crime: February 2006 Archives
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
Justice Louis Brandeis dissent, "Olmstead v. United States," 277 U.S. 438, 485 (1928)
Deputy's Gunfire Looks Like a Crime to Some - Los Angeles Times
Deputy's Gunfire Looks Like a Crime to Some
By Matt Lait and Lance Pugmire, Times Staff Writers
A San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy who shot a 21-year-old Air Force security officer in an incident captured by a video camera appears to have violated accepted police tactics and may have committed a criminal offense, experts in the use of force by police said Wednesday.
The experts cautioned that the low quality of the digital recording may obscure some important evidence. But what is visible - the image of the deputy firing multiple rounds at 21-year-old Elio Carrion as he appeared to follow the deputy's order to get off the ground - was shocking, they said.
"It's a criminal act," said Roger Clark, a former Los Angeles County sheriff's lieutenant who routinely testifies in court as an expert in police tactics. Clark has worked both for police officers and for citizens who have sued the police. "He shot an unarmed man who was complying with his orders," Clark said.
David Klinger, a use-of-force expert who teaches at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, and wrote a book titled "Into The Kill Zone: A Cop's Eye View of Deadly Force," said the recording was "the screwiest thing I've ever seen. It makes no sense."
