L.A. County Sheriff's Deputies Shoot Man in Back, Kill Him, As He Walked Away from Them at a Gas Station [UPDATED]
Man reported to have been firing shots in the air before police shot him.
KTLA in Los Angeles has very disturbing video from this afternoon that shows two L.A. County Sheriff's deputies shooting many, many times at a man who is walking away from them at an Arco gas station in Lynwood.
Police report merely that the incident happened, have offered no information yet on the dead man or what crime he committed that led up to the officers opening fire on him as he walked away from them, at a normal pace.
KTLA reports counting 30 shots.
After being shot, he continued crawling away, and they continued shooting. (It isn't obvious from the video that both are shooting, though they are both in a shooting stance.) This is at a gas station that appears to be open for business as usual.
Video at this link, as is this summation:
The unidentified man was pronounced dead at the scene after being struck by gunfire, sheriff's officials confirmed.
No deputies were injured in the incident, said Lt. Allen with the sheriff's Century Station.
It was not known why sheriff's deputies first responded to the scene, or what led up to the shooting.
UPDATE: ABC TV is reporting that authorities found a .45 weapon on the scene, and that the suspect was prior to the video shooting it in the air, though there is no video evidence of it being brandished or used to threaten to harm anyone at the time the officers shot him.
More from the Los Angeles Times on why the police felt the shooting was necessary:
Deputies were responding to a call of a man walking around firing a gun in the air, said Cmdr. Keith Swensson, of the sheriff's department. He said the suspect was holding the gun when he was shot…
Sid Heal, a former Sheriff's Department commander who testifies in use-of-force court cases, reviewed the video Saturday.
He said the shooting would be high troubling unless the man had a gun. He said officers must show there was an immediate danger to themselves or the public to justify deadly force.
If he did have a gun, Heal said, the deputies could argue their force was justified because it incident took place on a busy street.
A press conference will be held Sunday at 11 a.m. at the Hall of Justice.
Video now linkable via Youtube:
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Love the passive voice. Gunfire from somewhere, not quite sure. It seemed to come out of no where…
out of Knowhere, where there are no regulations WHAT. SO. EVER.
Well, CA has some pretty loose gun laws….
I didn’t see a pistol in the now-dead guys hand, so I want to see an enlarged capture of whatever can be seen of both hands. If someone has been firing in public, and is walking away and refuses orders to stop, he is in fact a present danger to both the gen public and the cops. This gives them a possible 100% walk on this-which is why I’d like to see that enlarged view of the hands.
LACSD released some stills from a surveillance camera that they claim show that Robertson was still holding onto the pistol as he was crawling away. The pics aren’t that convincing to me, but they don’t show that Robertson’s hands were empty, either.
As long as he has the gun in his hands, and he’s not surrendering, he’s still an imminent threat for deadly force against the officers. Or you and me, for that matter. People have died from other people who had mortal wounds, yet still were able to shoot back. And handguns still suck for reliably stopping people.
Tragedy all the way around.
Like in Zardoz?
Can we make the cops wear THAT costume?
Eeeewwwww.
Yep. Just a quick reminder that these are the people the left feels should be exclusively armed, not regular citizens.
Merry fucking christmas, assholes.
Is it just me or is this shit happening more and more frequently (at least, them being caught doing it)?
Getting caught more.
Disagree; i think news orgs were far less quick to publish video of a shooting – even if they had the footage and the cops weren’t insisting they sit on it – until they got all the info re: the context first and even details like the criminal/mental history of the person shot. “presumed good-shoot” until proven otherwise.
Now, with youtube and everyone having a cell phone in their camera, they feel like they “can’t wait” for the story to come out, and will do anything to get it out first.
As for whether actual police shootings are higher…. i think particularly as relative to the level of crime, yes, i think that can be proven. as in, ‘shootings per 1000 arrests’, or some similar metric.
It would be nice if they actually measured police shootings.
Leaving everyone to get their sense of police shootings from media feels actually works against them.
