Los Angeles sheriff's deputies shooting at dog kill teen

JimB said:
I suspect that the officer will be involved in a wrongful death suit brought by the family. The department will settle it so he won't be personally on the hook for it, but that's right since he was actually at work. It'll ruin his life for a while.

About limits on concealed carry, anyone know of a case where a self defense argument was nullified because the shooter was improperly carrying concealed in a prohibited place? Heck expand that all the way to nullification because possession of a firearm was clearly prohibited by the individual. I don't think it exists, although I imagine that there are cases where the shooter was charged for unlawful possession. My point is that you have a right to defend yourself, and although there are statutory limits on certain tools for doing so, I think it unlikely that any prosecutor would be excited about testing the constitutionality of those limits in a case where a bad guy was killed in self defense.

If I am forced to shoot someone I expect the police to take that gun. I assume that whenever an officer shoots someone, and maybe every time he discharges his weapon, the same happens. If the circumstances are questionable I might be detained or even arrested. I don't imagine that they would take any other guns unless they didn't believe that the gun I offered was in fact the gun used in the shooting, and even then they would need to get a warrant. If I shoot someone at the gas station, they'd have a tough time arguing that they should have access to any guns at home or the office; they wouldn't even know about them.

I think lots of folks get worked up because they read the news on this sort of thing and image that the situation might apply to them. It was a loud party, you're thinking the kids have the music up and are jumping in the pool, there might be a little drinking and maybe a little smoke, Timmy might even be getting a bj in the shadows. This loud party could be anything from that to a pile of tires burning in the backyard, lots of drugs, obvious gang activity and organized dog fighting, we just don't know and yet we assume that it applies to us.

Guys, sorry for being testy, I've been up for several days and am finally headed to bed.
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You bring up some valid points and some of them I don't have an answer to. I'll be the first to admit that when I read of any situation similar to this I imagine myself in that situation and how it might work out for me.
You are correct, there are a lot of factors in this story that are not yet known and they could change viewpoints once they are exposed.
 
spittinfire said:
I googled their names and see where they are all LEOs that were charged, that's as far as I've had time to look into them today. It's not a dead set rule that LEOs don't get charged with something but it does appear that they are slower to be charged with things. Now, I'm all for LEOs having a little bit of wiggle room, they're human too and we all make mistakes. My point here is, if I did the exact same thing, I would be arrested that night. Play this out in your head....

My neighbor is having a party and it's getting late so I walk over to ask him to tone it down a bit. His dog comes out and bites me, won't back off so I defend myself by shooting at the dog. Neighbor walks out and gets hit by a stray round....I've just killed my neighbor, completely by mistake, but it still happened.

I have 2 problems with this story.
One, part of the reason I own a dog is because they're an alarm and a guard. LEO or not, when a strange person walks into a dog's territory they are going to defend it. Because the animal attacks you in that situation, I don't think gives you the right to kill it. Now, if it runs into your yard and attacks you...kill away, but not when you enter its yard. If I have a dog show aggressive behavior towards me and I don't want the fight, I've yet to have one follow me too far if I back off. They were checking on a house party, it wasn't life or death.

Two, the guy wasn't smart to run into gunfire but honestly, if you heard shooting in front of your house wouldn't you at least poke your head out to see what was going on? Also, when you discharge a firearm you are responsible for that bullet until it stops. You started it's travel and you own it until the travel stops. So they're shooting at a dog that appears to be defending its territory and while doing so they kill a person who was coming out to see what the fuss was about. Nothing about this situation describes responsibility.

Now, as I mentioned before, we don't have all the details so maybe I jumped the gun and honestly I hope I did(I'll try to be a little more reserved in the future), I hope details will come out the clarify things and show that the LEOs responded reasonably.

