It was attempted murder of two peons, and it was done for a very very VERY important reason: some "real" person (i.e. a cop) might be at risk.

Don't worry, though...this assassination attempt will be investigated by the friends and coworkers of the would-be-assassins, and no "real" people will serve any jail time or lose their jobs.

OMG! Just looking at the picture with all the bullet holes is going to give me nightmares! I cannot imagine what it was like for those women.

If the police and the prosecutor do NOT do anything of real substance then when the public continues to paint all cops as being "bad." They have only themselves to blame. Afterall, if the police don't/can't/won't "police the police" what are we civilians to think? Can I, as a civilian, trust the local cop? How do I know if he is one of the good ones or is he someone who will shoot me in a heart beat because he is stressed out, under "incredible tension"?

And, to borrow some words from Reagan - "there they go again." Using language such as "tragic misinterpretation," and "incredible tension" only makes matters worse.

P.S. Thank you Amy for blogging about this. The more others hear about such things the better we can do something about it.

Seven police officers? I wonder how many police officers would be assigned to protect me if I get a credible death threat? Zero.

Fortunately, they will take away my AR-15 with 30 round magazines so I don't go on a killing spree protecting myself from a credible death threat.

It probably looked something like this:

http://youtu.be/ht4PfYkJjoc

From the article:

Law enforcement sources told The Times that at least seven officers opened fire. On Friday, the street was pockmarked with bullet holes in cars, trees, garage doors and roofs. Residents said they wanted to know what happened.

"How do you mistake two Hispanic women, one who is 71, for a large black male?" said Richard Goo, 62, who counted five bullet holes in the entryway to his house.

I would not wish any more harm or death on an innocent or innocent bystander -- but it makes you question the training of the officers that they fired that many rounds and didn't kill anyone. And that Hernandez was shot in the back?

If these officers aren't fired, there will be no trust of the LAPD. I'm not saying that they should just be hung, out to dry. They should have a trial first.

Dorner needs to be apprehended, and he should get his day in court, but if the public or conspiracy theorists get the mistaken belief this was an assassination attempt by a guilty and incompetent police force, well, gee, wonder why.

but it makes you question the training of the officers that they fired that many rounds and didn't kill anyone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Empire_State_Building_shooting

They did manage to kill their target. They also managed to wound nine bystanders down range. I further recall a story about two of NYPDs finest getting into a gun fight with a suspect. Between the three of them, they managed to fire north of 40 rounds and hit...no one.

Also, keep in mind that many of these officers go to the range only when they need to qualify, and that firing at a paper target is much less stressful than at a suspect.

Paper targets don't return fire, you see.

I can sympathize for the police. They are being hunted by a crazed person. It is understandable for them to jumpy and on edge.
BUT, I expect better from the police because they are professionals. They are people TRAINED in handling situations like or similar to this. The police are give instruction of when to draw, shoot and above all evaluate dangerous situations. Come on are NOT all police trained in how to approach a suspicious vehicle. Some do hundreds of times a year. You would think with 7 police officers, the truck was covered and it could be taken down efficiently.

This kind of event makes them look like KeyStone Kops. The police should not be seen a trigger happy and firing blindly. What happened to one shot, one kill. Or the basic gun FUNDAMENTAL know where the FUCK you are firing.

If regular citizens can not be trusted with guns, because they MIGHT make mistakes and might shoot the wrong person or cause massive damage. The citizens do not need guns, because the POLICE can handle it. That is what they are for. They are professionals. It is there job.

Yet when a group of trained police office make the same kind of mistake they warn regular people COULD do. That reeks of hypocrisy.

This reminded me of the Empire State Building Shooting from last year. When a bunch of people wounded in a gunfire battle between cops and a lone guy with a gun. Of the people they where wounded, all where by the POLICE!

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/25/justice/new-york-empire-state-shooting

Yes I can understand a gun battle is not an ordered event. It is chaos. Once again the POLICE are trained for this. So if the police handle a situation pretty much how a regular Joe Schmoe would (according to anti-gun people believe), something is wrong.

Here's hoping that witness Richard "Call me Dick" Goo gets a lot of tv time.

Church ladies are gonna faint.

The last line of that LAT story is terrifying.

> I can sympathize for the police.

I can't sympathize with anyone who shoots 71-year-old women in the back.

I doubt that those policemen came even close to following their required rules of engagement.

Their probably illegal actions caused harm and were the definition of reckless endangerment to all of the people around them.

To that, people reach to the amazing punishment of having them "lose their jobs". That isn't the standard for the peasants.

Those police carried out an ambush of opportunity. Shoot first and cover up later. Isn't this the equivalent of a war crime, only aimed at domestic civilians?

People are fired for coming into work late or drunk. These police should be in prison, according to current information.

This is one of those events you just can't get your mind around. Not one lick of sense is in it. It seems purely crazy run amok.

Besides this being all terrible, why is the LAT hiring 71 year olds to deliver the papers?

>People are fired for coming into work late or drunk. These police should be in prison, according to current information.

I couldn't agree more. There is no defending what has happened in this event.

> Besides this being all terrible, why is
> the LAT hiring 71 year olds to deliver
> the papers?

Why not?

If they applied for the work worth good references....

My Dad is 78 years old and works because he gets bored by staying at home. Mom is a great supporter of this.

While I generally abhor our overly litigious society, in this particular case, the city of L.A. via their police department need to be sued into submission.

Barring that, the only recourse is for citizens to shoot back when they are under "credible" threat. Whether the threat wears a uniform or not.

Besides this being all terrible, why is the LAT hiring 71 year olds to deliver the papers?

Because they show up, on time, everytime and do the job. Lot of old people with a work ethic. In Torrance, hard workers are everywhere - at least as I recall from being there many years ago.

I wonder what would have they been in Vallejo?

Jim P., that clip reminds me of that Chapelle Show skit about...

When keeping it real goes too far.

Hiring a lawyer won't stop this. Neither will filing a lawsuit. What will stop this is when law abiding citizen return fire and kill their oppressors.

If any one of the hundreds of thousands of private citizens who use guns in self defense every year had done anything even a little bit like what those seven cops did, he or she would have a lot of 'splainin' to do. And he or she would be doing it from inside a jail.

And it wouldn't matter how "incredible" the "tension" was, or how "tragic" their "misinterpretation", or even how scared freaking shitless they were.

And the media, politicians and government officials wouldn't be sympathizing with them. Instead they'd be presenting it as an example of why private citizens should not be allowed to have guns.

And those cops' actions show they were so scared shitless by the remote possibility that Dorner might come driving down that street that they could not act rationally, and they should not have been out on the street with guns.

Call me cynical, but if the police who did this, and their supervisors on the scene, were a bunch of 40 something white guys, we would know all their names and addresses by now.

The fact that we don't and probably never will, is telling.

Assuming the woman that was shot was driving -- how was she shot in the back?

In the picture many rounds were shot from behind the vehicle. That means that the vehicle had already passed the house before they opened fire. If they had not reached the house and were stopped by a police vehicle when the officers opened fire, the officers could have easily run the plates first.

This was a case of shoot first, ask questions later.