Unless, of course, they have something to hide.
Can we get a judge to issue a warrant that lets people determine how many people cops kill every year? I wouldn’t want to get that info improperly.
“It would be nice if they actually measured police shootings.”
Comey and others put on shocked face when they announce there has never been any requirement to collect info on police-shootings
AG Lynch then says starting now… is a hasty decision
You really gotta love Barack’s people. they can basically say FYTW to everyone and the media just swallows it without a peep. Whereas I imagine a GOP president would have comparisons to STASI made before they even took office.
Turns out FBI decided to go ahead with a new program to do so without blessing from DoJ. A detail that’s not clear is whether FBI needs a new law to compel PD’s to disclose any/every shooting event separately or whether they will report in the context of the existing systems.
“Ok guys, we’ve got a serious problem with our stats. Our shootings per 1,000 arrests are WAY too high.”
“What we should do, Chief?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Drum up more arrests so our numbers look better.”
^^^ RCz Iron Law
This ubiquitous surveillance seems to be fucking the agents of the State as hard as their victims. I expect case law yo fix that within 20 years.
It would be hard for them not to get caught riddling someone full of bullets in the middle of an open gas station, even in former times.
That’s sort of my point. Not only are people filming/catching them in the act more, it feels like the incidents of egregious, just flat out murder are increasing too.
Two trends reaching a crescendo at the same time: the filling of the ranks with psychotic cops and the civilian filming of psychotic cops.
I had the same thought. I think this may be the case, because these types of egregious murdershootings should cause a splash at any time, even without direct footage, and they just seem to be happening on a weekly basis at this point. Though maybe the cops were just better at hiding them than I thought.
A dead body is not a statistic.
Sure it is. It’s one dead body/x.
It’s not JUST a statistic.
Once upon a time, the good cops worked behind the thin blue line to undercut the lunatics that made it onto the force. There doesn’t seem to be any avenue a good cop has to effectively curtail the actions of bad cops. It’s like the police of old have replaced their ranks by burying the good cops in the pet cemetery. The ground is sour.
There haven’t been any good cops in nigh on 50 years at least.
At least not in the states. I’ve spent almost all my adult life abroad and every single bs experience I’ve had with cops has been in the states. 3 of them were flat out immoral by the cops involved. None of the places I’ve lived in had the badge licking element so ingrained in their societies.
If there was no video in the past, there was no proof. Just that maybe a few people
heard what sounded like 30 shots and a few witnesses saw it. But, if the police “forget”
to interview those people and the media doesn’t find out about them, it was much easier
to hush up. So, I think this shit happened back then too. Easier now with a Glock with 17
rounds and then reload a new clip in a second. That’s 34 right there.
“That’s sort of my point. Not only are people filming/catching them in the act more, it feels like the incidents of egregious, just flat out murder are increasing too.”
I don’t know. I remember it happening years ago. There’d be witnesses who saw it go down. They’d tell their story. The peace officers would provide a report to the papers. The papers would print the state version, and everyone who wasn’t present at the murder would pretend to find the newspaper version credible and that of the eyewitnesses (who generally could only get their version out through direct word of mouth) so outrageous that it just couldn’t be true.
Two differences, though, are that we more frequently see the police not even attempt to provide any sort of fabricated story that any self-respecting jerkoff could even pretend to favour, and that we more frequently see peace officers murdering people for no fucking reason at all, apparently in some kind of paranoid psychotic fit, wheras in the past they may’ve kilt folks off, but so far as I can recall, always with a rational motive.
Not to say that the police version of events is necessarily more credible but eyewitness versions are notoriously inaccurate. Eyewitnesses (usually) aren’t intentionally lying, but rather our capacity to remember an accurate version of an event is worse than we think it is.
we more frequently see the police not even attempt to provide any sort of fabricated story that any self-respecting jerkoff could even pretend to favour
They can’t just blatantly lie anymore due to the possibility that somebody was filming the incident. It’s much easier to make up a plausible but false story where the shooting was justified, if you don’t have to worry about being contradicted by video. 20 years ago they would have said the guy was shot while charging them with gun drawn.
