...Zerby...suddenly brought his hands up into a firing position, aiming directly at Ortiz...
Truly a sad set of facts.
Did Ortiz happen to be wearing plain clothes or was he in uniform when Zerby pointed at him with what everyone agrees appeared to be a firearm?
If the former, was there an appropriate opportunity for the police to announce their presence? If in plain clothes, Ortiz could have been you or me, or someone's teenage son.
If Ortiz was in uniform, what should LEOs do, with or without a warning, when they have good reason to believe they are at immediate risk?
I don't know, duck, run, drop to the ground, get behind a car, etc. Anything but automatically kill the poor guy woth a garden hose nozzle. There's too much of this crap happening. Other innocent men watering their front gardens have been shot and killed by cops hiding behind a fence, shooting without warning. The least they can do is to give warning to drop "the weapon" and not kill innocents. Cops are bloodthirsty and reckless these days.
The cops were in full uniform...
IIRC, they were both behind block walls, and never announced their presence or identified themselves.
Zerby couldn’t have possibly pointed the nozzle at the cops if he didn’t even know they were there.