Posted on 11/02/2013 12:59:51 AM PDT by Hetty_Fauxvert
[...]
[P]aramedic Aram Bronston, 43, of Santa Rosa said that his “heart sank” when a friend told him the deputy involved in the shooting was [Deputy Erick] Gelhaus....
[...]
About eight years ago, Bronston was struggling on the shoulder of Highway 101 in south Santa Rosa with a woman who was distraught over her brother's death and became “verbally and physically abusive.”
[...]
Gelhaus drove up to the scene as the woman began running into traffic, pulling Bronston with her, he said.
Gelhaus “grabbed me by my shirt — with cars literally two inches from hitting me — and pulled me to safety,” Bronston said. “He was able to subdue her in a way that didn't injure her. He didn't use a gun; he didn't use a baton. She was kicking, biting, spitting.”
[...]
Gelhaus' involvement in the shooting also sparked another Santa Rosa resident to speak out about his encounter with the deputy two months ago that left him rattled and in the midst of filing a complaint with the Sheriff's Office.
[...]
Gelhaus had pulled Westbrook over on his way to work at about 8:30 a.m. Aug. 21....
Gelhaus walked up to the passenger door, slipping on the steep hill. Westbrook asked the deputy if he should make more room on the roadside for him and when he put his BMW into neutral, Gelhaus pulled out his gun, according to Westbrook.
“He's screaming and he's ballistic — 'Turn off your vehicle' — I go, 'Sir, it is off,'” Westbrook said. “He jumped to an extreme situation in no time at all.”
Westbrook said that moments later he faced Gelhaus' gun again outside the car when Gelhaus asked if he had any weapons and Westbrook pulled up his shirt to show he had none.
(Excerpt) Read more at pressdemocrat.com ...
That's the SOP nowadays. Cops are in the clear to kill anyone or anything as long as they can say that there was some degree of fear.
Dear deputy jump start: seppuku is your only way out.
Jigai if you’re less than masculine, deputy.
Again something happen in between those 8 years. Again did this cop get an “desensitize” training. You know those training targets and maybe something happen in his personal life that many of us don’t know. Simply questions to ponder.
He’s a war veteran. He’s also written a number of articles on how to be the one who walks away from any confrontation. I wonder if he has undiagnosed and/or untreated PTSD (which can actually become worse with time). That plus desensitization/militarization training could have turned him into Deputy Shootfirst. I wonder.
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.
For Dr. Phil, perhaps.
you can get a job with the whitehouse spin team. a possible felony firearms violation does not carry the death sentence.
He shot 8 times.
If police had revolvers they wouldn’t be shooting 8 times.
These automatic pistols they all have now just encourage wasteful expenditure of ammunition.
That’s my opinion.
Until you left out the part where they shot the kid 10 seconds after rolling up to him and then shot them six times while he was on the ground...
How do you justify that ?
This happened in a neighborhood I know well. We lived a few blocks away. I’ve walked through that intersection many times.
Back in the 1970s, kids used to deal drugs at the bus stop. The neighborhood may not have changed much.
Sounds like this might be another St Trayvon-type situation, except this kid was carrying something that looked a lot like an AK. First impressions from the media were that the cop was a little trigger-happy, but the media tends to shade the truth in favor of protected minorities and against cops. The danger is that if cops are prosecuted unjustly, they will simply hang back from dangerous situations like they do in Mexico. That play-it-safe attitude is, in my view, why the murder rate there is 5x ours, and that may exclude people who just vanished into a mass grave.
He should be polishing up his acceptance speech for winning the Officer of the Year award for killing the kid.
I know what seppuku is. I am not familiar with Jigai. Would you bring me up to speed on that one? Thanks.
Because nobody apart from him knows for sure what happened, and even people at the scene tend to get this Rashomon-like slice of the incident where everybody sees things from his own perspective while leaving out things that other people see as essential. Bottom line is that the prosecutor could use things that he says against him, and that is why prosecutors tell people they're friends with to lawyer up if accused of a crime and never rely on straight-talking to get them out of a jam. A lot of people have been convicted of crimes they did not commit because they were a little too forthcoming. Here, where it's a matter of interpretation (i.e. there's no question he shot the kid, but the question is whether it was legit or negligent), it's even more essential that he lawyer up. Because the prosecutor can hang him out to dry, so he can appeal to the Latino vote when he runs for re-election.
How do you justify that ?
I'm not justifying anything. I was not there and I do not know what exactly was going through the officers mind.
Just adding context.
Cops drive up, see what appears to them to be a felon wearing a hoodie with the hood up so you can't see his face openly brandishing an illegal sawed off AK -47 zip gun with 30 found magazine loaded and ready to rock and roll.
They acted accordingly.
Consider this- whoever called the cops may have been terrified that the kid was a gang banger intent on invading their home or shooting them.
Jigai is suicide!!!
If I’m a cop and I roll up on a scene and “I believe” the perp has an AK-47 I ask once for him to drop it if he makes any movement other than dropping it I empty my weapon!!!Facing what might very well be a fully automatic rifle with a handgun is suicide if one hesitates!!!
What do you think the odds are that the kid was holding his toy gun by the pistol grip? That is what I probably would have noticed first. If he was, I shoot much faster than if he wasn’t.
Okay. Thanks for the info.
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