While I agree for the most part, she SHOULD have listened to the office and not driven away the first time. She was "violated a host of laws". She put her children in danger by not complying. There is really no excuse for what she did. The cops were wrong, yes. But so was she.

>> There is really no excuse for what she did.

True, but she did nothing to warrant the cops attempt to murder her and her children. Make no mistake, this was attempted murder on the part of the police officer who fired the shots.

There is no real, credible or imminent threat to life or limb of the officers or anybody else.

Ergo, the officers have no justification for the use of deadly force, which is what the gunshots and the full-arm baton strikes are.

Attempted murder (for the shooting) and assault with a deadly weapon (for the baton attack). Yes, friends, that's really what it is. Attempted murder.

Did she flee? Yes. Did she resist? Yes. Did she fight? Yes. Did she argue? Yes. Did she break the speed limit? Yes. There is, as Flynne notes, no excuse for what she did, except, possibly, some mental disturbance, but that is pure speculation.

But none of what she did justifies the use of deadly force. Taser, certainly. Pepper spray, without a doubt. But multiple discharges into an occupied vehicle? No.

The attempt to create some sort of equivalency here is laughable. The cops were wrong, but so was she? Really? She was so wrong that one cop was justified to unload into a vehicle filled with children?

The tendency of cops to use any level of lawbreaking, no matter how trivial, and often after the fact, as the basis for the use of massively disproportionate force, is an extremely troubling trend in US policing. It is one of the hallmarks of a police state.

Both cops should be charged as described. A more clear-cut case is hard to imagine. But they won't be. The worst they will get is some time off without pay.

llater,

llamas

"Do as you're told or I'll murder you and your entire family under cover of authority."

Ah, yes. The sound of freedom from fear, ringing throughout the land.

Llamas, I didn't say that there was any equivalency in this case. What I did say was that she SHOULD have stayed where she was, instead of taking off. She COULD have prevented the whole incident. The cops were way wrong, yes. But she was wrong too. She also has to accept responsibility for her actions. That the cops won't have to is probably inevitable. They're the ones with the badges. Doesn't make it right, but there it is. We don't know WHY she ran, but she did. She was wrong. We know WHY the cops chose to shoot, and they were most certainly wrong to do so. I agree they should be charged. Disciplined at the very least. Fired would be ideal. But it won't happen and we all know it.

He was firing at the tires, not the children. The whole family seems out of control. Way to be a role model mom.

When you have a car full of children, running away form the police puts them in danger. At that point you've escalated the situation.

While the police officers may have been aware there were children in the van, they were not aware if there were weapons, explosives, or other dangers in the van.

Both Ferrell and her son accosted the police officer. And he didn't tase or shoot either of them during the altercation.

A different officer, called to the scene of a fleeing suspect who had attacked the responding officer, was the one who fired. He may have been unaware of the children in the vehicle.

And the officer breaking the window (the initial responding officer) attacked the passenger window of the van - the door used by Ferrell's son who had earlier jumped out of the car and attacked him. He wasn't breaking a rear window where the children were presumably sitting.

The police were unaware at that point to what escalating levels of violence Ferrell and her son would go to avoid being arrested.

While the police acted stupidly in firing at the vehicle, Oriana Ferrell was the one who put the children's lives in danger with her actions.

He was firing at the tires, not the children.

Bullets ricochet. Cops are taught that.

And tires on a moving vehicle are a very difficult target to hit.

Why didn't the vehicle in front of the van park in such a way to block further flight? She'd already fled once, so it was not inconceivable that she would flee again ... which she did.

He was firing at the tires, not the children. The whole family seems out of control. Way to be a role model mom.

Posted by: Susan at November 18, 2013 8:58 AM

Doesn't matter. You don't shoot at the tires when there are five children in the vehicle above them. This is reckless and unprofessional. Should also be criminal. After the enema incident, it is starting to sound like New Mexico is what is "out of control" here.

You don't shoot at the tires when there are five children in the vehicle above them. ~ Isab

Exactly.

