Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Was Unarmed During Hour and a Half Long Stand-Off in Backyard Boat, Shots Fired Anyway
Watch that trigger finger
The FBI's not saying what led police to fire on the boat where Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding, as they reveal he was unarmed while hiding in the boat during a stand-off that lasted an hour and a half. His older brother, who officials say said he wanted to die for Islam, died after a firefight with police. Officials say he may have been run over by his own brother, Dzhokhar, who they say fingered him as the mastermind of the bombing. During the initial chase, cops also fired on a state police vehicle they thought the suspect was driving.
The hunt for a suspected bomber may have been something new for the media, but the indiscriminate shootings shouldn't be. In Ohio late last year, cops fired 137 shots in about 20 seconds into a car after a chase that started because one cop thought he heard a gunshot. No guns were recovered and the driver and passenger were both killed. And in February, during another manhunt, for ex-cop Christopher Dorner, the LAPD fired more than a hundred times into a truck that was a different make and model than Dorner's. The two women in the car, a mother and daughter aged 71 and 47, weren't seriously injured. The LAPD settled for $4.2 million earlier this week, an uncharacteristically quick resolution for the department.