I've thought about entering law enforcement, you and I have talked about that, so I'm not anti LEO. I am however, against LEOs not being held to the same standards as everyone else. I'm also against everyone else not being held to the same standards as LEOs. Everyone should be the same, everyone should be equal and if everyone withheld the same standard there would be a lot less issues to deal with. In order for that to happen, personal responsibility needs to be upheld and right now in our country that isn't happening.




I'm sorry, sir but I must respectfully disagree. If I were entitled to the same right of self defense I would not be subject to the laws of the land on concealed carry. I cannot carry in a number of places that an LEO can take his weapon.
Also, in a pure, clear cut self defense situation I would agree. I get attacked by a person and I kill him...LEO gets attacked by a person and he kills him...that's cut and dry. When you extend things beyond those terms it appears that the situation changes and it's in that situation that I have an issue. If a man breaks through my door right now and I kill him, LEOs will arrive and likely take my weapon...will they want all my weapons? What if they do?
If an LEO kills a person, do they take his weapon? Just his issued weapon or all his personal weapons too?
I haven't been in that situation so I honestly don't know. Hopefully I will never be in that situation but I do question it.
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In your mind the officer gets to carry in places where you can't, another way to look at it is he is REQUIRED to carry in those places. To be clear, those places are few and far between as when the officer is off duty the restrictions for him and you are the same.

In a shooting incident the officers weapon is taken and sometimes take years to get back so they aren't special there either. unrelated weapons are rarely seized from anyone unless you turn out to be a felon in possession or some other factor is involved.

Honestly the only difference between the LEO and you is he is forces to be in those situations from time to time whereas you will only be involved in an extreme fluke of circumstances.
 
Ok, so it was legitimate self defense against the dog. Given. Their bullets killed an unintentional target. Was it manslaughter? If so, voluntary or involuntary? Does being an on duty cop change the result?

If the "victim" was a gang banger POS well, good riddance, but does this change anything either?
 
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noway2 said:
Ok, so it was legitimate self defense against the dog. Given. Their bullets killed an unintentional target. Was it manslaughter? If so, voluntary or involuntary? Does being an on duty cop change the result?
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I think it depends upon facts that we do not know. That said, the death was pretty clearly an accident, so that would be a successful defense against voluntary manslaughter. The officer may also be able to claim that it was an unintended consequence of his self defense against the dog, you might find it harder to use that argument successfully because you were not required to be/stay in harms way. Of course if he had control of the dog it might be easy for anyone to argue that the dog was just the weapon and that he was really the aggressor, making self defense a viable defense.

Him being a POS shouldn't matter under the law.

I'm not a lawyer, and I didn't lookup the NC statutes on manslaughter and I don't have the facts for this case, so the conclusions above are very likely to be incorrect in some way.
 
Here is an excellent primmer on Involuntary Manslaughter.
https://nccriminallaw.sog.unc.edu/involuntary-manslaughter-a-recent-case-and-a-quick-review/

It seems the factor that would have to be decided is,

(3) (a) by an unlawful act that does not amount to a felony and is not ordinarily dangerous to life or

(b) by a culpably negligent act or omission.


Was shooting the dog negligent? He wasn't shooting into an unknown back stop and no one can judge where a ricochet will land or even if it would have enough velocity or mass to inflict harm.

Note the law doesn't differentiate between the public or Law Enforcement.
 
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Just more proof that the average police officer doesn't have the proper training. This is a department fault, where the police administration should be held liable along with the officer.
 
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Nice wikiquote. Now look at my quote. No repercussions has a solid history in LA county dating before the Rampart Scandal, Rodney King, etc.
 
Ikarus1 said:
Lets take the dangerous dog theory away. No repercussions isnt that far fetched.

How about when you are looking for one of the brotherhood that has went rogue and you shoot 2 women in a truck?

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/...very-women-dorner-manhunt-20160127-story.html
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Didn't follow your link, doesn't seem likely to be relevant, but tell me if I'm wrong.

