Fatal mixup at Costco

William Parcher said:
Off the meds...



https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...760894-9229-11e9-956a-88c291ab5c38_story.html
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As I suspected, the officer has not yet been interviewed by the criminal investigators (although he has submitted to an administrative interview).

Winslow, the officer’s attorney, declined Tuesday to confirm his client’s name but said he has never been involved in a shooting. He said they had not decided yet if the officer will sit down for a voluntary interview with Corona police, who are conducting the criminal investigation.
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Puppycow said:
As I suspected, the officer has not yet been interviewed by the criminal investigators (although he has submitted to an administrative interview).
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Timely interviews are for little people. The cop will make his statement after he reviews the video and decides what serves his needs best.
 
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arthwollipot said:
He wasn't mentally disabled, he was schizophrenic. Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder, not a disability.
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Based on the reporting of the story, I have no qualms using the term disabled. The man appears to have been incapable of living an independent life and was heavily reliant on his parents as caretakers. If that doesn't qualify as disabled, I don't know what does.
 
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Los Angeles Times said:
Kenneth French of Riverside lived with his parents and had the mental capacity of a teenager, said his cousin, Rick Shureih, in a phone interview with the Los Angeles Times on Sunday night.
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This doesn't make sense given the other things said about him. We have read about: nonverbal; schizophrenic; mental illness; requires vigilant guardianship.

Putting aside jokes, those are not things that are generally associated with "mental capacity of a teenager".
 
William Parcher said:
This doesn't make sense given the other things said about him. We have read about: nonverbal; schizophrenic; mental illness; requires vigilant guardianship.

Putting aside jokes, those are not things that are generally associated with "mental capacity of a teenager".
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That statement was made by the French's cousin who I venture to say knows next to nothing about the French's medical condition.
 
William Parcher said:
This doesn't make sense given the other things said about him. We have read about: nonverbal; schizophrenic; mental illness; requires vigilant guardianship.

Putting aside jokes, those are not things that are generally associated with "mental capacity of a teenager".
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Mental and emotional illnesses are way too complicated to make any such simple characterizations. They are also usually very distinct from developmental or injury related disorders that affect intellectual abilities. One can easily be nonverbal and have an exceedingly high intellectual capacity. Schizophrenia has nothing to do with "mental capacity" and schizophrenics have the same range of intellectual abilities and mental skills as any other population (perhaps on average slightly higher if I am remembering correctly). Nor does either of these illnesses require "vigilant guardianship" per se: that depends on the particular manifestation of the illness in that specific person. Many schizophrenics are able to lead fully independent lives.

The particular individual appears to have had severe enough mental/emotional problems that he did need close assistance by family, but likely due to problems with his ability to deal with the world around him in a rational and functional manner. Probably not because of a low "IQ."
 
At least one of those articles claims that the officer was knocked unconscious prior to the shooting; and that the incident was caught on security camera. That is conceivably a fair amount of force prior to the shooting; after which the off-duty officer may well have felt that his daughter was in danger. While the mentally disabled suffer hugely disproportionate rates of police violence, this isn't actually a police action. I'm going to withhold judgment on this one until more information actually comes out.
 
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Do we ever hearof toxicology reports in police shootings? Alcohol in this case?
 
casebro said:
Maybe, in addition to guns, off duty officers ought to be required to wear helmets.
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I was never able to verify the claim. But a friend of mine once claimed that the mortality rates of American soldiers sent to Iraq/Afghanistan had been found by the CDC to actually be lower than that of the general American (USAian) population. On account of 1) a lower and healthier average age, and 2) the consistent use of protective gear such as helmets. So....maybe they actually should.
 