Now, they pretty much have to restrict their lies to things that aren’t visible, like the officer’s fear for his safety, or whether he intended the gun to fire, etc.
Holy Fuck! The perp was getting away…possibly reaching for some angel dust in his pocket which would have made him super human and virtually indestructible.
But without the video evidence, there is just cops vs civilians, and especially when shootings happened in poor neighborhoods, who was going to believe disgruntled civilians against highly trained cops?
I think there is some difference in cops’ behavior, that they are more aggressive and eager ot get some paid vacation, but not in any practical manner.
Cops are civilians! Cops are civilians! Cops are civilians! Aargh!
I would also blame the popularity of the semi-automatic pistol vs. revolver.
When you only have 6 shots, you aren’t going to be spraying people with gunfire as much.
You sound like the gun-grabbers.
Just the facts Ma’m.
Reliability uber alles.
is this shit happening more and more frequently
yes
them being caught doing it)
yes. smartphones
The Cops have become the Gatlin brothers from ‘Jolleen’.
Coward of the County?
Man, off my game. Yes.
“One day while he was working, the Gatlin boys came calling
They took turns at Becky, and there was three of them.”
Maybe the cops just hate cans?
“Die gas-pumper!”
He was born a poor black boy.
Sounds like a typical asshole.
Typical bastard, according to Google. It’s been at least 20 years since I watched that film.
Mexi’cans and Afri’cans?
“SusanM, report to the Reeducation camp. I repeat, report to the Reeducation camp immediately.”
Lynwood? More like Lynchwood.
Perhaps the pistols had free-floating firing pins and the accompanying slamfire issues. The officers did look surprised that their guns were firing.
The pistols might be mind control devices. One of the cops reloaded at the end of the video.
Obviously, he was trying to insert an empty magazine to stop it from firing, but accidentally inserted a full one instead.
Oh yeah, I didn’t think of that.
The gun banners do blame the guns as if they are sentient…
You’re all going to feel really dumb when it turns out this was a terrorist with a bomb belt trying to blow up the gas station.
Had to shoot. The guy wouldn’t stop existing.
Just got the video to load — holy shit. All joking aside, it looks like two guys calmly taking target practice, just with a human being instead of paper targets. They didn’t even try to approach the wounded man, but stayed at least 30-40 feet away, and showed absolutely ZERO concern for the people pumping gas at the gas station. Unless they’re expert marksmen, at that distance the vast majority of those bullets would have missed. Which puts the lie to the justification that they were preventing him from shooting rounds into the air.
The man getting shot in the video looks black, too. Thus this might get coverage.
According to the link provided in my comment below, the suspect is black:
So the guy who was shot was also guilty of
wearing a checked shirt?
The suspect? Suspect of what? Of getting shot? I think it’s a bit more than suspicion at this point. He got shot.
Notice how in these recent shootings, the police are releasing fewer and fewer details. They don’t want to get caught up in their own lies. They’re waiting for all the witness videos to appear so they can fabricate a believable narrative that doesn’t conflict with the video.
If I was ever witness to something like this, I would sit on the video, giving the department all the rope they need to hang themselves. Kinda like the Broward cops who removed earphones from the dead suspect, putting it in his pocket, and claiming he turned and pointed a pellet gun at them. That was the story… for months. Then, a picture taken by a witness showed up – showing his dead body with earphones deep in his ears. That cop just got indicted for manslaughter. Should have busted every single officer and supervisor that signed off on the BS reports.
More details from the sheriff’s office here.
How does one passively shoot?
Active shooter : suspect :: Passive shooter : cop.
I think it’s an SAT question.
Are the witnesses and the deputies the same people? Cuz that claim doesn’t make any sense in view of the video. When the cops start shooting, the guy is walking away from them. Either they are so slow to the draw that the guy was able to put his gun away, turn around, and start walking, or they’re full of shit.
