The big story in Los Angeles for the past week has been the fatal police shooting of 19-year-old Abdul Arian at the end of a high speed chase.
It began last Wednesday night when Arian fled from a car stop and led LAPD officers on a Freeway chase. During the chase, Arian got on his cell phone and told a 9-11 operator that he was armed with a gun and was prepared to shoot it out with officers. Here is the KCAL news helicopter video of the shooting. Pay attention to the motions Arian makes toward the officers before he was shot.
It turns out that Arian was not armed, but was holding a cell phone in his hand as he was turning towards the cops and make pointing gestures in their direction.
The overwhelming public reaction is that the shooting was justified given the circumstances. My reaction is that this troubled young man was committing suicide by cop.
Nevertheless, before the body was even buried, which was yesterday, Arian's family had hired an attorney and is suing the city for 120 million dollars. In the words of their attorney, Jeffrey Galen, it is one million dollars for each bullet fired by the 8 officers. He is calling it the "worst shooting he has ever seen".
Huffington Post has another video from NBC News LA.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/17/abdul-arians-family-files-lawsuit_n_1431508.html
LA Daily News covered the funeral.
http://www.dailynews.com/ci_20420281/hundreds-mourn-abdul-arian-at-funeral-north-hollywood?source=most_viewed
I just hope the City of Los Angeles fights this case and does not settle.
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6 comments:
Will the loons from occupy Oakland march in solidarity with Abdul Arian like they did with Trayvon Martin and Shaima Al Awadhi?
http://www.oobbq.org/?p=135
I am wondering why the trial judge is allowing this to continue on. He/She has the ability to stop this as a frivolous lawsuit.
For perhaps the first time in my life, I may find myself agreeing with a defense attorney. If you do the math, it averages 15 rounds per cop for one dude, and if they did not make a sieve out of him, it was indeed poor shooting. They obviously need some more range time. Wait, is that not what he meant??
Looks to me like the moral to this story is not to take a cell phone to a gun fight. Further, it is looking more and more like Trayvon Martin took only his hands to one, which may be a little better and more effective than a cell phone, but not much and usually not enough.
Elwood,
Let me speak from the experience of one who has been in a shootout (with DEA). In the film clip, you can see at least 2 instants when the suspect turns back to the cops and makes what appears to be a shooting motion. The audio doesn't reveal anything, but it is possible that cops fired on both those instances.
When you make the decision to fire your weapon at a suspect, you aim for the torso for two reasons; it is the biggest target, and the most likely target to stop the threat (except for the head which is not the easiest target). Do you fire one time? No, you fire until the threat is stopped. He was a moving target, so it is very likely that many shots missed.
Multiply that by 8 cops and you see why so many shots were fired at one man. As I said, this was probably a suicide by cop.
Gary--I understand all that, I guess I was just being a little tongue-in-cheek about something that really is not humorous at all on any side. Apologies.
El,
No apology needed.
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