In the movies, police use a chain of spikes to blow out the tires and that usually results in a spectacular crash complete with rollover.

In real life, the spikes on the chain of spikes used by police agencies are designed to break off and slowly deflate the tires. The breakaway spikes help to prevent blowouts, which can cause rollovers and crashes that injure (or kill) innocent passengers and others in the vehicle (and bystanders).

For the same reason, you don't shoot out tires in moving vehicles.

Let's be clear. You don't get to deploy deadly force in response to what might be. So all these excuses about how officers didn't know what might be in the vehicle are just a distraction from the basic fact, in law, that you may only use deadly force to prevent a real, present and imminent threat of death or great bodily injury. Not because such a threat could possibly exist, in a place you can't see, and for which there is no evidence.

So this

'While the police officers may have been aware there were children in the van, they were not aware if there were weapons, explosives, or other dangers in the van.'

is nothing but trying to create an excuse for what the officer did. You don't get to shoo at someone for what they might have or do.

The fact that the officer doing the shooting was late coming to the scene, is not an excuse for what he did, but a further indictment of his criminal acts. If your excuse is that you're not sure what's going on, you actually proved that you have even-less reasonable justification for using deadly force.

Same with these stories about shooting at the tires. What, we're mind-readers now? Shooting the the tires is TV-movie stuff. I'm not aware of any police department where the use of gunshots to deflate tires is permitted by any policy under any circumstances. And watch the video - he's shooting at the vehicle, not the tires.

Same with the story about the officer breaking out the window with multiple tw-handed full-arm baton strikes. Sure, it's the window on the side of the vehicle where the 14-year-old boy is located. And sure, the 14-year-old boy had tussled with the officer - but then he ran away. Once a violent encounter ends, if a person - any person - re-initiates the fight, that person becomes the aggressor - and the criminal - and that is true whether or not he is an officer. If the fight has ended - and it did, because the boy ran away and locked himself in a car - that does not give the officer carte-blanche to re-start the fight - and with a deadly weapon to boot. Sure, he can enter the vehicle by force to extract the criminal - but that's not what he's doing, he's trying to beat on the kid, not the car. The first strike broke the window - the next 6 strikes were the officer trying to beat the boy inside the car. With a PR24. A deadly weapon. The officer re-started the fight.

Sure, the driver escalated the incident. But it was the police officers who then took that escalation all the way to deadly force - with absolutely no justification. There are 46 ways to stop a fleeing vehicle quickly, effectively and with minimum risk to anybody. Shooting wildly at it with a handgun is not one of them.

I really do want to see the whole, unedited video. What made the lady drive away? She certainly seemed to be fleeing in a very half-hearted way.

What is it with the cops in NM, anyway?

llater,

llamas

The shooting-and quite possibly the window breaking-were inexcusable. But this woman sounds like she was on something, or mentally ill, or both. And she had kids with her. If she'd gotten away from the cops and gotten in a wreck and killed her kids and possibly others, the cops would be getting blamed. Not an easy situation. They did NOT handle it well, and they should NOT have shot. But they needed to do something.

llamas,

You don't get to attack a police officer, then run away, lock yourself in your van, and then condemn the police officer because he now wants to arrest you for attacking him.

Should the officer have stood down and sought a more peaceful resolution? Probably. But the aggressors were now locked in a motor vehicle (a potential deadly weapon) and refusing to cooperate. They had already fled once and were likely to do so again - which they subsequently did.

Ferrell initiated the violence, ran away to hide in a motor vehicle, then refused to unlock the door and surrender. Breaking the window to reach him and arrest him was justifiable - albeit it was also a heavy-handed response that escalated the tension in the situation and was probably partly the reason Ferrell's mother fled for the second time.

And we don't see from the video if the younger Ferrell was threatening the police officer with a weapon of some kind after the window was broken, so we can't automatically condemn the officer's repeated swings of his baton.

[The police] don't get to shoot at someone for what they might have or do. ~ llamas

Sure they do.

