I was avoiding this thread like the plague as I figured posting in it is a no win situation. After reading some of the posts it's obvious many here are depending on a brief tape that is incomplete from the start of the situation much less the stop. The portion broadcast repeatedly is only a small portion of that tape as well. It was a case of yellow journalism at it's best. No attempt to remain an unbiased observer reporting facts but a willfull editing and broadcast of a portion of it.
Animal
The tape and stop was not 5 minutes as you state. It was much shorter.
Saburo,
The drawing of a weapon is an escalation to deadly force. Unless the Officer is facing a threat to their lives ie. a weapon of some type be it a rock, stick, knife or other potentially lethal weapon drawing a weapon makes it available to be used should you get into a close contact situation. In short, you do not draw it when only facing an unarmed suspect unless there is a disparity in body size or numbers against the Officer. The continuum of force that Officers are trained in indicates that you use only the level of force that will contain the suspect and keep you from being injured.
The Officers HAD tased king twice. In testing a taser hit is SUPPOSED to take down a suspect in ONE hit. Officers are trained in this bit of information as well. Tasers are relatively ineffective against people who are on some drugs known to cause psychotic behavior such as PCP and other high doses of amphetamins as well as a really deranged person due to a mental problem. When an Officer observes a person shake off 2 taser hits and multiple shocks the conclusion to be drawn based on their training is obvious. Observations are all they have to work with as a blood test won't be a possibility until AFTER control is gained and the suspect is in a medical facility and the results known several days later. Until that happens the Officer has to rely on observation of the situation and make his tactical response accordingly.
Drawing a weapon, as you suggested, is not appropriate here based on a perceived threat. Your supposition of threat feeling of the officer is inapropriate. You were not there, have never been there and do not know what you are talking about outside of monday morning quarterbacking based on information unavailable to the Officers involved in the situation.
As to the amount of force used in the situation. As far as I am concerned it could and SHOULD have been handled differently. I was trained, as were my fellow Officers in my Department, to use a swarming technique. It exposes you to more risk and has resulted in frequent Officer injuries including some I have suffered. I do not know if the Officers involved had been trained in that maner at all. Neither does anyone else posting here that was not a part of LAPD at the time.
Saburo, you seem to want to use this situation to tar ALL Officers of all Departments by stating they suffered as a result of this situation. That is your prejudice there. Please recognise it and keep it to yourself. All Officers are not like this situation and frankly very few situations are like this one as well. That is why it made such a big news production. It was news as it is rarther infrequent. If it were commonplace it would not have been news, so please refrain from generalizing about Officers because of this incident.
You use a tape transcription of comments as a damning indictment of those involved. Taken out of context it IS damning. It is indicative of a person (as in a human being) who has been in a rather intense situation and is not indicative of them in a NORMAL environment. Is it good? No but it is not unexpected given the amount of stress and adrenalin reaction. Should it be taken as an indicator of a state of mind before the incident? No again as it is a result of the stress during the incident.
As a matter of fact, in the use of batons, side handle or otherwise, please note the relative lack of effectiveness shown by king's reaction to the blows. This in itself indicates a lack of reponse to pain stimuli or a lack of power being delivered by the blows. Baton training tends to indicate that compliance of the force being delivered is a fairly guaranteed concept. It may be optimistic but it IS predicated on dealing with a more or less NORMAL suspect not under the influence of drugs or mental problems. This observation would also indicate a person who is under the influence of a psychotic drug or psychosis itself. Would YOU want to get into th grasp of a person like that?? To cuff him without the total submission of the suspect is to do just that. I believe one of your earlier posts indicated that one of the Officers was cocked ready to strike, next to king but did not do so until king moved in contradiction to commands. That indicates to me that they understood the situation and were not ready to expose themselves to king UNTIL they felt he would respond as commanded. Without a sound track or the Officer's thoughts I could be wrong in that supposition.
As to the trial and results. I was rather surprised at the vcerdicts. After all the press and media attention including the repeated broadcast of the small portion of video I had no expectations of acquital. All the info I had at the time was the media as well so my conclusions were that the Officers would end up fried. The jury, none of which were Police Officers. saw it defferently. I accepted it as much as I had to accept the verdict of a jury in all the case I was involved with. The heard the evidence presented, the arguments provided, pro and con, and made their decision. That is the way the system works.
When the second trial was started, please note only Law Enforcement are subject to prosecutions of violations of civil rights and repeatedly tried for essentially the same offense AFTER acquital based on the same incident, I had absolutely NO expectation of an acquital. The riots, blamed on the first trial, and subsequent publicity made it fairly certain that ANY jury pool would be tainted beyond an chance of being unbiased. The publicity made it abundantly clear that the first jury "didn't do the right thing" and the second trial would correct that situation. That there were only 2 convictions was a surprise to me.
Now that is about all I am going to say on this situation. I am rather surprised that it is as much of an issue as it is today but I suppose that some can't just let things go if it doesn't fit their paradigm of life or justice or whatever. Hold your grudges one way or the other if it makes you happy. I'm moving on.
