Posted on 12/16/2013 9:14:42 PM PST by BenLurkin
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Family members claim LAPD officers did not need to open fire on Brian Beaird, a disabled veteran who was killed in Downtown LA Friday after leading police on a high-speed pursuit.
Police Chief Charlie Beck spoke about the investigation Monday and insisted events that night may have appeared more threatening from an officer’s perspective.
“I reserve judgment. You know, I’ve been doing this a long time and you have to know what’s in the minds of the officers, you have to know what they know,” Beck said. “You have to remember that whatever you’re seeing is not the point of view of the officers; it’s very different to see something from 1,200 feet, from a helicopter, rather than 15 feet away in the dust and the noise.”
Beaird, allegedly drunk, led police on an hour-long pursuit before crashing his silver Corvette into another vehicle and a fire hydrant. The collision occurred near the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Los Angeles Street.
He reportedly tried to exit his car and was shot by officers.
A law enforcement source told CBS2/KCAL9 reporter Dave Lopez that when Beaird got out of the car an officer shot him with a bean bag without alerting the other officers. The other officers allegedly heard that and mistook it as a gunshot coming from Beaird, prompting them to open fire. “Right now that kind of stuff is speculation. Now, speculation isn’t always wrong, but I’m not going to confirm any of that, and we’re going to work through this,” Beck said.
“…Does it happen very often that a bean bag is fired and that triggers that,” Lopez said to Beck.
“I’m speaking very generally here: We have absolute protocols to prevent that. Before an officer discharges a bean bag the protocol is for them to loudly state, ‘Bean bag ready. Bean bag ready,’ so that everybody knows that the detonation they hear is not a gunshot,” Beck said.
The big question is whether the first officer yelled “bean bag” before firing.
“We’re pretty angry. It didn’t seem that there was justification for what happened,” said Beaird’s brother John in a phone interview.
He said his brother called during the pursuit and said he couldn’t understand why the police were after him.
Beck says there will be a full investigation: “These things take some amount of time and we work through them very thoroughly.”
In the meantime, the officers involved in the shooting have been reassigned to desk duty.
His color doesn't matter only because he was white.
Your suspect is called the fleeing felon.
The red light matters to the innocent people this drunk hit. Null and void, and maybe you, is so desperate to sanctify the guy he makes up facts when it’s very possible the guy he and you are defending killed one or two innocent people. My point is you’re doing the same thing you’re accusing the cops of. Making up facts in a case of life and death.
Call the suspect what ya want.
If the suspect was unarmed when shot to death, the cops were way wrong here and basically murdered the suspect.
No, wrong...The red lights and pursuit have nothing to do with the shooting that followed the pursuit.
Quote what I am allegedly making up...
Take your time.
“Exactly what time is it on the video where we can see the light and know for certain it was red when they ran it?”
If I have this right, he T-boned the other car at about 20:37; at about 20:57 you can see (barely) that he has the green light; at about 21:01 the light going his way turns yellow.
Depending on the timing of the lights, it seems possible the other car could have run a red light.
But exactly? For sure? I don’t know.
Do you have any idea what the word murder means?
Are you Alaska Wolf under another name?
The red light matters in the argument you butted into. I was just defending an innocent driver that got plowed into by the ‘hero’ to most in this thread.
The lights turning red or green have zip to do with the shooting which followed the pursuit.
What does it mean?
Not the issue here. The issue why was the suspect shot to death.
See the title of the thread.
BTW, if ya don’t want people “Butting” in as you say, ya better get off the Internet.
BINGO!
Now that was a low blow Sport!!!! The Wolf-ette would have been all over this thread wouldn’t he?! (Actually he would have been a bit upset that his hero cops didn’t shoot the ‘Vette and driver in half with with a .50 Cal. 5 minutes into the chase!)
I was quite aware of everything you said before I called null and void on his post.(every battle is won before it is fought) And the fact is we DON’T know if they ran a red light. I’d be betting on the drunk running from the police who ran the light. It just pissed me off that he accused these very likely innocent people of causing the crash to make the drunk running from the cops look better.
hey, I was just ‘rebutting’.
20:34 you can barely get a glimpse of the signal before it disappears behind the station ID placard.
We can agree that it’s not perfectly clear.
Green clearly visible in the Corvette’s direction at 20:55 as the helicopter pans around.
We can easily note the time it turns yellow, get the cycle time from public works, and back calculate when it turned green.
You want a definitive view? That will be on a dozen police dash cams, if they ever deign to release them.
Now my question for you. Given that the lethal weapon, the car, was stopped, and given that the guy effectively dropped the weapon by getting out of the car, and given that he no longer constituted a threat, was it then A-OK to then shoot him in the back in your opinion?
There is nothing to rebut. If you’re drunk and failing to stop for the cops, you’re at fault regardless of what happens, in regards traffic collisions.
*However*, this does not give the cops the right to shoot an unarmed suspect to death after the pursuit was over, with the suspect not even in a vehicle.
Not even with a bean bag. You could see he wasn’t much of a runner when he exited the car. It would have been an easy foot-pursuit to take him down.
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