The police in most states are authorized to shoot at fleeing suspects - especially ones that might be a danger to others. That's why you don't flee when the police yell "Stop or I'll shoot!" It's where the "or I'll shoot" comes from.

If you're acting in a suspicious manner, the police are authorized to act, in most cases only to stop and question you, but if you escalate the situation by fleeing or attacking them, they can escalate their response.

Oriana Ferrell was pulled over for speeding. She fled the first police stop. She and her son attacked the officer at the second stop when he attempted to arrest her for fleeing at the first stop.

[Amusing story from a while back: A police officer in Tennessee didn't want to shoot a fleeing suspect so he yelled for him to stop or he'd release the dog. Then, the officer barked. The suspect stopped and was arrested. There was no dog.]

If I was a child inside that car, I would be screaming and crying for the mother to stop once gunshots are being fired. I would also be peeing and pooping in my pants. I don't see how it is possible for anyone to continue driving away from the cops when they have five childing begging and pleading at the top of their lungs for them to stop.

But I agree, it doesn't excuse the use of excessive force.

@ Conan the Grammarian, who wrote:

'You don't get to attack a police officer, then run away, lock yourself in your van, and then condemn the police officer because he now wants to arrest you for attacking him..'

But that's not what happened. The police officer didn't go to arrest the kid - as he had every right to do, and with force if the kid resisted any more. If he'd wanted to do that, he could have opened the car door after the first strike (breaking the window) and hauled the kid out. But that's not what he did. He broke the window and then commenced to beat the kid through the broken window. He went to beat the tar out of the kid, with a baton, when the kid was no longer offering him any resistance. Police officers don't get to administer revenge beatings.

'The police in most states are authorized to shoot at fleeing suspects - especially ones that might be a danger to others. That's why you don't flee when the police yell "Stop or I'll shoot!" It's where the "or I'll shoot" comes from.'

No, the police most certainly are NOT authorized to shoot at any fleeing suspect. Bear in mind, I've been a LEO, so I do know whereof I speak. In very limited circumstances, use of deadly force against a fleeing suspect, if a serious, violent felony is involved, MAY be permitted, but only to protect life and limb from a serious threat. But that most-certainly does not extend to the relatively-trivial crimes seen here. 'Stop or I'll shoot' is the stuff of TV and movies. The police do not have carte-blanche to shoot at a suspect merely for running (or driving) away from them. I don't know where you get these ideas from.

Nothing that Ms Ferrell or her son did justified escalation to the use of deadly force. The officer had multiple non-violent options to deal with her, and even-more-so when other armed officers arrived. He/they chose to immediately deploy massive and deadly force when no threat of death or injury even remotely comparable was/had been used against them. That makes the shooting attempted murder, and the baton attack assault with a deadly weapon (or whatever the comparable charge is in NM).

llater,

llamas

Maybe she fled because of the enema incidents. A traffic fine is bad, but an involuntary colonoscopy is criminal. Being billed for it besides should be a capital crime.

"There are 46 ways to stop a fleeing vehicle quickly, effectively and with minimum risk to anybody. "

Name three. I know of no way to do such a thing. And no, spike strips are not very effective. We'll all seen way too many police reality shows where the perp just keeps going on the flat tires.

More on the story:

https://www.google.com/search?q=oriana+ferrell&oq=oriana+ferrell&aqs=chrome..69i57.2656j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8

=========================

He broke the window and then commenced to beat the kid through the broken window. He went to beat the tar out of the kid, with a baton, when the kid was no longer offering him any resistance.

But we don't see that the kid was offering no resistance. We don't see the kid. We see only the officer's actions. So, can it really be stated that he "beat the tar out of the kid" or that the kid was offering no resistance?

If so, I'm with you that the officer was wrong and should be punished. And I've already stated that his actions escalated the tension in an already tense situation.

However, in the video, only the officer's actions were visible and it can't be seen with certainty that the kid wasn't offering resistance or threatening the officer (either bodily or using a threat to thwart any attempt to unlock and open the van door - e.g, a hammer if he stuck his hand in the door).