I'm not saying that it never happens. I assume that you're not saying that it always happens. So, we agree that there are times when we think that there should have been more serious repercussions than there were for the officers involved in a shooting. Great, any other point you were making?
 
  1. All guns are always loaded. (Treat them so!)
  2. Never point the gun at anything you are not willing to destroy.
  3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target (and you have made the decision to shoot).
  4. Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.
 
NKD said:
  1. All guns are always loaded. (Treat them so!)
  2. Never point the gun at anything you are not willing to destroy.
  3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target (and you have made the decision to shoot).
  4. Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.
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#4 would nullify most every police shooting in public.
 
NKD said:
  1. All guns are always loaded. (Treat them so!)
  2. Never point the gun at anything you are not willing to destroy.
  3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target (and you have made the decision to shoot).
  4. Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.
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In this instance wasn't what was beyond the target the ground?
 
NKD said:
  1. All guns are always loaded. (Treat them so!)
  2. Never point the gun at anything you are not willing to destroy.
  3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target (and you have made the decision to shoot).
  4. Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.
Click to expand...

You come home one day, door is open, odd. You walk in and through the kitchen window you see a bad guy dragging your daughter across the yard by her hair, knife in the other hand. You believe that he must have parked on the next street over and by the time you get outside he's crossing your neighbors yard, he's 10 sec from his van, now you see it and the driver is getting out to help, he has a pistol.

To the sides are your neighbor's houses, behind the van is a house. You can shoot knowing that there might be someone hit in the crossfire, or you can let your daughter go knowing that it'll end badly for her.

I'm not gonna ask what you do, just point out that this is the type of situation the police are put in every day, it's a lose-lose and sometimes there is a tragic outcome when you have to play the odds.

BTW, I'm not making excuses for the bad shootings, and there are bad shootings, but I accept that sometimes bystanders will be hit because the alternative is to go back to night sticks and let the criminals run wild.
 
JimB said:
Didn't follow your link, doesn't seem likely to be relevant, but tell me if I'm wrong.

I'm not saying that it never happens. I assume that you're not saying that it always happens. So, we agree that there are times when we think that there should have been more serious repercussions than there were for the officers involved in a shooting. Great, any other point you were making?
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You dont remember the 2 asian women delivering papers who were shot up by the nervous LAPD because their boy Chris Dorner went rogue? They happened to be driving a vehicle that in no way resembled what a fat black male was driving.

No charges. No repercussions.

And you are most likely dealing with the same LA county DA

Heres another tired, weak, pathetic excuse

"Threats from Dorner to target law enforcement command centers "created an environment that was significantly different from other shootings,” the document said. The officers, the memo said, saw a vehicle similar to the one Dorner was believed to be driving crawling down the residential street with its hazard lights and headlights on. One officer said he mistook the sound of a newspaper hitting the ground for a gunshot, the memo said."
 
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Wait didn't this kid run into the line of fire??

Just like how people talk about moving the line for people involved in police shootings. We shouldn't be moving the line officers involved in shootings either.
 
Ikarus1 said:
You dont remember the 2 asian women delivering papers who were shot up by the nervous LAPD because their boy Chris Dorner went rogue? They happened to be driving a vehicle that in no way resembled what a fat black male was driving.

No charges. No repercussions.

And you are most likely dealing with the same LA county DA
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Yes.

The question in my mind isn't if there are examples of mistakes and errors of judgement, of course there are, it's what is the acceptable rate. For every 1,000 times an officer fires do we accept 1 unintended victim? 2? .001? It's a policy question that I can't answer, and I don't know what the failure rate is today. I agree that it'd be an interesting statistic to see by jurisdiction.
 
JimB said:
Yes.

The question in my mind isn't if there are examples of mistakes and errors of judgement, of course there are, it's what is the acceptable rate. For every 1,000 times an officer fires do we accept 1 unintended victim? 2? .001? It's a policy question that I can't answer, and I don't know what the failure rate is today. I agree that it'd be an interesting statistic to see by jurisdiction.
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If I shot up the mailman because I was too scared to effectively get the mail, I would be looking at attempted murder.

