Posted on 02/15/2013 12:26:17 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Ohio AG Mike DeWine is releasing evidence from an incident involving Cleveland police officers that took place in November. It started with a car chase. Then, it escalated. Badly.
CLEVELAND, Ohio — A November car chase ended in a “full blown-out” firefight, with glass and bullets flying, according to Cleveland police officers who described for investigators the chaotic scene at the end of the deadly 25-minute pursuit.
But when the smoky haze — caused by rapid fire of nearly 140 bullets in less than 30 seconds — dissipated, it soon became clear that more than a dozen officers had been firing at one another across a middle school parking lot in East Cleveland.
Both the passenger and the driver of the car were killed in the fierce firefight. Neither, it turns out, were armed.
So what happened? Well, it turns out that the 13 police officers who fired were shooting at each other. So when they thought they were under fire, they were — just from their own fellow officers.
It was all a case of mistakes piling up on top of one another.
Officers recounted for investigators seeing guns, objects that looked like guns or one of the suspects loading guns in the middle school parking lot — which could not have been possible at that point in the incident. No gun was found in the car.
Some also believed that one officer who ducked behind a car that was hit by the Malibu was either run over or shot – heightening their fears.
The report also shows that many of the officers’ worries were based on possibly erroneous information broadcast over police radio to the approximately 60 police vehicles involved in the chase...
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Understandable mistake, considering the stress and all. Move on, nothing to see here.
One other thought. The innocents would have been guilty if they did have a gun.
I heard that one-third of the Cleveland police force was involved-on one side or the other. This is hardly the case of a bad apple panicking.
No, “law enforcement officers” should not be armed. Get rid of them, the swat teams and the laws that make them more equal than the rest of us rabble. Go back to having Peace Officers that aren’t a bunch of badge heavy thugs.
if cops will be the only people allowed to carry a gun then they'll require a permit for us to carry a cop
What can you say? From what I’m hearing of these kinds of incidents, it seems pretty clear that police departments around the country need more, and more realistic training. Of course, the department leaders won’t spend the money to get them trained and prevent incidents like this.
In these stories, I always feel bad for the passenger, in this case a female, maybe dating the guy?
She goes out with the wrong guy, he reacts stupidly to a traffic stop, and then, just like blacks are always taught, all the police start chasing them and shooting at them.
And while the driver can be faulted because he should have stayed stopped in his vehicle and let the police to their job, so far as we can tell, the female did absolutely nothing. She was a hostage to the guy, and she was gunned down.
But the police reports will never call the passenger of a car a “hostage”. Even though it is clear from this report that she never had a chance to get out, once he decided to flee the initial stop. The car was always going at a high speed, until it stopped in the parking lot, where a police officer shot at HER. Would you jump out of a car when, without warning, a police officer just starting shooting you?
At that point, you might also feel bad for the guy. He made a lot of stupid decisions, but maybe when he got to the parking lot, he realized it was up. Maybe his girl was saying “just stop, give up, let me out.”. And then some police officer starts shooting — not at you, but at your girlfriend, who did nothing wrong. Maybe she was hit at that point, and he realized if they were going to survive, he HAD to get out.
Just to be clear, if you read the entire prosecuter’s summary, you’ll find that the female is certainly no innocent female, having multiple run-ins with the law.
None of which have any bearing on what happened on this particular evening, and none of which could have influenced the police in making decisions, because they had no idea who was in the car.
My point being that the police made a decision that the passenger was a participant in mayhem, but in this case that was a bad assumption. All because of a car backfire...
It was mistaken identity on the law enforcement's part. The guy was in a similar looking car.
I would guess that over the past decade, there are hundreds of incidents where an innocent is killed or wounded by the police.
Chased? Who was chased?
How did our free American Republic get along without ANY police departments before the late 1800s?
Obviously if you reduce magazine sizes to 7 rounds, we won’t have to worry about 30 second firefights, we could reduce that down to 3-7 seconds - making sure no one ever gets injured.
Going back under my bridge now.
Duh,,,
A total monopoly on force by the police misses the underlying purpose of police.
Every adult citizen of good character *are* the law. The police are hired guns to do the anti-crime work that the public does not want to do.
This means to keep the watch 24/7, to clean up and collect evidence at crime scenes, and to doggedly pursue and formally apprehend criminals.
So saying that only the police should have guns is foolish, like saying that only carpenters should have carpentry tools, or only gardeners should have lawn and garden tools.
Just like the LAPD in the Dorner episode.
Fear
Poor Training
Affirmative Action
Political Correctness
All lead to civilian collateral damage.
why do cops have guns?
It’s not to protect the public, it’s to protect themselves.
Training can’t make up for low quality people who are fearful and don’t have good judgment, yet who are armed with guns, badges and union and government protection, and sent to work daily among city folk in a complex society.
I wonder if sheriff departments tend to be as whacky and kill crazy as city police.
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