Also, we don't see any blows actually land on the kid in the front seat. And none of the subsequent stories about the incident indicate the kid was beaten or in any way touched by the officer's baton. Or even the target of the officer's rage.

One report says a firearm was found in the vehicle. Her lawyer claims it was planted by the police. No officer mentions being threatened by it or seeing it before the vehicle was searched, so....

The police do not have carte-blanche to shoot at a suspect merely for running (or driving) away from them.

I didn't say the police have carte blanche to shoot at anyone running or driving away from them.

And I've already stated my position that the officer who fired his weapon was wrong. He maintains that he was shooting at the tires in an attempt to slow or halt the vehicle - and I've stated my position that that was stupid as well.

But that most-certainly does not extend to the relatively-trivial crimes seen here.

The initial crime, speeding on the freeway, was relatively trivial. Even the resistance to arrest was fairly non-violent.

Several reports say Ferrell subsequently fled at high speeds (one report says the chase reached 100mph) and drove the wrong way through one-way traffic to evade the police. She pulled into a motel parking lot and then surrendered, so it's conceivable that she was scared and wanted to be arrested someplace public with witnesses. That's what her lawyer maintains. It should be noted that the high-speed chase happened after the baton incident, so the over-reaction by the police coudl have contributed to her mentality of fleeing the police.

Her lawyer is also trying to make the story about the officer firing on her vehicle, but he fired it after she was fleeing for the second time, so his actions did not cause the second flight.

[To reiterate, I've already stated my position that the officer who fired his weapon was wrong.]

I don't know what was going through Ferrell's head at the time. Reports say that at the initial stop, she refused to answer the officer's question whether she would pay the $126 fine or go back to Taos to contest it. I don't know if that means she was supposed to come up with the money right then or follow the officer back to Taos. Even I might resist a bit if those were my only two options. The officer may just have been trying to get her to check a box on the citation and she had a complete meltdown.

Marijuana pipes were found in the car. The reports don't say if they were found in the luggage or in the ashtray. Nor does any report indicate she was high or under the influence of anything.

There are allegations that she has at least two DUIs back in Tennessee, but she denies having any.

"beat the tar out of the kid" should probably be rephrased.

The moment she was driving 16 miles over the speed limit she was putting herself, her kids, and the public at risk. The moment she drove off she put everyone at risk again. The moment she saw her son going at a police officer she should have gone limp and given up to avoid the possibility of her son being shot.

(And from watching the kid, I suspect he is no stranger to street fights. That wasn't a "protect Mom" rush.)

I agree the officer who fired the shots should probably lose his job. The cop who parked off to the side of her should be reprimanded for being a dumb ass and not preventing her movement. But I have no problem with the original officer busting out the window. If anything, he should have tased the woman as soon as he opened her door to prevent another possible chase.

You get stopped, you turn off the car, open the window, and show your hands over the steering wheel with your documents at hand, and 99.99% of the time there is no problem. I have no tolerance for bad drivers, they cause a lot of innocent people to be harmed forever.

So they have her license plate, they're on the scene, they have a radio, they have additional backup vehicles and officers, she's outgunned, outnumbered, and outmuscled.

But they can't follow the car, wait for her at home, set up a roadblock, surround the car with other police cars and slow her to a stop.

All they can do is open fire on a van full of children. They simply had no other way to resolve the situation.

You will respect my authoratah!

Part of Ferrell's problem could be the uneven and sporadic enforcement of speed limits in this country.

The feds require states to post speed limits that comply with federal doctrine (e.g., 55mph) or lose highway funds. So, states post the required speed limits, then enforce only the ones they would have posted without federal coercion.

Living in the Bay Area, I'm used to driving 80-85 on the freeway (when traffic permits). When I travel to North Carolina, I find myself having to be extra cautious lest my speed creep up to my accustomed Bay Area speeds. The speed limits posted on both Interstates is usually 65 mph. In one state, going 15-20 mph above the posted speed is not only acceptable, it's practically required. In the other, going even a few miles above the posted speed limit can result in a citation.

