Posted on 07/13/2010 4:07:32 AM PDT by marktwain
LAS VEGAS -- The three Las Vegas police officers involved in Saturday's shooting at a Costco have been identified.
Officers William Mosher, Joshua Stark and Thomas Mendiola shot and killed Erik Scott at a Summerlin Costco. Officers say Scott had a weapon and pointed it at them.
Mosher has been with Metro for five years. Stark and Mendiola have been with Metro for under two years. All are assigned to the Metro's Northwest Area Command.
This isn't the first time Officer Mosher has been involved in a shooting. In April of 2006, Officer Mosher and Officer John Wiggins shot and killed Aaron Jones. According to police, Jones rammed his car into Wiggins while trying to escape arrest. Jones died at the scene.
A coroner's inquest into the 2006 shooting found Officers Mosher and Wiggins justified.
Police say they were called to the scene of Saturday's shooting when Scott started damaging store merchandise and had a gun visible inside the store. When officers arrived, people were leaving the store and an employee pointed out Scott to police.
Police say officers saw Scott's weapon and told him to lay down on the ground. They say he pulled the gun out at pointed it at an officer. That's when police opened fire.
Emergency workers transported Scott to UMC, but he died a short time later. A second gun was found on Scott during transport.
But Scott's attorney contradicts what police say happened. Attorney Ross Goodman, son of Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman, says Scott did not point his gun at police or act in a threatening manner. He says eyewitnesses have reached out to him contradicting Metro's story. He is still waiting to see surveillance video of the incident.
The three officers involved in Saturday's shooting have been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of a coroner's inquest.
Wow! Were you there? Did you see him damaging property and rampaging the store? It sounds to me like a WHOLE BUNCH of people over reacted!
I legally CC all the time. If a guy in a store starts waving a gun and rampaging, I’ll make sure I take him out while you hide under the produce...
It’s EASY to side with the police. Do a little research first... The case in New Mex was domestic.
At this point, I find it just as likely that the second gun is a throw-down to help (as you note) the cops' case. Most cops are fine and upstanding public servants that are in it for the right reasons. But there are more ignorant, overzealous, and downright evil bastards "protecting us" than will ever make me comfortable. The Atlanta PD shooting of a 92 year old woman in a botched raid and the subsequent planting of evidence and coverup opened my eyes permanently.
This case stinks to high heaven. I pray the CCTV video A) exists undamaged, B) is in control of an independent agency, and C) is clear enough to resolve this without question one way or another.
The “blue wall of silence” doesn’t work very well when a camera is present.
“The guy was damaging/rampaging in the store and had an exposed gun,...”
Not true, and I wasn’t even there! Better read some eyewitness stories before you make stuff like that up!
Yep, either a totally normal, upstanding guy suddenly had a breakdown one day (which is definitely possible), or a set of circumstances developed where an innocent man was gunned down by some overzealous and/or poorly trained cops- who may now be trying to cover it up.
CC
Then I’m sure there is security camera footage showing this. In fact it’s probably been released right? Oh wait, it hasn’t. Wonder why?
I think it might be a good idea to know which areas Officer Mosher is assigned to patrol, and to make a determined effort never to go there.
I suspect your theory is the correct one.
Statements from the victims employer...”model employee, best salesman”, graduate of military academy, etc don't tend to support a rampaging lunatic creating panic.
For the sake of argument, let's say that he did become angry and “destroy merchandise”. What would be the sense of driving him, along with all the customers in the store, out the front door and into a confrontation with police officers?
Albuquerque Police now wear minature video cameras clipped on their uniform (in addition to sound recording). Some officers bought them prior to being issued.
APD does a pretty good job, the first officer was on scene of the workplace shooting yesterday within a minute and they were removing the wounded and moving in on the shooter (who offed himself - another brave guy) within three minutes.
If you have some videos of the event, come forth ~ you will be needed as a witness.
In the meantime everybody else in the country is going to get busy organizing a ruinous boycott of COSTCO. People cannot feel safe there if employees can call in shooters like that.
It's unacceptable - all of it.
No one is certain what happened at this point. So take it down a few notches.
I take that back. We do know a few things. One, we know that an employee called police and said the guy had a gun. Two, we know that people were thrown into a panic when the police arrived. Three: we know that the police shot the man dead and that he in fact had at least one concealed weapon. Four, we know that the dead man was a graduate of West Point and Duke, that he held down a good job, and that he had taken the precaution to obtain a concealed carry permit.
There are factual scenarios consistent with those facts that do not make the dead man out to be a crazed, gun-waving nutjob.
I wil also say this: people tend to see what they want to see, what they expect to see. If the police arrived at COSTCO expecting to see a crazed, gun-waving nutjob, that's what they are likely to see even if in fact all that happened is that a gun-hating employee saw an ordinary guy acting ordinary, and spied a concealed carry weapon on him.
A tragic case. It is NOT going to impact my concealed carry habits in the slightest.
“any of them had tried this in the Helmand, he would be right along Stan Macchrystal right now.”
It’s an interesting point, but I’m not sure.
I feel like this cop will be convicted of manslaughter if it’s anything like the eyewitness story. Probably no jail time, but lose his job.
A slogan "COSTCO DELANDA EST"
"It was like he was trying it out," the man said. "I think possibly he was trying to see if it would fit in his backpack."
link
ANY motion, including “getting down on the ground” would be taken by these officers as threatening and they would shoot. Once they have shot him once they have to finish the job so he can’t tell a story different from theirs. The constant flood of stories of cops shooting dogs who barked or who took no notice of the cops and the many women who get multiply “tazed” implies to me that people join the force with the expectation that they get to shoot or at least “taze” someone if they go out on a call. Maybe it is in the union contract. Hereabouts I would not hesitate to call police to a situation on the beach because the beach police are part of the tourist industry and don’t wish to scare off the tourists. In the burbs back of the beach I would not call a policeman to a situation for any reason. They do not feel constrained by the need to keep the goodwill of any tourists.
It'll certainly impact mine.
I plan to start *physically* practicing the art of safely surrendering to the cops just like I dryfire and live-fire at the range. I'll add a traffic stop scenario to that as well. Just educating yourself and tossing it around in your mind doesn't seem to be enough anymore.
This incident has really ramped up my discomfort with our encroaching police state.
I read another acct that witnessed the so-called berserk behavior.
The witness said the guy was trying to see if some sports drinks fit into a backpack he was thinking about purchasing. The employee noticed the gun on his person and confronted him. The only thing the witness heard was, this would not be a problem in TX. The employee walked away and went to another employee and the store was then told to evacuate. The witness said once outside he did see the gun in a holster,the victim he was told different orders by each officer. The witness said he looked to reach for the gun to remove it, not threaten, he never made it to the holster before they shot him.
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