Posted on 10/29/2013 9:59:16 AM PDT by Uncle Chip
SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) — Sheriff's officials say the Northern California deputy who fatally shot a 13-year-old boy is a firearms instructor who has trained his law enforcement colleagues in the proper use of force for nearly two decades.
Sonoma County spokesman Assistant Sheriff Lorenzo Duenas said 48-year-old Erick Gelhaus has been an instructor and rangemaster for the county for 19 years.
He also teaches pistol, carbine, shotgun and rifle lessons for Gunsite, a private company in Arizona, according to the company's Web site.
Gelhaus, a 24-year sheriff's office veteran, is a frequent contributor to S.W.A.T. magazine, a monthly firearms publication.
Duenas confirmed that Gelhaus is one of 26 gun instructors for Sonoma County.
He has not only given shooting lessons but also has provided instruction on the proper use of force, Duenas said.
To do that job, "you've got to be good at instructing others," Duenas said, adding: "You have to be able to instruct others on policy and procedures and use-of-force policy issues."
Gelhaus shot and killed Andy Lopez last week in Santa Rosa.
Investigators say Gelhaus mistook the pellet gun Lopez was carrying for an assault rifle....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Yes, since it's not reasonable to expect anyone to know it wasn't a real gun.
The rest of your questions are non-sequitur sophistry.
Who was endangered by not knowing whether it was a real gun or not???
That’s the law. The danger doesn’t have to be real. We went over this a thousand times on the Trayvon/Zimmerman threads. You should have been there.
It has to be reasonable not imaginary. Go back and read the sophistry that you missed.
We went over this a thousand times on the Trayvon/Zimmerman threads. You should have been there.
You must have missed the trial because they backed up his fear with a bloody head being banged on the concrete. Zimmerman's threat was real not just perceived and it had to be proven as such in a court of law. Next time pay attention.
That is false.
Your willful ignorance is tiring. You haven't had a rational argument for the entire thread and you lost all credibility with this. You're not worth another minute of my time.
I could ask, but the answer seems obvious to me. Once the shooting starts, you don’t stop until your training tells you to. I witnessed this first hand in the simulator. The perp, who had started by running at the shooter with a big knife, was already on the ground, looking quite helpless and disabled, but the last of five shots was fired anyway, because he was still moving. It all happens so fast, there is no time to make fine distinctions such as “oh now I realize this is a toy knife (or AK47).” The reflexes were trained. The reflexes did what they were trained to do.
But your question is worth asking, so I’ll call tomorrow and see if he’s available, and try to get you an answer.
BTW, this guy has taught hundreds of police officers in central IL, and he has confirmed one thing frequently mention here on FR, the police he has trained have been notoriously less skilled at shooting and even combat shooting, than hobby or self-defense shooters. They squeeze off 30(?) rounds a year to qualify, and never touch the gun otherwise. So they have no real stress programming. Put them in a serious shooting scenario, and they’re no better off than some total non-shootist dragged in off the street. Comforting, I know.
BTW, this guy has taught hundreds of police officers in central IL, and he has confirmed one thing frequently mention here on FR, the police he has trained have been notoriously less skilled at shooting and even combat shooting, than hobby or self-defense shooters. They squeeze off 30(?) rounds a year to qualify, and never touch the gun otherwise. So they have no real stress programming. Put them in a serious shooting scenario, and they’re no better off than some total non-shootist dragged in off the street.
***All the more reason to make taser guns mandatory for all police officers.
That’s interesting because self defense experts say that you fire until the threat is neutralized. If he is on the floor writhing in pain or running away I would assume the threat to be neutralized.
BTW that’s what some witnesses said this deputy did. He fired and the victim fell to the ground and he then went up and while he was on the ground shot him some more.
If that’s what they are teaching in these classes then they are turning out murderers not self defenders.
No no no. I said no such thing. That is not what I saw in the simulator. It was just a very quick burst of shots from one fixed position. The measure of success is moving versus not moving. The problem is, once the machine starts, it will run to the end. If you want a different result, you have to program it differently.
BTW, it is extremely unlikely he would shoot, walk up , then shoot some more. It's contrary to both the programming and common sense. For one thing, you can shoot nearly as well from 20 yards as 10, so why get closer to a still moving perp who could pull a second gun or a hidden knife? No, the training is to stop all perp movement from the safest vantage point possible. Furthermore, the autopsy confirms the fatal shots were delivered to the right side of the boy's body, which would require him to be standing at a 90 degree angle to the officer's weapon, not on the ground. Witnesses can say anything. Ballistics will tell the truth.
Probably a pretty good idea. Much easier to recover from a mistaken use of NON-lethal force.