Ferrell may have found herself in a state which strictly enforces the speed limit, but being from one that does not, may have ignored the posted limit. And then gotten upset with the officer when he enforced a speed limit she routinely ignored back home.

So they have her license plate.... But they can't...wait for her at home....

"Home" is in Tennessee. That's about 1,000 miles away and in another jurisdiction.

But they can't follow the car....

They did follow her - as she drove at high speeds evading arrest.

>> They simply had no other way to resolve the situation.

Only one cop fired his weapon, and he was behind a vehicle that could have just as easily been thrown into reverse. The other police were very restrained.

When you accept a driver's license, you accept the responsibility to follow the law. As soon as she fled the scene it became a life and death situation. The police did not know if she was drunk, high, or what her intentions were, so stopping the vehicle is the first and most important priority for the safety of the children and the rest of society.

She alone took this from an infraction to several felonies.

It will be interesting to see the forensics of the bullet holes, but I think if he were trying to shoot someone we would have seen the back window shatter.

"He was firing at the tires, not the children"

"Stop or I'll shoot"

Man, you people watch too much television!

This was real life, in which innocent people could be killed; not TV land.

Sure, the mother was at fault; but shooting at a car as it speeds away. WTF? The cops don't know who else is in the van or what their situation is. The cop was NOT being threatned himself, was he? Ergo, don't fucking shoot!

"Only one cop fired his weapon"

At the tires on a van full of unarmed children. AND MISSED THE TIRES.

"he was behind a vehicle that could have just as easily been thrown into reverse"

But wasn't.

"That's about 1,000 miles away and in another jurisdiction."

Nuclear-powered van never needs to stop for refueling?

Too many other ways to resolve this without firearms. This is incompetent and dangerous policing.

"When you accept a driver's license, you accept the responsibility to follow the law. As soon as she fled the scene it became a life and death situation. The police did not know if she was drunk, high, or what her intentions were, so stopping the vehicle is the first and most important priority for the safety of the children and the rest of society."

I reposted this in the fascination I feel with the same leaps of logic that bring us Obamacare as the solution to minor insurance problems in the US.

How does someone driving away after a traffic stop rise to the level of a "life and death situation" especially for the cops?

By this logic every vehicle on the road is a life or death situation, and the cops should have the right to pull over everyone indiscriminately, and then machine gun the car, if the driver doesn't stop.

Robert Peel's Principles of Policing:

The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.

The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions.

Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.

The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.

Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.

Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient.

Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions, and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.

The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

Is this so hard?

I grew up and had a tendency to be somewhat of a lead footed driver in when I was in Texas. I also had a radar detector and a CB. Those of us who chatted on the CB radios had a joke that Motorola beats a 351 Cleveland motor every time.

Back then the staties were using the Mustangs as the interceptors. There was more than once that I drove past a group of them sitting on the side of the highway and later on I would hear on the CB they got X vehicle surrounded.

Let alone seeing the same behavior on shows like COPS and other reality shows.

Nothing in the video indicates that the original officer called out for an interception or mass assistance. Nothing shows that it was indicated to anyone that the freakin minivan was filled with kids. No show of true force (i.e. violent behavior, weapons, or similar things) was indicated by anyone in the vehicle.

I will say that the driver was in the wrong, but pulling and firing for this was wholly on the wrong side of the law. The use of the baton beyond breaking the window was beyond acceptable force as well.

(either bodily or using a threat to thwart any attempt to unlock and open the van door - e.g, a hammer if he stuck his hand in the door). -- Conan the Grammarian at November 18, 2013 12:25 PM

That is so far beyond supposition that it really does not justify comment. But I really want you to come up with a good justification for this California cop's laying on of hands. I know it isn't the same case, but I want to hear the reason.

I'm not supposing anything. I'm stating that because we cannot see what the cop sees, we shouldn't immediately declare the officer was in the wrong. I'm not defending his action, I'm just not condemning him with only half the perspective.

The officer who fired his gun was wrong. We have a 360º view of his situation and can make a reasonably fair and balanced judgement regarding his actions.

