LA COPS KILL BABY
grandpa_shig
5,799 Posts
anyone hear about this? yeah, they shot some dude and a baby. 
grandpa_shig
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"A toddler was shot and killed when her father used her as a shield in a gunbattle with police following an hours-long standoff, officials said. The man also died and an officer was wounded."
...right, but then I think again what kind of fuck uses a baby a sheild?
how about a dude getting shot at? not condoning or justifying eithers actions...but with only a two sentance description seems like there is some additional information required before making any conclusions?
Sorry. It keeps coming back to the second part for me.
Yes
By Alicia Wittmeyer and Richard Winton, Times Staff Writers
Authorities planned an autopsy today for a man who fired repeatedly at neighbors and police, and for his 17-month-old daughter whom he used as a shield before police stormed his apartment.
Jose Raul Lemos was embroiled in "a family dispute" that triggered his bizarre behavior Sunday night, Los Angeles Police Department Lt. Paul Vernon said this morning.
Vernon said the death of Lemos and his toddler daughter was "a tragedy" that Lemos brought on himself. No determination has been made about the cause of death as SWAT team members closed in.
"We tried to do the best we could," said LAPD Police Chief William Bratton.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said he would wait for the LAPD investigation before drawing conclusions on police conduct.
He said he "grieved" for the family of the child who was killed, and for the family of the officer who was injured.
"My heart is out to a grieving mother who lost her child," Villaraigosa said.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting of department heads in the mayor's office, Bratton said early reports indicated that the suspect "continuously had that baby in front of him while he was firing at officers."
Bratton said 11 officers engaged in gunfire with the man on three occasions. The officers were "traumatized," he said, by the fact that the child was slain.
Vernon had disclosed that three times Lemos emerged on a South Los Angeles street carrying his daughter in one arm and waving a handgun. The second time, about 5 p.m., police were trying to rescue a neighbor who had been pinned down by Lemos' gunfire.
"His firing was indiscriminate," Vernon said.
One neighbor, Raul Orduna, 35, said he was watching a soccer game with his family and when he left to run to the store, he found himself in the middle of the standoff. He said the suspect was waving a gun, with the child in the other arm.
"He was holding the kid with one arm, screaming at the police," Orduna said this morning. "He was holding the kid like right in front of him."
Another resident, Mary Bradford, 35, said she found it hard to believe that the child's death was necessary. She said she had been evacuated when the fatal shootings took place, so she did not see what happened.
"It was really disappointing to me," said Bradford, a mother. "I don't know what the protocol is for situations like this, but I know that child's safety and well-being wasn't first and foremost for the police officers.
"The minute that that child was in plain sight and in plain view, there should have never been fire back at that baby," Bradford said this morning.
Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell said Sunday that officers "used as much restraint as humanly possible. We did our best. It was tremendous stress.... The suspect dictated the outcome.
"Our deepest sympathies go to the family," he said.
An officer was shot in the shoulder during the final exchange of gunfire. The wounded officer, who was not identified, was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and was expected to recover, said Vernon.
The shooting came more than two hours after Lemos held up his daughter as a human shield when officers first responded at 3:50 p.m. about a man firing from the intersection of 104th Street and Avalon Boulevard.
Lemos appeared "despondent and crazed," Vernon said.
Police said Lemos was armed with one weapon and was randomly shooting into the street. Officers said they believed that he was on drugs or intoxicated.
After Lemos fired shots in the direction of the first officer on the scene, the officer fired back but did not hit him, police said.
Lemos then retreated into an apartment building, where police said he held the girl as a hostage.
Additional officers, including hostage negotiators, soon arrived at the scene, and the LAPD went on tactical alert.
Negotiations with Lemos continued for nearly two hours as members of LAPD's SWAT team communicated with him by phone. The department also used psychologists and crisis specialists and gave Lemos numerous opportunities to surrender, McDonnell said.
Just after 5 p.m., police exchanged gunfire with Lemos as they tried to give cover to a woman trapped in the standoff. She escaped safely.
About 6:20 p.m., Lemos emerged from the building with the toddler. He was holding a weapon and again firing erratically, shooting an LAPD tactical officer in the shoulder.
As other officers moved in to rescue their wounded colleague, police exchanged gunfire with Lemos. The girl also was hit.
Police said it was unclear who fired the shot that killed the girl.
Lemos' rampage may have been spurred by a custody battle, Vernon said, but declined to give details.
Villaraigosa visited the shooting scene Sunday night and went to the hospital to meet the wounded officer and his family.
LAPD regulations state that officers should fire only "when it reasonably appears necessary" to protect themselves or others from death or serious injury.
LAPD officers have fired on hostage-takers in other instances, including a November standoff at the Mexican Consulate when an officer who had SWAT training fatally wounded Manuel Ortiz Gonzalez, 19, who was holding a pregnant woman hostage at gunpoint. The gun was later discovered to be a starter pistol. Gonzalez died at a hospital. His hostage was unhurt.
Sunday's shooting shocked neighbors.
Robert Cole, 69, said he left his apartment to see what was going on after he saw the street full of LAPD patrol cars and officers.
