After TheCrafsMan lifted your mood (I hope), now it’s time to come crashing down. The name of the young woman murdered by the cops has been released to the public.
Her name was Valentina Orellana-Peralta. She was 14 years old, shopping for her quinceañera dress. She was hoping to be an engineer someday.
The linked article also includes a video of the asshole cop in action, which I won’t be including here. The cop rushes in to the store eagerly with his rifle, turns a corner, sees the guy we assume had been attacking people with a bike lock, and pop-pop-pop instantly opens fire. The cops did not take any time to deliberate, to argue, to try to settle the problem relatively peacefully, and there was a whole mob of cops idling around the store who could have easily taken the alleged attacker down by physically jumping on him, or hitting him with their nightsticks. But no, that guy was marked for death from the instant the trigger-happy cop lifted his big gun out of his car.
Lots of people are noticing that.
Many critics of the police have expressed outrage over aspects of the shooting — the speed with which an officer opened fire on Mr. Elena Lopez although he did not have a gun, the fact that police officers did not ensure that the area was clear of bystanders.
“You guys don’t have the ability to just tackle him to the floor?” said Chloe Cheyenne Rogers, an activist who started the Justice for Valentina petition, which has nearly 5,000 signatures. “You can’t use any parts of your training to be able to take that person in a way that doesn’t include your assault rifle?”
The LA PD North Hollywood (@lapdnorthhwddiv) has now deleted their Twitter account. The police chief is calling it “a chaotic incident”. The ass-covering has begun.
The LAPD is certainly covered by ass.
They’ll probably “defund the police” by throwing guns and money at them.
Grabbing a rifle to deal with a scuffle is so obviously wrong. Oooops the cops need more training lets spend millions instead of taking their guns away.
It’s the Hell-A PD just doing business as usual. I doubt much has changed since the Rampart scandal in the 90s.
Once again.
Forget the nightsticks.
The police use batons these days, more reach and more leverage.
The police seem to have lots of helments, batons, shields, and armor when they are dealing with peaceful and some not so peaceful demonstrations.
They also have an endless supply of rubber bullets.
It just seems that they could have started off with the less lethal tactics and worked their way up from there. As pointed out in the OP, the police did outnumber Mr. Bike Lock by quite a bit.
It’s terrible. From the video, some of those other cops are telling the shooter, who seems to be named “Jones,” where to go.
This is curtesy of the caption in the video:
“He’s hitting her now on the right-hand side”
“Slow it down, Jones.” “Slow it down.” – Note the caption did not include “Jones” in this one, but it was clearly audible. It also sounded like it may have been two different cops speaking here.
That was then followed by a “Hold up, hold up Jones. Hold up, hold up” as he was approaching the aisle where Lopez was.
So, yeah, why couldn’t all of those other cops have done something else? They seriously had to send in a guy with a rifle? They should all be charged with murder of Lopez and reckless homicide for the girl, Orellana-Peralta, because they all knew what they were doing and how this was going to end.
Whatever happened to tasers? Cops love those and they all have them. Nope, go straight to the heavy firepower.
The chest camera footage was released.
The officer with the weapon of war pushed no less than five armed officers out of the way, all of whom were staying well clear of the assailant with the bike lock as he pummeled a worker with the lock and exclaiming “She’s bleeding!”, while never deploying a taser, night stick or even spit ball from a slingshot.
In he went, brief warning and three rapid fire rounds, aimed with a holographic sight that should have prevented missing, to miss with one round that struck a minor child in a dressing room in the chest.
Gee, I wonder what cops would do if we gave them bayonets?
If the guy had a knife, would the cops have deployed an antitank rocket? Howitzer?
re wzrd1 @7:
Continue to shoot people, but their gun would look really cool with that bayonet attached.
Can’t wait for the LAPD to investigate themselves and find themselves clear of any wrongdoing, and give that police officer a 2 week paid vacation to conduct such an investigation of course.
I knew this would be posted about here. I live out here that is there is the reason I am never in any way confrontational when speaking to police you never know when you are going to be talking to one of those guys.
The fact that the cops out numbered the lone suspect has never been an issue that ever seems to be used to modify the tactics, been that way publicly since Rodney King
That young girl was murdered – using a battle rifle indoors of a mall is a deliberate attempt to murder bystanders.
EVEN if he had hit his target the odds are sizeable the round would continue on, and in that environment there IS NO SAFE direction in which to fire.
The irresponsibilty of discharging that weapon without absolute need is a crime of depraved heart (in the U.S known as reckless endangerment) constituting motive for a charge of murder.
fentex @ #11 — He did hit the “target”…the guy causing the trouble in the mall that brought the LAPD in the first place. Two people were killed yesterday. One because he was causing a stir and taking swings at people (or so I gather), the other because she was quietly trying on a party dress. Doesn’t much matter what you do, you can end up dead really quick in a society where “shoot first, ask questions later” is a basic rule of thumb particularly for cops but really anyone who considers themselves under threat by something…or other. Of course, pulling out any gun and firing in a busy shopping mall is pretty crazy thing to do unless the officer could clearly identify an active shooter. That doesn’t appear to be the case. Per what I read, the original call to LAPD reported “gun shots” but that could have been a disturbed person banging garbage cans.
I understand cops being concerned about getting shot. I do not under stand cops who are afraid of getting a scratch. Scared cops are dangerous.
According to those bastards at the guardian,the LAPD killed 5 people in 9 days this month .
In 2021 they have shot 38,with 18 of them dying.
@10 Don’t know if the US border patrol are as trigger happy as the LAPD,but during our last trip to the US we had to
go through a check point near the Salton Sea,I didn’t understand that I was suppose to stop.
Didn’t hit the barrier or anything like that,I apologised to the nice officer,and he was fine with that.
But if we had been black or Latino,would it have turned out differently?