I don’t know what their policy is, and she may have violated it in a manner that makes her actions inexcusable. Do you know why she shouted, “taser, taser, taser?” Because the report of the taser could cause officers to misrepresent it as gun fire, and respond as such. The fact is “she” (which is an entirely valid disscussion) drew a weapon, which she ultimately thought was a taser (listen to her comments after the shooting) and deployed it. Do you think she would have made that error if the criminal hadn’t put her in that position”
Back when I was a Taser instructor, we encouraged officers to deploy the taser with their support hands to prevent this sort of mistake. Oh, and by the way, we didn’t abandon the citizens of Los Angeles, but we were unprepared for the level of insurgency we experienced.
Thing is, she was a department instructor, which means she should be held to a higher standard. Also, prior to resigning, the chief noted that she *completely* blew department policy. Taser is supposed to be on weak side hip, she’s supposed to confirm proper weapon selection. And of course she blew basic weapons safety.
I do know why she made the Taser call - but she then used something that was not a Taser.
LAPD’s own internal communications, released after the fact, demonstrated that officers on the ground near Florence and Normandy were there in enough force and wanted to go in to quell the rioting, but the Acting Chief (Chief Gates being out of town) pulled them back. The political leadership of LA then continued to demand the police pull back for some time after that.
I don’t blame the individual officers for what happened, but the fact remains that the police leadership abandoned the city and pulled the officers back. I’ve run into a number of LAPD officers who were serving in that time and talked it out with them, and have seen nothing to contra-indicate this.
And then afterwards, LAPD went door to door looking for the weapons the air units had seen from on high and the media had depicted. Because, hey, let’s make sure that the civilians are even less capable of defending themselves when the police abandon the city to the rioters.