Costco shooter was a cop... and all 3 victims were unarmed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I was in the College Park Ikea a few months ago and a pretty large man aggressively rushed towards me. I stopped walking immediately and turned to face him. He stopped maybe 3 feet away from me and just stared at me, with his fists clenched. You know what I did? I assessed the situation, realized he was with a group of people, and a woman was coming over to get him. He clearly had some sort of intellectual disability, so I just stepped away from him and let the woman guide him away.

These cops surely have much more training in assessing situations than I do. If I can diffuse a situation in Ikea, surely these cops can diffuse situations as well before they turn deadly. Police are way too eager to arbitrarily impose the death penalty on people who are just out in public going about their lives, and it must stop.

Well, that's great, but him being with a group of people was actually no guarantee that he wasn't going to attack you. You didn't come through this unscathed due to your good judgment. You got lucky.

The cop in Costco and his child were seemingly unscathed, so the "attacker" couldn't have been too violent.

You're not required to permit an attacker to inflict any harm on you before you defend yourself. Try again.

And you don't go about defending yourself by shooting someone. If someone punched you, you punch him back, not shoot him dead,.Trigger happy cop.

You aren't a lawyer. There is no requirement to respond with equal force. The law allows for you to defend yourself. If you can make the argument that this was an appropriate response it would be legal. You need to consider far more than punching.

Or you can turn and run to safety. Why is that never an option here? Costcos are huge.

The last officer to do that is facing charges for dereliction of duty. Good idea.

You are a special kind of stupid.

I can play this game. Aren't you a bright little shining star?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Police use of force is judged by a "reasonable officer" standard, not a "reasonable person" standard, the assumption being that police should have a lower standard because some of them sometimes have to make "split second" decisions, and they somehow ostensibly possess arcane knowledge not available to mere ordinary people. Expect this to be in full play here.

huh? show me the case law on that. he was acting as a civilian.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Why does an off-duty cop wear a gun?

Because you are never off duty. You are always a target.

Everyone's just starring in their own little John Wick movie these days, aren't they.

+100. I have a cop who is an LEO and I see the stuff he and his wife post to LEO facebook pages and it seems like they all sit around hyping each other up about how they're under siege at all times. The more paranoid and histrionic you are about the grave danger of the job, and the more filled with rage toward the perceived out group, the better LEO/LEO spouse you're being. It's gross.

Given the posts around here, I think they might be right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does an off-duty cop wear a gun?

Because you are never off duty. You are always a target.

Everyone's just starring in their own little John Wick movie these days, aren't they.

+100. I have a cop who is an LEO and I see the stuff he and his wife post to LEO facebook pages and it seems like they all sit around hyping each other up about how they're under siege at all times. The more paranoid and histrionic you are about the grave danger of the job, and the more filled with rage toward the perceived out group, the better LEO/LEO spouse you're being. It's gross.

Given the posts around here, I think they might be right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was in the College Park Ikea a few months ago and a pretty large man aggressively rushed towards me. I stopped walking immediately and turned to face him. He stopped maybe 3 feet away from me and just stared at me, with his fists clenched. You know what I did? I assessed the situation, realized he was with a group of people, and a woman was coming over to get him. He clearly had some sort of intellectual disability, so I just stepped away from him and let the woman guide him away.

These cops surely have much more training in assessing situations than I do. If I can diffuse a situation in Ikea, surely these cops can diffuse situations as well before they turn deadly. Police are way too eager to arbitrarily impose the death penalty on people who are just out in public going about their lives, and it must stop.

Well, that's great, but him being with a group of people was actually no guarantee that he wasn't going to attack you. You didn't come through this unscathed due to your good judgment. You got lucky.

The cop in Costco and his child were seemingly unscathed, so the "attacker" couldn't have been too violent.

You're not required to permit an attacker to inflict any harm on you before you defend yourself. Try again.

And you don't go about defending yourself by shooting someone. If someone punched you, you punch him back, not shoot him dead,.Trigger happy cop.

You aren't a lawyer. There is no requirement to respond with equal force. The law allows for you to defend yourself. If you can make the argument that this was an appropriate response it would be legal. You need to consider far more than punching.

