Posted on 07/26/2003 2:39:46 PM PDT by Reeses
Berkeley and Oakland police shot and killed a bank robbery suspect Friday in a confrontation near the UC Berkeley campus and across from a center where preschool children were playing.
Witnesses described a chaotic scene that erupted at 11 a.m. on the 2200 block of Haste Street after officers spent an hour searching for a man who police said had robbed a Wells Fargo bank at College and Ashby avenues and fled with an undisclosed amount of cash.
"There were like six or seven shots. I heard police saying, 'Don't move, don't move, police' and then 'bop, bop, bop,' " said Charles Elazier, 26, who lives near where the shooting occurred. "I got behind the truck," he said, motioning toward a white vehicle cordoned off with yellow police tape.
The unidentified suspect was pronounced dead at Highland Hospital in Oakland. Police sources said the man had been a suspect in a series of takeover robberies in Oakland and San Francisco.
The man was shot by Berkeley police Sgt. Craig Juster, 45, and Oakland police Officers Shawn Knight and Dave Burke after the suspect brandished a gun at them behind a home near Haste and Ellsworth streets, between bustling Shattuck and Telegraph avenues, police sources said.
The shooting happened just three blocks south of the UC Berkeley campus in a residential area mostly populated by college students and across from the Harold E. Jones Child Study Center, a university research center that studies preschool-age children.
Minutes after the shooting, children played within the fenced compound as a host of FBI agents and Berkeley and Oakland police officials surveyed the scene. Evidence from the bank robbery was found on Haste Street, police said.
The drama began just after 10 a.m., when a man robbed the bank in Berkeley's Elmwood district after holding a gun to the head of a female teller, police said.
Berkeley police put out a description and soon tracked the man to Haste Street. They were joined by Oakland police officers who heard the broadcast. Officers were conducting a building-to-building search when Berkeley police Lt. Dan Lee said into his radio, "Challenging one," meaning officers had a suspect at gunpoint.
Moments later, Lee yelled, "Shots fired."
Shawn Sridhar, 21, a UC Berkeley student, was trying to get to his home on nearby Dwight Way and was being escorted by officers when shots rang out. The officers abandoned Sridhar, drew their weapons and took cover behind their cars, he said.
"They didn't pull me (to safety)," Sridhar said, smiling. "They didn't seem to be worried about me; they seemed more worried about themselves. I was kind of surprised."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
This story was also on the TV news. They didn't show the suspect as it was not a white male Republican. But they did show his Nike's, pointing up.
This 21-year-old UC Berkeley student was well aware that shots were fired and he saw his two police escorts take cover. His account implies that he didn't have the minimal intelligence required to know there was danger and take cover himself. I doubt this is what happened. I think he took cover and then gave a negative account to the media to create the impression that Berkeley cops are uncaring cretins.
Actually, the police probably acted exactly as he would guess. Remember, anarcho-leftist dogma holds that police are "pigs." It's only the socialists that think authority is wonderful.
Well, he said it, so I guess that settles it.
In Berzerkley terminology, this means that he was a helpless, defenseless victim of a cruel corporatist society. And he was just trying to raise enough money to feed himself. If the economy was better, this guy would have had a steady job. So it was all Bush's fault /berzerkley
Gets his knowledge of proper police procedures from movies and television.
Who in their right mind would pull a Berkley liberal out of the line of fire? It's simply a case of good conservative cop training!
Say what?
We have the CHP now claiming they don't have to call for assistance when an injured motorist is laying on the side of the road. One or two more examples of this and Davis' recall will be just the beginning.
Spin me again how $200,000 worth of traffic tickets, issued on a single 35 MPH 1000 foot stretch of highway, "saved lives"...
Two cops walk out of a Cafe. Your on the ground with a guy on top of you and another one kicking you. You can sue the cops if they walk away.
There are defenses, another more serious call, a hostage situation back in the cafe, a solar eclipse, but if they don't have a more serious duty, you've got them for failure to perform their duties.
I sat on the peace officer standards and training committee which did the training standards for our state. If I had a couple of departmental manuals, I'd cite you code and verse. We have a tendency on the ole FR of seeing court cases, applying them to the whole world, and then yelling the sky is falling.
Current odds are 4-1 against, even money for.
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