurisdictions, a police dog carries the same distinction as a police officer for criminal puposes. What would have been the process if one of the police officers had been killed by other police fire?

On the face of it, 81 rounds is extremely excessive, but if there were 30 cops, then it means only 2 - 3 shots on average for each cop. That they all fired is immaterial as each one has to react to danger independently. If they had reason to believe the suspect had a weapon, then they would have to provide convincing evidence of their decisions.

I'm not a cop. Just thinking along the lines of being on a jury and considering the facts, not just the juicy details of a news story written for sensationalism.

But there are two issues here. If you believe that a review board is prejudiced and not disposed to rule based upon the facts, then you are already operating at a loss of trust and no answers will re-establish that. And if the general public believes they're privileged to second-guess every decision a police officer makes, then you've rendered the law enforcement community useless. Even robots would be second-guessed about their programming and they can't react nearly as fast as human officers must do.

Answer 6

From what I've read from the situation, yes. What the video doesn't show is that Brunston led Officers to believe he was armed and they even tried to negotiate with him to get him to surrender.

Apparently the K-9 was released and he made a motion of drawing a weapon(which was a shoe under his shirt) towards the Police Dog. It appears that one Officer fired and others started to as well with the K-9 in the line of fire.

Such a situation is not unheard of. If a number of Officers are placed under extended stress and state of readiness with their weapon and one Officer shoots the others will shoot as well as a reaction.

When shooting a person, Officers are trained to shoot until the threat is neutralized. While I don't have the specifics on the number of Officers that were there at the stand off I can believe there were quite a few and at 12-15 rounds per weapon 81 shots would not be unheard of.

It was a bad situation all around. But ultimately, Brunson alone put himself in that position, not the LASO.

Answer 7

The best thing any police officer can do is to return home alive to his family. The young man repeated time and time again he had a gun. Why would the police not believe him? When he jerked his hand up as the dog attacked he was pulling up what he said was his gun. If you were a police officer would you let him shoot first if it had been a gun? Color has nothing to do with this, you just need to watch what happened. A black police officer and I work out at the same time every day. He shot someone who turned around holding a screwdriver. He went before a review board and he was found to be "not at fault" for the death. The guy he shot was white. As he said, "your dammed if you do and your dead if you don't"! Ask yourself, honestly what would you have done if you'd been a police officer?

Answer 8

Well he was honestly provoking the officers. He was not complying with there requests. I'm sure there was about 30 officers there all with guns draw which is proper procedure when dealing with someone with a firearm. All of the shooting occurred in about 3 seconds which I wouldn't consider an excessing amount of time of shooting. This was not in excess and each was following proper procedure. This also appears to be a case of suicide where the suspect provokes the officers to kill him. Very sad stuff.

Answer 9

You have to understand that Police Officers are under a lot of stress and the last thing they want to do is hurt or kill someone.
The Police want to end things as peacefully as possible because they want to go home.

Put yourself in the police officers shoes... someone is threatening to kill you or one of your comrades. You really don't want to hurt the person threatening them but it's either you or them.... make your decision... you don't have a lot of time to react, you have about half a second to decide and well... this time he didn't have a gun.... unfortunate but that was an expected reaction.

I feel sorry for the family and the friends.

Answer 10

1. I am not a cop...
2. 99.999% of the time I disagree with anything that smells like a cop.
3. I have to agree that the cops did what they had to do on this one...The man had a gun (Or at it was understood by all that he did.)....And he refused to yield...
Had he yielded to the cops the worst he would have gotten was free room and board.
4. Damn...I hate agreeing with cops.....But this was suicide by cop.

Edit and one well placed round or a hundred wild shots produces the same result....Dead is dead.After the first round the rest was just abuse of a courpse.