Or you can turn and run to safety. Why is that never an option here? Costcos are huge.

The last officer to do that is facing charges for dereliction of duty. Good idea.

He was on duty.

[Anonymous]

I hope the put that cop on death row where he belongs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The man who supposedly assaulted the police officer was a big guy. I can see how the police officer would have felt threatened being attacked by that guy especially since he was carrying his young child.

If the elderly parents tried to physically intervene in some way, hitting the officer or otherwise getting physical with him, that may have prompted the shooting. We don't know what happened.

I hope they got this on surveillance video.

And yet here you are creating your own narrative.

According to the links posted in the Op, the officer was holding his own small child when the man attacked him unprovoked. The man was shot and killed and somehow the man's parents were also shot. My *guess* is that the parents were trying to protect/defend their son and wound up being physically aggressive with the officer in the process which prompted the officer to shoot them. I'm not saying that is what happened, obviously I was not there, but common sense says that the parents must have somehow been involved in the altercation. The officer wasn't just shooting random shoppers. He specifically shot those 3 people after he was attacked by the man.

I'll leave it to the investigators to determine what exactly happened and whether or not the officer acted appropriately. From my armchair quarterback position I'm finding it hard to believe that the officer felt threatened by those 2 elderly parents but I have also not seen the videotape of the incident.

[Anonymous]

Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989). Police use of force judged by objective reasonableness standard as compared to police, not non-police.

Police are always technically on duty. Always have arrest powers. Never have to retreat if they can articulate why they reasonably believed why a violation of law was taking place, even if that was not actually the case.

Firearm carried pursuant to office, not LEOSA. Cop will seek refuge in police status.

Bad shooting? Probably. But until all the facts are in, nobody knows. But like it or not, police are held to a lower standard in the use of force, and study how to articulate their rationale for using it.

[Anonymous]

So sad. Tell me again about the myth of the "good guy with a gun."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989). Police use of force judged by objective reasonableness standard as compared to police, not non-police.

Police are always technically on duty. Always have arrest powers. Never have to retreat if they can articulate why they reasonably believed why a violation of law was taking place, even if that was not actually the case.

Firearm carried pursuant to office, not LEOSA. Cop will seek refuge in police status.

Bad shooting? Probably. But until all the facts are in, nobody knows. But like it or not, police are held to a lower standard in the use of force, and study how to articulate their rationale for using it.

that says zero about a shooting committed while off duty in the name of self-defense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989). Police use of force judged by objective reasonableness standard as compared to police, not non-police.

Police are always technically on duty. Always have arrest powers. Never have to retreat if they can articulate why they reasonably believed why a violation of law was taking place, even if that was not actually the case.

Firearm carried pursuant to office, not LEOSA. Cop will seek refuge in police status.

Bad shooting? Probably. But until all the facts are in, nobody knows. But like it or not, police are held to a lower standard in the use of force, and study how to articulate their rationale for using it.

that says zero about a shooting committed while off duty in the name of self-defense.

also, it's a civil tort case, not a criminal case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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An duty cop shooting 3 shoppers in a Costco is not enforcing the law. Step away from the LSD.

PP cited a duty to retreat in CA. Response addressed lack of duty to retreat on part of police. Then you chime in with your witty personal insult.

Rest assured that the officer in question is going to assert that he was acting legally to defend himself, his child and others when he was brutally blindsided without provocation. You don't have to like the information provided but attacking the messenger on a subject you know nothing about hardly raises the tenor of the discussion.

The fact is that there should not be special privileges for police. They should be judged by more rigorous standards, not less rigorous. They should be expected to act reasonably and not be able to escalate situations in the guise of merely carrying out the law. Not relevant here, but vehicle pursuits are a perfect example. Police pursue a stolen vehicle at high speed. A property crime, but they endanger everyone they pass.