If you were a dogcatcher and shot a dogs owner because it bit you....
 
J R Green said:
In this instance wasn't what was beyond the target the ground?
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Apparently, in this case, it was a young man/boy. Unless they pull the bullet out and it came from somewhere else?



JimB said:
You come home one day, door is open, odd. You walk in and through the kitchen window you see a bad guy dragging your daughter across the yard by her hair, knife in the other hand. You believe that he must have parked on the next street over and by the time you get outside he's crossing your neighbors yard, he's 10 sec from his van, now you see it and the driver is getting out to help, he has a pistol.

To the sides are your neighbor's houses, behind the van is a house. You can shoot knowing that there might be someone hit in the crossfire, or you can let your daughter go knowing that it'll end badly for her.

I'm not gonna ask what you do, just point out that this is the type of situation the police are put in every day, it's a lose-lose and sometimes there is a tragic outcome when you have to play the odds.

BTW, I'm not making excuses for the bad shootings, and there are bad shootings, but I accept that sometimes bystanders will be hit because the alternative is to go back to night sticks and let the criminals run wild.
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Nightsticks, criminals, guy grabbing my daughter by the hair, driver with pistol, perp with knife, this is a bizarre scenario that did not happen. What you mention above couldn't get any more different than what happened. A response to loud music complaint and a dog bite is what happened.

If I am with a couple guys and a dog attacks us, we will try and handle it without any innocent people getting killed, even though we are likely all armed with handguns.

If terrorists where attacking everybody's daughters with knives and guns and white pedo vans, and there are only seconds to save them, then we wouldn't be here bitching about stray dogs and stray bullets. We would all use our heads and see that some rounds are going to be flying in that case. Of course, that's different than a potential or even actual dog bite, lol.

Now, if it was loud rap music maybe I can see emptying the magazines indiscriminately.

edited for spelling/grammar
 
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JimB said:
Yes.

The question in my mind isn't if there are examples of mistakes and errors of judgement, of course there are, it's what is the acceptable rate. For every 1,000 times an officer fires do we accept 1 unintended victim? 2? .001? It's a policy question that I can't answer, and I don't know what the failure rate is today. I agree that it'd be an interesting statistic to see by jurisdiction.
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Ask what the military accepts as their rate of "oops" shootings on innocents.
I imagine they fire their weapons alot more frequently in war zones
 
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SPST said:
Just in general. Not many places in a city where it is safe to crank off rounds.
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Precisely why you want to go ahead and think twice about dumping a mag at a dog in a public place.
 
J R Green said:
Did they teach you that any bullet can ricochet? and to never ever fire a round because of it?
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They taught me certain hard surfaces are bound to richochet, even the surface of water. Of course, I dont shoot other peoples dogs for a living
 
NKD said:
What you mention above couldn't get any more different than what happened
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I wasn't trying to describe what happened, I was creating an artificial example where someone would likely not think first about the backstop because they need to deal with the immediate harm vs contemplate all potential negative outcomes. Point is that most of us will never be in such an urgent situation (which is why I had to create one) but that we pay the police specifically to deal with those situations and in so doing they will have to make judgement calls about what is safe and what is not.

Again, there are bad apples and there are bad shootings, but arguing for zero negative outcomes just makes policing impossible.

For the record I have never shot a dog. Beat one with a stick and killed one with a bike lock, in neither case was any bystander physically harmed although I was threatened by one owner.
 
Ikarus1 said:
If I shot up the mailman because I was too scared to effectively get the mail, I would be looking at attempted murder.

If you were a dogcatcher and shot a dogs owner because it bit you....
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So which of these scenarios relates to the case at hand? Nobody shot a mailman, nobody acted out of unjustified fear, nobody intentionally shot anyone. I don't doubt that you have a point, I just don't know what it is.
 