“Either they are so slow to the draw that the guy was able to put his gun away, turn around, and start walking, or they’re full of shit.”
Clearly the solution is to punish these officers by sentencing them to paid overtime at the shooting range so they’re faster on the draw.
/DA
No deputies were injured in the incident, said Lt. Allen with the sheriff’s Century Station.
Whew! That’s the most important thing.
Totally. Why don’t you libertarians want cops to go home safely at night? NEXT TIEM YOU NEED A COP CALL A CRACKHEAD INSTEAD!121!!!
The most important instant, when the bullets strike the man, is blocked by the pillar! Was he still walking away, did he stop and turn, what happened? Luckily, it is clear from the video that others were taking video, and their viewpoints should provide more evidence of what really happened.
Cortana ate my ninja elbows and I cut her head off and smashed her head into my windows cocks and spurted a million ghosts into her dead throat.
Fill the canvas, AC.
Kill the rest of Windows 10 and its automatic updates while you’re at it.
Just a million? You sound impotent.
Cop jackers will have Trump bullets shot in their throat, bros.
The fucking angry hells act like letters bleeding ass lasers punched into the new young butts by lovely Trump cops.
i dragged Cortana from my windows and I broke the neck of this thing your dumb people in Seattle like to lube their buttholes with and my massive cock blew a load right into her nasty asshole and then we punched the goddamn asshole of our pc’s in the goddamn butthole with an actual motherfucking agile cyborg bomb which blew that shit into jesus clouds.
I love little puppies you goddambn best inviduduals on the planet called my Reason goddamn loving lost tribes. I love evry goddamn single one of your fuckig head balls and I love the fucking lasers you melt my nipples with and I just thing a tons of old swords and shit.
Day 12: Massive The Force Awakens Premiere At Oscar Night Levels
Where’s the “I don’t care” option?
The future is digital elbows and tall angry scowling metallic hells.
I will grab the balls of a future fucking casement of asshole Trumpico and pull his wires out and cut his goddamn neck of and run my goddamn lawnmower over his sleazy limbs
The future is Trump cops. And I want to smash the heads in of Trump cops. And all this metal I will jam my fat cock into and cum new galaxies the strangle Trump into going downtown.
Computer, load up Celery Man, please.
I like Paul Rudd. He’s like the only good looking comic actor who isn’t a douchebag.
Totes McGotes.
If he did have a gun, Heal said, the deputies could argue their force was justified because it incident took place on a busy street.
How does being on a busy street justify firing 30 rounds from 30 feet away with most of them missing the target?
From the LAT article:
Mr. Obayashi lives in some sort of libertopian dream world. Justify schmustify.
That narrative collapsed rather quickly.
Just a month after the county settled a different case (from 2009) where unmarked deputies killed a guy driving from a convenience store in Lynwood.
I didn’t know there was such a thing as killing-civilians insurance.
If that’s what it’s called, the premium went up a whole hell of a lot.
You need the proper soundtrack for that quote.
The bronze take our pride!
That’s a downer, how about this relaxing news item:
“With the Clippers leaving Chicago for New York on this five-game road trip, some of the players and coaches answered which city they believe has the better pizza.”
“Chicago,” said head coach Doc Rivers. “It’s not even close.”
This explains a lot.
That ex-Blackwater training comes in handy. They call it “The Lead Enema”. It’s a variation on Hemmingway’s “Lead Mouthwash”. Just a garden variety assisted suicide. Move on.
I’m so turned on right now.
“In a 2,000-square-foot industrial walk-in cooler, famed porterhouses have been dry-aged to perfection for more than 100 years.”
One hundred years seems like an awfully long time to dry-age a steak. Maybe I am not doing it right.
It’s my understanding that the cops can shoot a fleeing felon if he’s an imminent danger to others.
This is true. Also, I am holding off on this one until I get more info.