He's off duty, which means he was not acting as a cop. He was just a guy in Costco. You keep chiming in as some kind of false authority and twisting further and further from reality to keep justifying a murder. First you said that you (general you, not cops alone) can shoot someone in self defense, and defense does not have to be proportional to the threat. That was 100% wrong. Then you said cops don't have to react with proportional force; in fact cops are supposed to escalate situations. That is also wrong. Now you've pulled my quote, bizarrely edited it to say "an duty cop" instead of "an off-duty cop" and are coloring in your fever dream with more embellishments ("brutally blindsided without provocation"?), while accusing me of personally insulting you (??) and simultaneously backpedalling to say that truly you don't think the cop was right in his behavior, after a full page of trying to be his pro bono comments section lawyer without understanding the law.

You can't draft the narrative and then call yourself the messenger. You tried to prove that he was within his rights, when he was not. Now you're trying to write a fictional account of a man "brutally blindsided" who had no choice but to shoot an entire family, which is all pulled out of your @ss, while also pretending you have no choice but to relay the facts. You look more ridiculous with each post. Just stop digging.

DP here - I think you're misreading the PP. PP is saying what the officer is going to assert, not what PP is asserting. And the next paragraph talks about how cops should be held to a higher standard, and should be held responsible for failing to de-escalate. Just saying.

That's the backpedalling, yes. Doesn't change the fact he spent the last page telling everyone who said you can't shoot a person in self defense if you haven't even been touched that they were wrong on the law (they weren't) and to "try again."

You seem to be conflating posts by multiple individuals and attributing them to the same PP.

Self defense does have to be proportional. But it does not require absorbing the first assault. Especially for a police officer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So sad. Tell me again about the myth of the "good guy with a gun."

Not a myth. You don't know what happened. You have exactly one side and speculation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The man who supposedly assaulted the police officer was a big guy. I can see how the police officer would have felt threatened being attacked by that guy especially since he was carrying his young child.

If the elderly parents tried to physically intervene in some way, hitting the officer or otherwise getting physical with him, that may have prompted the shooting. We don't know what happened.

I hope they got this on surveillance video.

And yet here you are creating your own narrative.

According to the links posted in the Op, the officer was holding his own small child when the man attacked him unprovoked. The man was shot and killed and somehow the man's parents were also shot. My *guess* is that the parents were trying to protect/defend their son and wound up being physically aggressive with the officer in the process which prompted the officer to shoot them. I'm not saying that is what happened, obviously I was not there, but common sense says that the parents must have somehow been involved in the altercation. The officer wasn't just shooting random shoppers. He specifically shot those 3 people after he was attacked by the man.

I'll leave it to the investigators to determine what exactly happened and whether or not the officer acted appropriately. From my armchair quarterback position I'm finding it hard to believe that the officer felt threatened by those 2 elderly parents but I have also not seen the videotape of the incident.

Please let’s not hide behind the “officer was holding his own small child” excuse, or let’s arm all the mothers holding “their own small children”. Somehow, if this was mother with child instead of an “officer”, none of this would have happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The man who supposedly assaulted the police officer was a big guy. I can see how the police officer would have felt threatened being attacked by that guy especially since he was carrying his young child.

If the elderly parents tried to physically intervene in some way, hitting the officer or otherwise getting physical with him, that may have prompted the shooting. We don't know what happened.

I hope they got this on surveillance video.

And yet here you are creating your own narrative.

According to the links posted in the Op, the officer was holding his own small child when the man attacked him unprovoked. The man was shot and killed and somehow the man's parents were also shot. My *guess* is that the parents were trying to protect/defend their son and wound up being physically aggressive with the officer in the process which prompted the officer to shoot them. I'm not saying that is what happened, obviously I was not there, but common sense says that the parents must have somehow been involved in the altercation. The officer wasn't just shooting random shoppers. He specifically shot those 3 people after he was attacked by the man.

I'll leave it to the investigators to determine what exactly happened and whether or not the officer acted appropriately. From my armchair quarterback position I'm finding it hard to believe that the officer felt threatened by those 2 elderly parents but I have also not seen the videotape of the incident.

Please let’s not hide behind the “officer was holding his own small child” excuse, or let’s arm all the mothers holding “their own small children”. Somehow, if this was mother with child instead of an “officer”, none of this would have happened.

If a woman shopper was holding her small child and she was attacked by that big guy I would expect that the woman would try to defend herself and her child. If she had a gun and felt that her and/or her child's life was as stake, yes, I would think she would shoot her attacker(s).