JimB said:
So which of these scenarios relates to the case at hand? Nobody shot a mailman, nobody acted out of unjustified fear, nobody intentionally shot anyone. I don't doubt that you have a point, I just don't know what it is.
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Ok I will make this simple. There's a ******* double standard

If I shot someone's dog that was protecting their house, and killed someone I would be wearing cuffs. If shot someone's POLICE dog I would be up for killing a police officer. Are you dense, or clueless that the examples giving here demonstrate that? Jeezus
 
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J R Green said:
Did they teach you that any bullet can ricochet?
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I've known this my whole life, by I never really appreciated it until I started shooting suppressed. The sound of the bullet spinning off to parts unknown drives the point home better than having been told hundreds of times.
 
Ikarus1 said:
Ok I will make this simple. There's a ******* double standard

If I shot someone's dog that was protecting their house, and killed someone I would be wearing cuffs. If shot someone's POLICE dog I would be up for killing a police officer. Are you dense, or clueless that the examples giving here demonstrate that? Jeezus
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How is it a double standard? You think that if you are walking down the street and a dog came out and bit you you wouldn't be justified in shooting it? The only difference here is they were on the peoples property which was required by the call they were on. whereas if you were on someone else property you would have to have a compelling reason you put yourself in that situation.
 
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J R Green said:
How is it a double standard? You think that if you are walking down the street and a dog came out and bit you you wouldn't be justified in shooting it? The only difference here is they were on the peoples property which was required by the call they were on. whereas if you were on someone else property you would have to have a compelling reason you put yourself in that situation.
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You just explained it pretty well bud. The fact that they escalated a late-night sound ordinance call into a use of force (intended or not) is the difference.
 
JimB said:
I've known this my whole life, by I never really appreciated it until I started shooting suppressed. The sound of the bullet spinning off to parts unknown drives the point home better than having been told hundreds of times.
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Exactly. Most ricochets don't have the velocity to do serious damage though, I've been hit a few times myself. This case was a freak accident in that it actually killed someone.
 
Ikarus1 said:
Ok I will make this simple. There's a ******* double standard

If I shot someone's dog that was protecting their house, and killed someone I would be wearing cuffs. If shot someone's POLICE dog I would be up for killing a police officer. Are you dense, or clueless that the examples giving here demonstrate that? Jeezus
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Let me break this down into two parts.

First, someone's large dog of a breed generally presumed to be be aggressive attacks you, you shoot the dog and the ricochet hits and kills the homeowner. I agree that you'd be cuffed. I am not certain that you'd be booked, and I seriously doubt that you'd be convicted. Yes you'd have a different legal process than a cop, but the outcome would be the same.

Second, shooting a police dog is indeed bad. However, in a scenario where you are walking down the street and a rogue police dog attacks you I see no reason to think you'd be prevented from defending yourself or prosecuted for doing so. Fortunately there are few, if any, rogue police dogs and I think the law around protecting them is really intended to discourage bad guys from injuring or killing them to escape. In a situation where you were intentionally, and wrongfully, attacked by a dog and/or his handler I think you could defend yourself and even get compensation. I admit that this is a gray area, even if you aren't guilty you're not supposed to escalate violence with a police officer, hopefully neither of us are ever in this situation.

Third, is there a double standard? I don't know, but I don't see rampant evidence of one. Given the situations that we put officers in and the escalating violence by officers, criminals and even bystanders, I'm not surprised that there are an increasing number of mistakes and accidents. Perhaps you see a need to change how officers interact with the public, and with dogs, but I haven't heard a workable suggestion that would reduce the risk to bystanders.

I wouldn't say that I'm dense, more that I'm realistic about the world we live in and the jobs we ask people to do. Sometimes people die, sometimes officers die, and sometimes dogs die. We should try to manage these events to keep things from getting out of hand, but it seems to me that the legal system is doing so effectively.
 
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