Posted on 11/02/2013 12:25:28 AM PDT by Hetty_Fauxvert
As a large wooden shrine sprung up Friday in the southwest Santa Rosa lot where a sheriff's deputy killed Andy Lopez last week, an attorney for the teen's family outlined the framework of a federal civil rights lawsuit the family intends to file next week.
Arnoldo Casillas, the attorney representing the Lopez family, said the Oct. 22 shooting was unconstitutional because it violated the Fourth Amendment's limits on police authority.
The family will file a lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco contending that Deputy Erick Gelhaus shot Lopez “without reasonable cause,” Casillas said in a statement. The shooting, he said, resulted from “an unconstitutional custom and practice” of the use of deadly force by the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office.
The family made similar allegations in a tort claim filed Thursday with the county. In that claim, Casillas alleged the “sheriff's department's training encourages deputies to prematurely shoot suspects who pose no threat or danger to deputies or the public at large.”
[...]
The Santa Rosa Police Department is doing a criminal investigation of the shooting, while the Sheriff's Office is conducting its own internal affairs review. Casillas said he expects little from those investigations.
“We really have very little confidence in the investigation that the City of Santa Rosa is doing,” Casillas said, adding that he's interviewed several witnesses that had not yet been interviewed by police.
In its claim filed Thursday with the county, the family contends the Sheriff's Office has “failed to develop and implement policies, procedures and training regarding the use of deadly force and proper tactics for pedestrian stops.”
(Excerpt) Read more at pressdemocrat.com ...
Dog supply running low.
Photo of memorial at the site where Andy Lopez was shot. . .
Vincent Caedoza, left, decorates a large altar constructed Friday at the memorial site for 13-year-old Andy Lopez, who was shot and killed by a Sonoma County sheriff's deputy near the corner of Moorland and West Robles avenues in Santa Rosa. (Photo Credit: CONNER JAY/Press Democrat)
It just gets worse.
The article says that witnesses have stated that Gelhaus fired his weapon before the boy had time to figure out what was happening. Is anyone carrying a rifle out of doors who turns toward an officer now subject to be shot immediately?
“He shot a 13-year-old kid who was doing what a kid is expected to do,” Casillas said. “This isn't a hardened criminal. This is a 13-year-old kid. You call out to him, what is he going to do? He's going to turn around.”
In the interests of full disclosure, the BB gun in question was completely indistinguishable from a Russian Kalashnikov AK -47.
And not only did the “BB gun” look indistinguishable form a real AK - 47, it did not look like a standard, potentially legal AK-47
The AK-47 look alike BB gun had been modified by someone who had sawed the barrel off to 12 inches long to make it look exactly like a sawed off AK-47 gang banger street zip gun with a similarly illegal (under California's insane gun laws) evil “High Capacity Magazine”.
Possession of a rifle with a sawed off barrel less than 16 inches long is a violation of the National Firearms Act of 1934 and is a Federal Felony carrying a mandatory 10 year sentence in Federal Prison
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act
Sawing the barrel down also removes the front sights so the only real use for such a weapon is extreme close range shooting of the type you see in a gang land execution style hit.
Such AK-47s are a status symbol in California gang culture, especially in the Northern California's Mexican gangs who are running the illegal pot growing industry where they are used to protect the illegal marijuana fields .
What the officer saw when he drove up was _
A) A guy dressed in a gang style hoodie with the hood up to conceal his face(no way the officer could tell the kid was 13 because he was wearing a hoodie with the hood up)
B) Said person with hoodie up in the fashion Gang Bangers to conceal their identities when committing crimes, was openly carrying a gangster style street zip gun AK -47 with a crudely sawed off 12 inch barrel, which if the gun had been a real unregistered sawed off AK-47 would have put the guy in Club Fed for a mandatory 10 years
C) In the officers mind, the scenario above would have immediately registered in the officers mind was he was dealing with gang or drug related execution style hit or home invasion in progress.
The fact that the barrel had been sawed off the faux AK-47 suggests it was intentionally altered to look like a gang banger zip gun, especially since the removal of the front sight rendered the BB gun worthless for target practice, plinking, squirrel shooting and all the other uses boys have for BB guns.
There is also evidence to suggest that the kid was gang banger wannabe who was intentionally impersonating a gang banger with a zip gun to play “bad boy” in an areas where gang related violence a day to day occurrence.