Shadowdweller said:
I was never able to verify the claim. But a friend of mine once claimed that the mortality rates of American soldiers sent to Iraq/Afghanistan had been found by the CDC to actually be lower than that of the general American (USAian) population. On account of 1) a lower and healthier average age, and 2) the consistent use of protective gear such as helmets. So....maybe they actually should.
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I didn't hear it as America in general, but compared to the age/sex related deaths in America's Deadly Seven Cities. Take those seven cities out of the national murder rate and we have a normal murder rate compared to the rest of the world.
 
casebro said:
I didn't hear it as America in general, but compared to the age/sex related deaths in America's Deadly Seven Cities. Take those seven cities out of the national murder rate and we have a normal murder rate compared to the rest of the world.
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And take the two largest cities out of the stats for every other country and the US would likely still have a higher murder rate. So?
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Based on the reporting of the story, I have no qualms using the term disabled. The man appears to have been incapable of living an independent life and was heavily reliant on his parents as caretakers. If that doesn't qualify as disabled, I don't know what does.
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Yes, it sounds like his particular suite of mental disorders and intellectual impairments contributed to a disabled life, but that's not the same thing as saying that schizophrenia is a disability. Like I said, as long as they stick to a good treatment plan, schizophrenics can and do live relatively unimpaired lives.

My main issue is the way people, including the New York Times and Washington Post use imprecise and misleading language around mental illness. It contributes to misunderstandings and assumptions. The worst example of this (which may not have occurred in this case but which I present as an example) is the conflation of psychotic with psychopathic. They're two very different things. I think it's Alfred Hitchcock's fault.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
This is absurd. Even in this highly favorable story the cop's attorney is peddling, I see no reason why the officer should not have been arrested on the spot. Even if you buy the story that the mentally disabled man shoved the officer so hard that it caused him to lose consciousness and thus be justifiable cause to use deadly force, two other people were shot that were not engaged in violence.

At the very least, two counts of criminal negligence occurred. No justification has been offered why the shooting of both parents was not, at the very least, criminal negligence, if not aggravated assault or attempted murder.

You can be sure that if an lawfully armed citizen killed an unarmed man and injured two others he would be arrested on the spot. There is no collateral damage exemption in self-defense scenarios.

Cops truly are first class citizens. Under a similar fact pattern, an ordinary citizen would be starting in a very deep hole and have a long climb out to prove their innocence. Cops circle the wagons and it's the burden of society to prove that their violence isn't justified. Disgusting.
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Just a logic issue: If you are unconscious then you can't use any force. You're unconscious!
 
Shadowdweller said:
I was never able to verify the claim. But a friend of mine once claimed that the mortality rates of American soldiers sent to Iraq/Afghanistan had been found by the CDC to actually be lower than that of the general American (USAian) population. On account of 1) a lower and healthier average age, and 2) the consistent use of protective gear such as helmets. So....maybe they actually should.
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I think that it is the general public that need protection from the off-duty cops that are shooting them.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Just a logic issue: If you are unconscious then you can't use any force. You're unconscious!
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I wouldn't worry too much about the logic of it, since odds are good it's just a post-hoc rationalization why it isn't a crime to gun down three unarmed people at a Costco if you're a cop.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Just a logic issue: If you are unconscious then you can't use any force. You're unconscious!
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This is the part that got me as well. It makes absolutely no sense even in the slightest. I read the article 2-3 times just to make sure I wasn't missing something.

So he gets pushed in the back and "briefly loses consciousness". Ok, fine. Then he wakes up, without have any idea of what happened, and just starts blasting these people. First off, if he got pushed in the back, how the **** does he know who pushed him? If he blacked out, then wouldn't he wake up confused? Concussed perhaps? Wondering what happened? In this case, he just wakes up and starts "pew pew" all over the place. Including at innocent people trying to defuse the situation.

Put him in jail as mentioned previously for negligent homicide x2. Nothing presented thus far should give him the right to shoot someone. Even if he was pushed like....super duper hard, the attack was not ongoing. Especially if he lost consciousness and suffered no more physical damage until he woke up. This is on the cop, and he should probably get ready for a long trip away from home.
 
It's hard to say what he may have been thinking. He was holding his child and was somehow knocked or pushed from behind. If he lost consciousness it was probably because his head hit the hard floor. Who knows what he saw when he came to. He may have thought that this is an organized child abduction by three pedophiles. Not an innocent but highly-odd son and his caretaker parents. Instead a violent child stealing crew.

Who knows what he thought? Do you think his thought was, "I'm going to shoot three innocent people right in front of my child because, well, because why the hell should I not do that?"?
 
Maybe it wasn't a push knocking him down and instead was a fierce sucker punch causing unconsciousness before he hit the floor.
 
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