Monday, March 9, 2015

Orange County Starbucks Alleged Tip Jar Thief Apprehended

A 26-year-old man remained in custody Sunday for allegedly attacking a retired police officer after the suspect reportedly stole a tip jar from a coffee shop.
Police explained Cardenas (the suspect) allegedly grabbed a 40 pound metal sign, and struck the customer in the head.

He said being hit by the sign was “like getting hit by a baseball bat.”

Fahey told the newspaper that after being struck, he told Cardenas he was carrying his Glock 26. He said Cardenas came at him with the sign a second time.

“You don’t want to do that,” he said he told the suspect, “I will shoot you.” He said Cardenas then jumped back on his bicycle and fled.
Upon reading this story I was reminded of a comment by Ken in Tx, on another blog, in regards to the police shooting in Madison Friday evening. Someone said "Police shoot too many people." to which Ken in tx responded...
I disagree. I think they don't shoot enough people. Let me explain why I write that.

When I was a kid, cops were allowed to shout, "Halt or I'll shoot." And then they did. A guy I went to school with was shot like this after robbing a service station. The US Supreme Court put a stop to that.

Back in those Bad Old Days, we did not lock our doors, day or night. We only locked them if we left town for a few days. You could leave your bike or other toys in the yard overnight and they would be there in the morning. Actually you could leave your bike anywhere unlocked, and it would be there when you came back. People did not lock their cars. GM cars could be started without a key if the ignition was left unlocked. Most people did. My brother and sister and I walked to school from the 2nd grade on, about a mile. The only bad thing to happen was the dog followed us and got run over. We walked or hitchhiked 10 miles from our subdivision into town for the movies. We walked through multi-racial neighborhoods after dark, with no danger or even threats, only polite greetings. This was in the bad old days when decent people respected the authority of the police and those who were not decent feared them. "Halt or I'll shoot." was part of that.

11 comments:

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I'm guessing that Ken in Tx never got his dog shot by a SWAT team.

bagoh20 said...

Violent crime is down or equal to the levels in the "Bad Ole Days", but fatal encounters with cops are up. The training has clearly changed to a shoot at the first sign of danger approach and apparently they are taught to shoot to kill, even the guy is already being shot by other cops.

I don't know what exactly changed or why, but it seems that today encountering a cop - even when doing nothing wrong is more dangerous than ever, and probably one of the most dangerous people you can run into. That is not how it should be in a free society.

Maybe I'm naive and don't know the reasoning, but I don't understand why people are not wounded by cops rather than killed so often. A person who has not actually fired a gun or at least clearly brandished it should never be killed by a blaze of gunfire from multiple cops. That seems like either cowardice, or bad policy and training. I worry more about my dog, my kids, my friends, or myself meeting a cop than I do them meeting up with a bad guy.

Methadras said...

What is the counter argument to Hands Up, Don't shoot? Halt or I'll shoot.

William said...

The cops who got attacked by an axe wielding maniac and the two cops who were recently killed execution style by another madman may have some light to spread on this subject.......I have been violently assaulted several times in my adult life. They weren't life threatening situations, but they were sufficiently scary. It's extremely difficult to respond in a proportionate and disciplined way when you're being attacked. The take away lession from this is that you should not assault strangers because the response may be disproportionate. This is, of course, especially true when it comes to assaulting cops.

Trooper York said...

Wait a minute!

Leo Cardenas swung and hit something?

That can't be right.

ricpic said...

The great warriors for social justice never talk about the cops who die because at the crisis moment they hesitate to shoot the dreck and be smeared "RACISSS!!!" But then a dead cop is a bonus to Schmendrik & Co. So why should they talk about the eggs they break on the way to their glorious omelet.

bagoh20 said...

It's a common story that an assailant (often just crazy or intoxicated) will approach police with a screwdriver, brick, pipe, or some such weapon that requires close contact and mobility to be dangerous. The cops will riddle them with bullets from a distance ensuring they are dead when a shots to the legs would be sufficient, or even a single shot to the torso that might be survivable, but would stop the threat. They virtually never do that. They instead turn them into swiss cheese not knowing if they were really dangerous or just out of it for some reason including some that are entirely innocent.

I want cops who have the courage to try apprehend these people alive if possible, to take some risks in order to avoid killing people that don't need killing. Is that so unreasonable? It didn't used to be. I have lost an enormous amount of respect for law enforcement over the last few years. Not over the bullshit charges of racism, but rather over what looks to me like careless disregard for citizens' lives with excuse that theirs should never be at any unnecessary risk. I'm sorry but that's part of the job. Would we be satisfied if firemen never entered a burning building to save lives, because they might be hurt?

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

A cop once told me they're trained to shoot dead center because: (1) you're only shooting when it's life-or-death; and (2) you need to minimize the danger of a stray bullet.

Sounded plausible to me but I really don't know much about those sorts of things.

Amartel said...

Every single one of these stories that gets adopted by racemongers does not ultimately play out.
Tawana and the Freddie's Fashion Mart story in the early days, then more recently Duke, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, even Eric the cig seller's death was supervised by a black police sgt. Interesting that in this whole allegedly raaaacist nation, they just can't dredge up a white officer/man shooting/raping an innocent black teen. "Hands up, don't shoot" isn't an argument, it's just sleepwalking in someone else's dream world.

bagoh20 said...

"A cop once told me they're trained to shoot dead center because: (1) you're only shooting when it's life-or-death; and (2) you need to minimize the danger of a stray bullet."

I assume there is a better argument that I'm not aware of, because those two don't hold up.

The situations I'm referring to are not life threatening unless you let the assailant get close to you, and firing 50 or 100 shots at a person is no way to reduce stray bullets.

Does anyone have the police justification for these overkill and shoot to kill policies?

Leland said...

My understanding for the doctrinal change from shot to wound to shot to kill is due to the resultant legal fallout. You shot towound the guy carrying the screwdriver, and then he argues to the judge is his wrongful shooting civil suit that he was just carrying a screwdriver and may have been a bit animated with his hand gestures but never intended to harm the officer. The dead assailant doesn't get to provide their side of the story. The family could bring a wrongful death lawsuit, but it is their word vs the cop as to what was in the mind of the assailant during the attack, again the dead assailant can't tell you for themselves.

It is a classic dilemma issue. Soldiers face this problem in war with prisoners. If you wound the enemy, he becomes a prisoner you have to feed, shelter, and protect. If you kill them, then they are a KIA to be buried in a mass grave as you move onto something else.

It is easy to look at the few if any times this hypothetically might happen in our lives, but these mean and women face it much more routinely and thus have less interest in the nuance anymore. I'm no justifying behavior that leads to shooting the family dog while doing a no-knock entry in the middle of the night, time so chosen as to catch the assailant asleep and less a threat while SWAT makes themselves a bigger threat. But if we don't seriously understand why these things happen, then we won't effectively solve them. It seems some had questions as to why these things happen nowadays.

BTW, anyone know what happened to the LA cops that shot up the pickup with two ladies in it, confused as a pickup driven by a large black man cop killer? That was outrageous, yet seemed to get very little news coverage afterwards. Certainly far less than Ferguson or Trevyon.