"If there was one, there was 50," said Cole, who lives two doors down from the scene of the hostage situation.
Cole said officers told him that he had to go back inside. From his window, he said he could not see what was taking place but still listened. About an hour after police told him he couldn't stay outside, Cole said he heard gunfire.
"I said, 'Gee whiz, that was heavy gunfire,' " said Cole, who served five years in the Navy. "It was heavy caliber and it sounded like a 9-millimeter to me."
Cole said he heard several shots and two different types of gunfire. Although he said it was not unusual to hear an occasional shot fired in the neighborhood late at night, the timing -- before dark -- and the number of shots surprised him.
He said he had grown accustomed to fireworks still being set off in the wake of the Fourth of July holiday, but knew the difference immediately.
"I can tell a gunshot from a firework," he said. "I can tell that any day."
Seriously, I'm no police apologist, but you have to figure this is true, and something we won't usually think about in these situations when it's so easy to see cops as undisciplined and reckless - the dude that killed that poor helpless child is probably at risk of taking his own life today. I don't generally like cops, but I damn sure would never want to be one, either.
as soon as the bullets started to fly, it was pretty much a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for both sides. i just hope it was an instant death.
ps. je n'aime pas le po-po.
non-lethal weapons perhaps? i'm kind of on the other end of the spectrum -- i think cops have a tough, fucked up, often thankless job that i would never ever want to do, but i think they PROBABLY made some bad moves here. hard to know when removed from the situation, but if the shooting lasted two hours, i dont really understand why it was standard lapd officers returning hand gun fire. there should have been a swat sniper on a roof or something. tactical failure.
that says a lot. your job as a cop is to be in control of the situation and dictate the outcome.
In addition If bad dude was shooting at cops while using baby as shield, why not clear the area of civilians let him use up his bullets, then move in and Steven Segal/Wesley Snipes his ass. wondering...
um, cause that only works in movies? seriously, a guy is walking around spraying the neighborhood with bullets and you're saying "oh just stay out of his way, he'll wear himself out".
that is actually pretty much policy for a situation like this.
1) clear the area of civilians
2) wait for the suspect to calm down, wear out, slip up or otherwise provide an opportunity to bring the situation to resolution without further endangering civilians or police officers.
happened in my neighborhood a few months back. dude wanted on a murer rap took two people hostage in an apartment building. the cops blocked off about 6 square blocks, cleared out the entire block, put a helicopter overhead and waited him out for about 10 hours, at 6am he flipped, came out firing and got taken out by a sniper on a nearby roof.
after two hours i would think they should have been in place for a response like that, but who knows, none of us were there.
it's obviously terrible that the baby was killed, but when a dude is waving a gun around and shooting it, the cops are gonna have to make a hard decision about what to do. I would say they did what was necessary in a very difficult and dangerous situation, and unfortunately, the worst possible scenario ended up happening. But at they may also have prevented other deaths by taking the guy out when they did.
Wouldn't matter, those will kill a baby anyway.
Please. That's hardly realistic.
First off, I doubt those of you taking the cops side of this line would be supporting them if this was your child or love one. YES its a tough job, but the job duty is explicitly clear "To Serve & Protect".
Sure the details are still surfacing from this sunken ship. With the info we do have, in conjunction with a video clip from CNN, to me it is clear the LAPD failed miserably. It is also a failure of upper management (trinkle down effect).
Think of it this way...All those hero firefighters & cops on that tragic Spetember day were willing to risk their lives to save people. Today, certain members of the LAPD took a baby's life to save themselves.
whoa
I wasn't there, but there's always more than one way to approach a situation.
Once a cop gets shot or killed it's pretty much SOP to kill or seriously fuck up the one who did it. It's not that big of a surprise to me that they killed him, but for real, you don't think there were alternatives to the way it went down?
We'll probably never know.
Day, did you get my PM?
you're making cops way too black and white. the cops at 9/11 weren't heroes. the cops the other day in LA weren't evil. in both cases they were just human beings doing their jobs the best they could. it's very easy to sit back in your cubicle and say they failed. playing the "if that was YOUR child" line is tired, because it's make believe. if the cops didn't take that guy out, he easily could've killed more people. and if one of those people "were my child", i'd probably be more upset. i don't think these cops killed this baby to save themselves, i think they acted the best they could in a bad situation to protect the people in the surrounding area.
also, to above posters, this was a SWAT team, not regular cops. honestly, i think this was a case of someone who had a deathwish and wanted to take some people with him, "death by cop" they call it...
"Bratton said there was a conflict within the family revolving around Pena's cocaine and alcohol use and abuse of family members."
"The Los Angeles Times reported that Pena, 34, had been served with a temporary restraining order on Saturday involving allegations of child molestation."
"Pena, 34, was holding his daughter Suzy when he opened fire on police last Sunday, unleashing 40 shots[/b] in three separate exchanges. He and his daughter died in a hail of gunfire after he confronted police in an alley behind his apartment"
if you honestly think you could have done better in the above situation, i tip my hat to you. life is tough and that was a VERY VERY tough situation. save your beef with cops for Rodney King and Diallo situations. cause honestly when psychopaths go on the warpath, it's one of the few times i'm glad we have cops.