Yesterday LA Times ran a human interest story. "LAPD will give new truck to women shot by officers." Sounds lovely.
Of course, LAPD would want to keep that dirty, moth-eaten old truck... the one they shot a couple zillion times last Friday. Getting additional photos could prove difficult. Forensic analysis of the tailgate and driver side rear window ?????
LAPD moved immediately to get legal hands on the evidence.
Sign on the dotted line, Margie Carranza and Emma Hernandez ??? Maybe. But before you sign -- allowing blue truck to meet black crusher -- please have your supporters contrast the originals that go with these two images and have a look at the tailgate.
FIRST:
Image # 1 -- empty Toyota Tacoma, secured crime scene
-- http://timelines.latimes.com/...
SECOND:
Later LA Times got Image # 2 -- empty Toyota Tacoma, secured and tagged crime scene
-- http://www.latimes.com/...
No CGI. Both are cropped/recopied LA Times photos.
These are not the originals. They are cropped and limited to 100K max to make life easier for DKOS downloaders. In real life Image # 1 is excellent.
Count the bullet holes and tagged bullet holes in that tailgate.
The white squares in Image # 2 are evidence tags, mostly placed over bullet holes.
Working from Internet "originals" gets only so far. These results are not certain. There can be errors, here. We will not for sure what happened until close-in images become available during this coming work week.
We get to an extra dozen holes looking at the cruiser window area, then stopped counting. Six holes went to eighteen holes. The driver-side rear window also looks to have taken additional damage in the form of bullet or buck shot holes.
Based on this photographic evidence, LAPD officers inflicted a cosmetic fusillade on this truck after Margie and Emma had been transported to hospital.
This would not the first instance of additional gunfire at a crime scene being used to obscure evidence of police wrong doing.
Will we see an investigation for charges under California Title 8 related to hazardous discharges of firearms? Any discharges after the crime scene was secured would qualify.
Based on a conservative read of these images, someone blasted the truck again after the scene was secured. Many of those bullets would have traveled substantial distances before they stopped.
Los Angeles pays a lot of money each year for the salaries of police executives. Their basic job is to select, train and manage LAPD police officers. What is going on out there ???
This Gang of Seven in Torrance can't shoot straight. Look at the truck.
Their pistols should have "red dot" laser sights. Assuming these guys really are uniformed officers, this incident presents a "Cheney" level of shooting without aiming. They spray the neighborhood with gunfire.
-- "Criminal negligence refers to a mental state of disregarding known or obvious risks to human life and safety."
-- "Reckless endangerment: the offense of recklessly engaging in conduct that creates a substantial risk of serious physical injury or death to another person. A misdemeanor but sometimes rises to a felony, as when a deadly weapon is involved."
Take out a loaded 9mm in a city and pull the trigger. You just got there.
One more legal question: any chance that this truck was sitting in a School Zone ??? California has special legal tools for charging criminals who discharge firearms in or near to schools.
Of course we don't expect anything to happen. This "cosmetic fusillade" will not be investigated.
LAPD management practices would be investigated. Police officers would have to testify under oath. Deposition testimony would be memorialized.
LAPD apparently covered up the crime that Dorner reported -- an LAPD thug kicked a handcuffed prisoner in the head. Covering up this Gang of Seven blasting an innocent Toyota Tacoma ain't nothing compared to that.
Big whoop!
No strings attached, LAPD want to give the Margie and Emma a new truck ! You betcha.
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Thanks for the brief trip to the Recommended list !!
Subject matter here is for specialists in police procedure and evidence. It's a boon that people took a look at it.
There are also lessons, here, somewhere... at balancing stubbornness and evidence evaluation. The images above are in the much-worse-for-wear category from web publication and getting copied for use at DKOS. Yet no one asked to see the originals ! (OMG. Gosh... &^%^.)
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Excellent article on this attack and other LAPD attacks on civilians during the Dorner crisis:
LAPD vs. Hispanic women delivering newspapers
The money quote:
Glen T. Jonas, the attorney representing the women, said the police officers gave “no commands, no instructions and no opportunity to surrender” before opening fire. He described a terrifying encounter in which the pair were in the early part of their delivery route through several South Bay communities. Hernandez was in the back seat handing papers to her daughter, who was driving. Carranza would briefly slow the truck to throw papers on driveways and front walks.
This Gang of Seven in Torrance missed seeing Margie toss her newspapers.
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Advice also comes in that the Seven left the scene before dawn. That means that one of them would have had to return to the scene later, if one of the Seven carried out this "cosmetic fusillade."
Evidence, so far, indicates that evidence tampering did happen at the scene and prior to CSI tagging.
So that means a specialist at such cover ups would have (more likely) been the shooter. And that's getting to overt symptoms of paranoia, imagining a strange extra-legal team/group/organization that does illegal acts for The Powers That Be -- except that's how Los Angeles has worked for 80 years. Tampering with reality is what the town does for a living!
If it's not broken, don't fix it !!
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