Posted on 03/23/2009 10:24:17 AM PDT by Drew68
When Oakland police Sgts. Ervin Romans and Daniel Sakai burst into an apartment on 74th Avenue on Saturday, they knew they were entering a dangerous situation. After all, they were looking for a man who had already killed two police officers.
What they didn't know was that the killer, Lovelle Mixon, had somehow gotten hold of an AK-47 assault rifle, police officials say. All they knew was that the gunman who had shot motorcycle officers Sgt. Mark Dunakin and Officer John Hege about two hours earlier used a handgun.
"Nobody knew he had an AK-47," said City Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente, who was among four council members to join Mayor Ron Dellums and acting Police Chief Howard Jordan for a late-night press conference Saturday.
The bulletproof vests that Romans and Sakai wore were no help - when Mixon fired his automatic rifle through a closet door in the apartment, he hit the two sergeants in the head.
The killings of four officers would devastate any police department. But it was especially traumatic for an Oakland force that has been beefed up in recent years with a lot of young, inexperienced cops.
"We've got a really young force out there, and this is really hitting them hard," officer Bob Valladon, former head of the Oakland Police Officers Association, said Sunday as he drove from one slain officer's home to another to meet with their families. "We've hired maybe 25o new cops in the past five years, so about a quarter of the force has never seen anything like this. No one has.
"These cops (who were killed) were veterans," Valladon said. "The best of the best."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
The article is more than a little propagandastic. If it was a semi-auto AK 47, cheap Romanian copies are widely available in many states and menacing looking derivations like the AMD 65 are readily available. If it was a full auto AK, that's another matter, but it doesn't sound like it from the article.
Helmets in common use will deflect a round to some extent and possibly stop some of the smaller pistol rounds. Otherwise, their primary use is to stop shrapnel. They don’t do much good against full-power rifles. Any helmet that would is likely to be too heavy and bulky, which in itself creates a hazard for the wearer.
I’m also unsure what effect 2,000 ft/lb suddenly delivered to a helmet might be. It certainly wouldn’t do the wearer’s neck any good.
Lisa Dewberry, the perp’s atty ... http://www.dewberrylaw.com/
Thanks, that is the most info I’ve seen on the perp.
Lucky the guy wasn’t carrying Grandpa’s old Remington 870 12 gauge, or the damage might have been even greater. The MSM love to stroke the “assault weapons” issue; it sells copy and it’s so, so trendy-PC, pseudo-intellectual chic.
May God bless their families and give the four LEOs eternal rest.
Sadly, your report on this killer is exactly what I expected. I did read where his family claims he was “not a monster”. Tell that to the families, friends, fellow officers, and citizens who these men had helped in the past.
Same thought I had. Some of the other coverage says the shots were through the drywall, not through the closet door. That would involve a lateral position in the closet. This will probably prove to be similar to most of these types of incidents where the after-action ends up showing that at least half the original reporting was wrong.
My hunch, is he was crouched down, with muzzle pointed in an upwards position...When they entered, he just started squeezing off rounds as fast as possible.
My bet would be, costly mistakes were made by the entry team, after two of their own were killed. They wanted this guy bad, and took too many chances.
What do you expect the family to say?
Not likely. An AK would penetrate most body armor at close range, with little problem.
It's highly unlikely that he had an "AK-47 assault rifle." It's more likely he had an AKM (or some semi-automatic "single shot" variant). These news droids are notoriously ignorant (and/or misleading) demagogues.
In any event the rifle used (if it can be positively identified) will not as powerful as most hunting rifles. A Remington 750 Woodmaster in 308Win or 30-06 would have been far most devastating. An M1 Garand of WWII fame would have been a nightmare, but no one is talking of banning this venerable weapon of freedom, just "evil" imported chi-comm crap.
True, but for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction - so upon firing the round, you feel on your shoulder EXACTLY the same force that would be smacked upside the helmet.
If your shoulder can take the smack of firing the round, and IF THE HELMET CAN STOP THE ROUND [by absorbing its tightly focussed energy point into the much larger surface area of the helmet], then you would only experience EXACTLY the same smack to your helmetted head.
I expect them to say exactly what they did which is why this young man turned out like he was. Nothing but excuses for him his ENTIRE life to explain his poor choices and behaviors. He was never made to accept responsibility for HIS actions. Yeah, so “he ran with the wrong crowd”, “was under suspicion for murder”, “already had an armed robbery”, shall I go on? Who raised him/or didn’t raise him to be this way? The same people making excuses now.
I am familiar with an attempted murder case on my parents’ road in Tampa. The would-be killer actually slit a woman’s throat as an “initiation” into a gang. She survived by the way. Well, the FATHER of this young man (yes, black kid) caught his son burning clothes in the back yard. The kids made an excuse and the father rather than accept it confronted his boy. The boy did not admit, but the father said he “knew” and went to his pastor and then TOGETHER they turned him in for this crime.
I spoke at length to my parents’ neighbor before the trial and he said “you have no idea how difficult this is for us. We don’t know what went wrong with XXXX, but I could not allow it to continue. Turning him was the only way I knew to save his life.” Now THAT is a man with integrity. Why one son went to be in the armed forces and one an attempted murderer is a mystery, but the father felt maybe they “gave him too much”. Not all families would cover for another who broke the law. Not all....
Don't be too hasty.
There's been talk recently (prior to this incident) which would extract from civilian hands any weapon resembling any weapon used by the military.
This would include the M1, M1911, M1903, M1917, M1A and M1 Carbine.
It would also include Winchester Model 70s and Remington 700s, since military sniper rifles are based on them.
One of the persons interviewed on Fox out of Oakland this AM said” They just did it all wrong. They was disrectful to the guy when they stopped the car. They always are.” This woman was not id’d as any member of the family of the killer.
The entire culture of the blacks in the cities is that they get “sidrespected’ at the drop of a hat. They are genetically born with the world’s shortest fuses, and the longest ability to remember a slight from the rest of the citizens of their area.
They most are not employed nor employable, living generations on various kinds of welfare- WIC-food stamps- and totally unwilling to even consider that they are a larger part of the problem.
IMO, Oakland, Los Angeles, and other cities cannot pay enough for any police officer to serve there.
If the Taliban came to me and asked for a test area for one of their bombs, I would reccomend Oakland as ground zero. It is a total cesspool, housing thousands who refuse to ‘witness’ any event- regardless of how horrific-and then chronically whine about not getting ‘protection’ from the authorities. All too often, they know who did what, but they suddenly are mute and blind because they have been raised in the society of ‘do not snitch’.
Fence them in, leave them to their own actions, and go back later when all the bones are bleached. Then start over.
if you want to go home at night, always expect an AK-47! i wonder if they were wearing heavy vests.
Still waiting for a MSM story highlighting Lovelle’s record of crimes. The gun gets a lot of attention, but the person behind the gun,,,not much info.””
Fox in San Francisco said he had a very long history of crime, and had served 5 years for assault with a deadly weapon, and was also on parole for same charges.
I want longer sentences, no plea bargaining, and every day served.
“I want longer sentences, no plea bargaining, and every day served.”
I agree, but I fear it does not fit in with the plans of “change” or current administration is ramming up our collective arses. Keeping felons in jail would only help the honest America...can’t have that now! what would the ACLU say to that?
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