I’m concerned about the two recent shooting incidents involving Sheriff’s Deputies in Santa Clarita. But I’m not sure what I should be concerned about, in particular.
Should I worry that some dopey criminal-types apparently can’t obey lawful orders to not make sudden movements and not reach for suspicious metallic objects when asked to by Deputies? That’s par for the course, I think, and it’s exactly what law enforcement professionals train for. They are taught to deal with all manner of non-compliant suspects in difficult situations, and they are usually very clear in their (shouted) instructions.
Clearly, not much can be done to train dopey criminal-types to obey those orders. They either will or they won’t, and Deputies are -or should be- prepared either way. That’s their job.
Perhaps I should be concerned that Deputies in both situations mistook objects for guns? I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here. In both situations, it was night time in presumably poorly lit environs where said dopey criminal-types weren’t complying with the Deputies’ demands.
I do wonder how they interpreted what they saw in the context of the suspects’ physical location. Both suspects were in their cars at the time; one apparently pointed a shiny object out the window toward deputies, the other reached under his seat. At what point precisely did the Deputies involved feel threatened? Do protocols regarding use-of-force distinguish between a potentially violent suspect who’s seated in his car vs someone who’s standing and mobile?
Maybe I should be worried about the shooting skills of the SCV’s finest? Let’s review the facts here. Deputies in both situations felt threatened. As a result, they escalated their response from non-lethal means to the most lethal means available to them: they shot their guns. There’s no middle ground here; law enforcement is not trained to shoot to disable a non-compliant suspect. If they aim and fire their guns, they do so with the intent to kill the suspect.
But the three Deputies who fired their duty weapons in the two incidents missed and struck the suspects’ cars instead. That’s a lucky break for the suspects, both of whom were not armed with a firearm, but it troubles me.
If these Deputies had been more accurate, if the situation had played out like their training dictates it should, then we’d have two dead or injured young people in Santa Clarita, who’s crimes were allegedly fighting and tagging.
I suppose we should be thankful they weren’t more accurate (and doubly thankful no bystanders were hit).
Maybe I should be concerned that local media appears uninterested in probing for more details. We had to learn today from KNBC 4, a Los Angeles TV news station that doesn’t give a hoot about Santa Clarita, that Internal Affairs detectives in the downtown LASD headquarters are investigating at least one of these incidents.
True, The Signal followed up on what happens to Deputies who fire their guns (nothing), but we’ve not seen any details on how these incidents are being investigated out of our local media. NBC simply called LASD Headquarters, bypassing the SCV Sheriff’s office, and got the story.
No media source in the SCV or elsewhere has bothered to look for any witnesses to the shootings. I realize we would never trust the words of the suspects themselves, but we could at least ask around to see if anyone saw what went down. One of the shootings occurred in a parking lot on a Friday night at 8pm, after all.
No one doubts that law enforcement officers have one of the toughest jobs imaginable. No one doubts how difficult it is to make a split-second, life or death decision, at night-time, and with non-compliant suspects complicating the situation.
But we owe it to ourselves to ask these questions and to probe this further. We invest an incredible amount of authority and power in our law enforcement officers, and it’s our job as the public to ensure they use it effectively and wisely.