I think Ag’s point is that the cops are often a greater danger than the fleeing suspect.
Christopher Dorner wasn’t going to shoot at non-cops.
Corner was fanatical and angry enough, who knows what he’d have done?
Well, then I guess this LACSD shoot was good then – after all, who knows how fanatical and angry this guy was?
Sure they can – but he has to be *fleeing*, not walking down the street unaware that the cops are even there.
Oh and he felon has to have committed a *violent felony* (which this guy did, granted) *and* the cops have to have a reasonably belief that he is likely to go on to do the same thing in the near future – most workplace violence dudes don’t then walk down a busy street and start shooting at people.
But the police do.
“”Guy who was shot allegedly shot up his workplace earlier that day. “”
If i recall, he went into work, capped *one person*, and turned and left. Basically, killed his boss who fired him or something.
I don’t remember all the details about what happened when he hit the street. It was right in front of the empire st building during busy-lunch-hours if i recall, which rivals Times Sq. for density of sidewalk-traffic. Hitting 3 people with one round would be par for course.
Background for the video – Guy who was shot allegedly shot up his workplace earlier that day. Cops see him out on a busy street, roll up and start shooting with no warning given. Nine bystanders were wounded by police fire – 10 rounds in the victim himself.
That is incorrect.
The guy the cops shot was Mr Jeffrey Johnson, who had murdered an ex boss minutes earlier. A witness to the shooting tailed Johnson who attempted to flee the scene by running a short distance and then blending with the throngs of people commuting to work (the murder happened at 9AM).
A witness to the shooting tailed him. Johnson’s course took him past a construction zone where two cops were assigned to do ‘guard’ detail. The witness alerted the cops to the murder and pointed Mr Johnson out. The cops ran up to him and confronted him, he pulled out his gun and the rest is history.
Had they not shot scads of innocent bystanders this would have been one of the less objectionable police killings.
Trying again:
That is incorrect.
The guy the cops shot was Mr Jeffrey Johnson, who had murdered an ex boss minutes earlier. A witness to the shooting tailed Johnson who attempted to flee the scene by running a short distance and then blending with the throngs of people commuting to work (the murder happened at 9AM).
A witness to the shooting tailed him. Johnson’s course took him past a construction zone where two cops were assigned to do ‘guard’ detail. The witness alerted the cops to the murder and pointed Mr Johnson out. The cops ran up to him and confronted him, he pulled out his gun and the rest is history.
Had they not shot scads of innocent bystanders this would have been one of the less objectionable police killings.
You’re summary is correct – but I don’t see how it could have been less objectionable if they hadn’t shot 9 other people.
They knew who he was, should have known he wasn’t likely a danger to others, arranged for more support – or better, picked him up at a car wash in Seattle in a couple of weeks.
Not endanger the crowd.
The were told a guy had just murdered someone!
They had no idea who he was!
They confronted him and asked him to show his hands, and he pulled out a gun!
When a person starts to settle old scores, you don’t know how many scores they plan on settling before the day is out.
Kill first, ask questions later.
“Questions? How DARE you question authority! He’s got a gun!”
*BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM*
“Any more questions?”
Pretty pathetic. And they wonder why we jump with joy everytime some stupid cop gets clipped in the line of duty.
http://www.GoneAnon.tk
easy there Anonbot, you don’t want to get subpoenaed.
zero tolerance for non-compliance + zero tolerance for anything that might jeopardize officer safety = this
The fact that they found a gun will give the cops a free pass.
That was as botched execution as I’ve ever seen. Did you see how long the condemned squirmed before expiring? Maybe lethal injection isn’t as bad as we assumed.
The sheriff has now started to make his case for why the shooting was justified. He supposedly showed photos and videos indicating the suspect was holding a gun and approaching innocent bystanders at the gas station.
Not sure how that justifies the cops standing 30 feet away, rather than trying to close the distance so they would have less of a chance of missing the gunman and hitting said bystanders.
He’s coming…uh…right away from us!