Jeez... the gun looked like a plastic piece of crap, not real. It is not a crime to open carry a plastic weapon. There is no evidence that the boy looked or acted hostile during his walk to a friends house.
One of the two cops rolled up, open his door and shot the boy seven times in less than 10 seconds. The other cop did not fire because he did not feel threaten. I will repeat the other cop did not fire because he was not threaten.
The cop wanted to shoot to kill the second he rolled up. His mentality is I am cop and the only one allowed in this country to carry arms. I will kill anyone exercising their 2nd amendments rights. Anyone carrying a gun deserves to die.
The sheriff must approve of drive by shootings as well. He apparently opened fire on him from a moving vehicle.
Dead kid = free money
So, the kid was a gangbanger wannabe pretending to be a tough guy and drawing down on a cop.
Evidently.
<>”The boy turned and the muzzle of his BB gun raised toward the deputy, according to police.<>
And that’s not even what Santa Rosa police Lieutenant Paul Henry told the newspaper earlier.
The Lieutenant said that the kid “was turning toward the deputies while raising the barrel.”
“while raising the barrel”.
That’s present participle versus past tense.
Nope the cop enjoys blowing away anyone who might think of exercising their second amendment rights. He shot the in kid carrying a unrealistic looking toy gun with malice.
He starting blowing away the kid before his partner could think about accessing the situation. Call in, 7 shots by one cop, and report of shots fired. All within 10 seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUIYJ0Ydt7k
Cops are on a murder spree.
You and I know that but there are those who that are of the opinion that anything a cop does to others is right and true. Until they do it to them. And this forum appears to be overstocked with them.
That's not true. Look at them side by side and the one with the steel cut off barrel and plastic stock is clearly the plastic pellet gun.
The fact that the tip was sawed off is indicative of a pellet gun with the orange safety tip sawed off to make it look real which kids often do to their orange tip toys.
Surely a professional gun expert would know this and be able to discern the difference or atleast be cautious in leaping to unwarranted conclusions.
What the officer saw when he drove up was _ A) A guy dressed in a gang style hoodie with the hood up to conceal his face(no way the officer could tell the kid was 13 because he was wearing a hoodie with the hood up)
That's not true. He was wearing a hoodie, like virtually everyone does in northern California but he had the hood down. The police admitted this.
This cop then had no excuse for not taking a few extra moments to see that this was a kid with a kid's pellet gun.
This is a lie. He was not a gangbanger. The kid was well liked and played trumpet in the school band.
Writing under his real name on the forum The Firing Line, Eric Gelhaus wrote under a thread entitled “He’s got a gun! ... A bb gun...” that: “It’s going to come down to YOUR ability to articulate to law enforcement and very likely the Court that you were in fear of death or serious bodily injury. I think we keep coming back to this, articulation — your ability to explain why — will be quite significant.”
Read more at: http://www.heavy.com/news/2013/10/erick-gelhaus-andy-lopez-shooting-cop/
The question I would ask his boss, the Sheriff, is this:
You held up two rifles in the news conference — one an AK47 and the other a plastic pellet gun.
Can you, an LE professional, tell them apart??? How??? Which is the quickest way???
Then why couldn’t your 24 year experienced deputy who is also a gun expert and trainer???
Or was he just in the mood to kill someone that day like he had been for months???
I’ll bet Gelhaus knew that it was a toy and he shot anyway. He had been itching to pull the trigger for a long time and this was his moment and he had to act quickly before it passed.
And by shooting prematurely before Andy got turned around to see that the gun was really just a toy he can claim that he really didn’t get a good look at the gun and assumed it was real.
And that bogus assumption gave him the green light to shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot.
He wasn’t in fear for his life. He was in fear that this opportunity would slip through his fingers. He had to shoot Andy before he got too far turned around where his kid features and the toy features of the gun would become too incontrovertibly apparent for him to feign ingorance as he is doing now.
Gelhaus wrote training articles for SWAT Magazine. In 2008, he wrote in SWAT: Today is the day you may need to kill someone in order to go home. If you cannot turn into the ‘Mean Gene’ for yourself, who will? If you find yourself in an ambush, in the kill zone, you need to turn on the ‘Mean Gene.’
Read more at: http://www.heavy.com/news/2013/10/erick-gelhaus-andy-lopez-shooting-cop/
This comment is quite concerning. Note here that he doesn't emphasize how to distinguish a bb gun from a real gun in the situation but how to talk your way out of it when its over.
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