But, for Baton Cop, we don't have a full view of the situation. So, we should reserve judgement until we have the full picture.

My thoughts from the video were regarding what happened at the start. The mother slowly drives away from the officer after he asked her to turn the engine off. When she does this, the officer becomes beyond angry - and that's where this problem - angry cop and crazy mom - hits mass point. See, crazy mom needed a level-headed cop to just simply reach in and take the keys from the woman, not scare her with the many infractions she had already committed, try and jerk her out of the car, freak her out more than she was and incite her 14-year-old to try and defend his mom. How do you train a cop to not get so mad that he makes a situation worse instead of using his head to diffuse it? There were several things he should have done when crazy mom stopped that second time, none of which he did. The rest of the video is appalling, but to me it's all a byproduct of angry cop. You will encounter many crazy moms as a cop. You've got to do better than this.

@ Cousin Dave, who wrote:

'"There are 46 ways to stop a fleeing vehicle quickly, effectively and with minimum risk to anybody. "

Name three. I know of no way to do such a thing. And no, spike strips are not very effective. We'll all seen way too many police reality shows where the perp just keeps going on the flat tires.'

Easy.

1) spike strips - which, contrary to your TV-informed experience, actually do work surprisingly-well most of the time. You only see the failures on TV, because the successes are boring.

2) Rolling or confining roadblock. There were 3 police interceptors at the scene, and they couldn't catch up with a heavily-laden minivan and surround it?

3) Controlled vehicle diversion aka the 'PIT' maneuver, where the pursued vehicle is placed in a controlled spin. This does require a trained driver to perform safely.

4) Traffic diversion - using stopped police cars to funnel the pursued vehicle into a location from which it cannot leave, such as a parking lot.

5) Keep following. Call for assistance. Gas is cheap. And nobody can out-run Motorola.

I don't believe the '100 mph' chase story. I don't think that minivan, fully loaded, could reach 100 mph, on a down grade, with a following wind. I believe the pursuing police cars may well have hit 100 mph in their frantic attempts to catch it, after completely-failing to contain it the second time. Again, who was putting the public at more risk here?

And we see another typical police tactic when an incident like this comes to light - oh, well, of course, she had marijuana pipes in the vehicle! That totally justifies everything we did! It's a deliberate attempt to damage the reputation of the accused, in advance of any trial, by publicizing things which have no bearing on the incident at hand, and which may not even be illegal.

I think other commenters have the right way of it here - it only went really bad when other officers showed up. Appalling procedure by the second officer, by-the-bye - if he knew that she had already fled once, he should have parked his cruiser so as to block her from leaving. But when other officers arrive, they all start jacking each other up.

Also interesting to note that the first officer is so slight of stature that the relatively-petite woman driver is actually taller than he is. They call it 'little-man syndrome' for a reason.

Part of a police officer's job is to handle, tolerate and (if possible) defuse conflict and resistance. In this case, the officers escalated both, and to an extreme that is clearly criminal.

Try this thought experiment - if you think that the firing of a weapon at the fleeing vehicle was justified, then assume for a moment that the officer came out of his vehicle, not with a handgun, but with a department-issued selective-fire M16A4 assault rifle, with a 30 round magazine. And that he then emptied that magazine at the fleeing vehicle, on full auto. Would he have been justified to do that? If not, why not?

llater,

llamas

You don't get to attack a police officer, then run away, lock yourself in your van, and then condemn the police officer because he now wants to arrest you for attacking him.

No, but you do get to condemn him for trying to beat the shit out of you and then shoot you for attacking him. It's a simple principle called "proportionate use of force" that used to have some meaning in this country.

When CNN used to run a forum called "guns under fire", I used to ask a question:
"When you see a uniform, do you know the hiring policies of the uniform issuer?"

I wonder how many times this police agency was thwarted from hiring people based on their physical appearance and capability during stress tests.

I was astonished once to see a South Carolina Hwy. patrolman – wearing braces. The plain fact is that someone will try to test him.