Don’t forget to, uh, make sure the digital recording device malfunctioned in some manner.
Spoken like a badgemonkey...one deeply enamored with their
petty powers of life and death over citizens.
For you and your associates judgement day is coming....and right soon.
Uh oh, it’s going epidemic!
Yeah, jump right on that and get back to us or aren’t you “patriot” enough?
Well, there ya go. Gelhaus has "given shooting lessons" and "provided instruction on the proper use of force."
Plainly, with an expert like this, the kid couldn't have been hurt too badly. . . . Unless you count being killed.
I mean no disrespect, but there are a number of unsupportable assumptions in that statement. First of all, we did the exercise in class in slow motion. At each state of the turning, the instructor asked us whether we would shoot. At about the point when the barrel of the (pretend) AK47 is, say, half a second from lining up on you, and the person holding the weapon can see you, that's when you feel there's no time left for niceties. Act now or someone dies, maybe me. In real time, that period of decision could take less than a second to pass.
I'm glad I have not been in that situation, yet. In the exercise, I was too slow to decide, even in slow motion. If the gun was a toy, you'd have your happy ending if I was the cop. If the gun was real, and he pulled the trigger first, I wouldn't be here, I'd have been killed in an instant, leaving behind a family who loves me and depends on me. Not a very happy ending.
I made other fatal mistakes during related exercises in that class. If you're ever in a bank robbery situation, and you're carrying, try to remember the robber probably has an undisclosed accomplice who can take you out if you try and pull your gun on the guy collecting the wallets and jewelry.
Bottom line, the police have developed the training they have for a reason. They want the bad guys to go down, the innocent bystanders to stay safe, and the cops to make it home alive on any given night. If the training can be tweaked to account for some of the more difficult scenarios, fine. Do that. But understand that once you're in the situation, you're going to fall back on your training. Superman is a fictional character. There will be no super-brilliant high speed decision-making. There will be no reading of minds. There will only be reflexes based on what you see and hear. Period. That's why you over-train.
As to your question of morals, I am a Christian, so that's my moral lens. And in the long history of Judeo-Christian law, murder isn't and has never been the same as killing someone through an honest mistake in judgment. You could perhaps make a case for manslaughter if you could show the judgment was reckless or unreasonable in some objective way. But here even that would be difficult to do, because the officer's judgment, as we understand it so far, appears to be within the norm for persons in his situation.
BTW, I should mention that my instructor brought up the unpleasant spiritual aftermath of killing someone, even when fully justified under law and morality. It's not something any LEO I have ever known wanted to have to deal with, years of second-guessing themselves and wondering, with their reason, not their reflexes, could they have done something differently? I am sure there are bad eggs out there to who this does not apply, but I have had the statistical good fortune of never meeting one.
Your post raised another question you can ask your instructor regarding threat determination clues, especially since it appears that in firearms training that is often the point of no return:
What indications were there in this case that should have clued this officer, a firearms expert, that this kid openly carrying what appeared to be an AK47 in his left hand with the barrel pointed down was not a threat???
What indications were there when the kid began to turn around to his right with the barrel still pointing down that he was still not a threat???
What indications were there when this kid was turning around with only his left hand on the rifle and his right hand in front of him no where near the rifle that this kid was still not a threat???
How easy is it to raise the barrel of an AK47 with only one hand, your weaker left hand, as you are turning around if you are not Rambo or Arnold???
Good luck getting a straight answer —
“I made other fatal mistakes during related exercises in that class. If you’re ever in a bank robbery situation, and you’re carrying, try to remember the robber probably has an undisclosed accomplice who can take you out if you try and pull your gun on the guy collecting the wallets and jewelry”
What most concealed carry instructors fail to tell people, and even police officers forget, is that 40% percent of all armed robberies involve at least two suspects. It’s the standoff guy that gets you.
And remarkably, in a 2005-2006 debate on The Firing Line forum about the justification for shooting someone who brandishes a BB Gun, Gelhaus contributed this:
“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.”
http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/10/28/deputy_santa_rosa_+andy_lopez
In a matter of seconds, Gelhaus ordered the boy to drop the weapon then opened fire before the trainee could take cover behind an open door of the car ....
The trainee’s account bolsters eyewitness reports and dispatch records that only 10 seconds or so elapsed between Gelhaus confronting the boy and the shooting....
The Press-Democrat reported that Lopez was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, but the hood was down and Lopez was not wearing earphones when ordered to drop the gun....
Gelhaus told investigators that he couldn’t remember if he identified himself as a police office before firing....
“When he touched the weapon and briefly looked at it, felt that it wasn’t the proper weight and looked different, that was when he first began to suspect it was a replica firearm,”
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