If an officer can't handle a 14 year old boy seated in the passenger side of a car without repeatedly swinging his baton...he's to fucking incompetent or violent to be trusted with the enforcement of law. I can't imagine what that boy could have been doing to justify those swings. Breaking the window to open the door I get, but when you're swinging a damn stick against someone seated in a car, you're just whooping someones ass...not following any procedure for public or personal safety.

If officers are shooting at a van full of kids, without having been presented with an immediate violent danger to themselves, there is no way to justify it, they are wrong and no other suggestion can be entertained. Any such suggestion bearing upon 'what ifs' is meaningless because they cannot resort to deadly force on a hypothetical threat. If hypothetical threat is justification, then every cop is automatically justified on shooting first and asking questions later.

It has been pointed out that it was the newly arriving officer who fired the shots...but so what? If he was provided information on what he was approaching, he fired knowing he was putting children at risk. If he was NOT provided information on what he was approaching, then that just makes the first cop that much MORE WRONG than he already is by not advising his backup on the risks and mitigating safety hazards.

On the chase:

Some cities have eliminated the right of police to give chase except after known violent offenders, because the loss of life and property as a result. One might blame the driver trying to escape, and even be correct, yet the dead are not less dead, and the damaged objects are not less damaged, by eliminating police chases except for KNOWN public threats (aka a violent wanted criminal), they've reduced the public threat quite measurably. If the worst we can say about this policy is that the occasional speeder escapes a $200 fine...then for fucks sake why put the public at risk with a chase over that???

The officers here are BAD at their jobs, really REALLY bad.

Don't give me that 'very dangerous job' bullshit either, they don't even make the top 10 riskiest jobs in the country.

The kid might have been wrong, no, he was...but he's just a 14 year old boy trying to protect his mother.

I would plea him down to some counseling and let it go.

His mother was kind of a dumbass...

But look I have a minivan, those don't get great gas mileage, she wasn't going to go that far even assuming she had a full tank, which I doubt, burning fuel at 71 mph on a highway will drain that tank in short order. And look at that goddamn thing, does that look like something that can hide from anyone?

The fact is here, they faced a belligerent bitch, then turned into belligerent bitches themselves, then fired off shots at a car full of kids.

They didn't control the situation, they didn't defuse the situation, they escalated the situation to the point where it became deadly.

And the cop claiming he was shooting at the tires? Hell how do we support that, where do the shots land, and I can't tell where he's aiming from the video. Honestly it looks like he's aiming at the back of the vehicle. Not down at the damn tires.

Frankly they should drop this one unless they're going to charge the cops as well.

And the cop claiming he was shooting at the tires?

Business Insider weighs in on why "shooting out the tires" is a bad idea and not standard police procedure.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-didnt-police-shoot-out-miriam-careys-tires-2013-10

The officers here are BAD at their jobs, really REALLY bad.

The Timothy Young and David Eckert incidents (in NM), the Miriam Carey incident (DC), and this incident (NM) in rapid succession are giving police in general a serious black eye.

Sure, only the worst incidents make the national news. The officer who dies in the line of duty saving a kitten only makes the local news, if that. Nonetheless, these incidents give rise serious questions on how police officers are being trained to do their jobs.

Have they not been trained that guns are deadly weapons, bullets ricochet, warrantless strip searching of people in parking lots violates their civil liberties, high-speed chases (especially ones involving minivans overloaded with luggage) are dangerous, and not everyone who gets stopped by the police for a minor traffic violation is a dangerous criminal.

Cavity searches at traffic stops is becoming more common:
http://news.yahoo.com/police-turn-routine-traffic-stops-into-cavity-searches-201433510.html

I don't know if the root of the problem is in officer selection, policing technique, the increasing militarization of the police (Radley Balko wrote a book on this), or training.

The so-called "War on Drugs" is definitely contributing to the erosion of civil liberties as everyone is now a suspected mule, dealer, or kingpin. Allowing police to confiscate assets in a drug arrest has turned every traffic stop into a lottery ticket.

Civilian respect for the police is vital for a functioning civil society - but police respect for civilians in that society is equally, if not more, vital.