Just slightly over two years ago, an LAPD SWAT team tried to rescue an 19-month-old little girl named Suzie Pena, who was with her drunk, drugged out dad in a car dealership while the dad shot (and shot back) at the cops.
After several hours of this, the SWAT team did an entry into the back gate of the dealership, crept through the dealership building itself, sent a “flash-bang” into the tiny interior office where the dad was holed up. They thought the flash-bang would stun him. It didn’t. He shot back. So they blew into the room firing, and killed the crazy, messed-up, murderous dad….and the little girl. She died in her father’s arms.
So now the little girl’s mother, Lorena Lopez, is suing the LAPD for her daughter’s wrongful death and negligence. (I wrote about this case for the Weekly, so in case you’re curious about the back story you can find it here…and here.)
As part of the suit, her attorney, Luis Carrillo is asking for the internal police reports from the department’s investigation into the gun battle. Not surprisingly, the department doesn’t want to fork them over. The Deputy City Attorney, a woman named Kelly Kades, insists that the police officers’ statements are for internal use only and are protected by the right against self-incrimination.
It’s kind of an interesting dilemma. Kades says that, unlike in civilian employment, the department can make officers testify against their wills and so the info that results should be kept confidential.
According to the AP, Carrillo argued that “there is no danger of self-incrimination because the district attorney’s office said in 2006 that none of the 57 officers and supervisors involved in the standoff and shooting would face criminal charges.”
Carrillo says he only wants to compare what the officers involved in the shooting told their supervisors with what they stated in their depositions given for this civil case.
On Tuesday, the judge, who clearly would prefer not to touch this one, ruled that…..somebody else can decide it. He’s ordered the two side to make their respective pitches to an impartial referee who will then advise the judge was to whether he ought to release the documents or not.
Okay, attorneys and arm chair attorneys out there, what do you think the referee will decide?
One thing I’d bet the ranch on: if the cops have to fork over the internal info, the department is toast in terms of this lawsuit. (Not that there was any ill intent. The SWAT guys were devastated by by the outcome.)
They may be toast anyway if Carrillo the attorney can, in any way, accurately reconstruct the way the tiny interior office looked after the shooting.
When I was reporting, I spent a long, long time in that office looking at the walls and at all those bullet holes. (The photo below only shows a small section.) And frankly I still can’t understand how those genuinely good officers could have gone into that little room, guns firing, and imagined the outcome would be any different than the tragic scene that resulted
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Correct me if I am wrong, but because of confidentiality laws, the court cannot compel a Priest, Therapist, Journalist or spouse to testify about what someone has said to them in confidentially.
It appears that the internal police department’s investigation into the gun battle could fall within this category of confidentiality especially if the officers expect a level of confidentiality in the investigation.
She died in her father’s arms?! Celeste, give me a break. First, do you know that to be true, or is that just an emotion grabbing phrase? Second, if the father did hold his daughter in his arms, was it like a loving dad or a crazed man using her as a hostage or shield between him and the police?
I’ll try to read the rest of the post later, but I see where this is going. The police are bad.
The fact that the D.A. has concluded there was no prosecutabe violation of state law does not close the door on potential liability if the U.S. Dept. of Justice were to decide to prosecute the officers involved (civilly or criminally). Until prosecutors at the local, state and federal levels unequivocally state there is no violation of law, the officers involved are in jeopardy.
Woody, it’s literally accurate. I’d have never put it in there if it wasn’t. I deconstructed the whole thing very, very carefully with the police at the time and, I’m not suggesting you need to read the whole Weekly article, but most of the underlying facts are there if you’re curious.
I personally believe that the police screwed up. But it doesn’t mean I’m right. And, it was an honest mistake. The whole thing was an awful situation. Everyone truly tried their best, and some of the SWAT guys broke down afterward. They wanted very much to save that baby.
The father wasn’t using the child as a shield—although police spokespeople said he was. It was a statement that, once made, never got taken back. But I’ve reviewed the video of the guy (the dealership had something like seven or nine video cameras for security purposes and they were running so there is a record).
He wasn’t holding her as a hostage, per se. But in the end, he may as well have been. He was shooting at the cops with one hand, while holding his daughter with the other hand, which was as endangering to her as if he HAD used her as a shield. Frankly, I think the terrible noises of the guns had the kid shrieking so what do you do when a panicky little kid cries? You scoop ’em up. I believe that’s what he did. Only problem, he then shot at the police.
He basically had a breakdown for reasons unrelated to the police situation. It was a domestic dispute of sorts. But he was a creep.
I’m not making the police bad. It was a tragic occurance.
In fact, after my articles in the Weekly, the chief (Bratton) told me that they were the articles he felt were the most accurate and treated the department the most fairly.
Anyway, I’ve been curious about the civil trial because I reported so closely on the story. To my mind, this is akin to a medical malpractice suit where doctors make an error in judgment and the patient dies, but not because the doctors aren’t skillful or didn’t do their damnedest to do it right. But sometimes people make the wrong choice and it ends badly. Again, this is only my opinion and there are plenty on the other side who would argue this differently.
Geeze, but that was a rambling comment. Sorry about that. (Need more coffee.)
I continue to think there is another dimension that operates in these kinds of situations that more officer training won’t fix. And, I still think that it’s not always just the knucklehead psych profile of the officers. I think there is a dynamic that occurs in groups, or triggers that can cause a group, to react rather than respond. I may be too under the influence of writers like Douglas Hofstader (human consciousness) and Mark Buchanan (the physics of social interaction). Each considers aspects of what we understand to be “individual free will.” Some day, maybe hundreds of thousands of days, from now I think we will have a much different picture of how these kinds of crises – situations in which it appears an unreasonable level of force was used – occur. Personally, I hope the impartial referee argues against releasing the documents unless all of the relevant legal authorities offer immunity (as suggested by opuspa on this thread). We need to understand a whole lot more about how flash points happen, and it’s not the kind of thing I believe we’ll see captured on a security film. In this particular case, there were a series of decisions, likely formed within the group, that suggested the next step was reasonable, even though it turned out to be deadly, deathly wrong.
Celeste, a sitution where a drunk guman is holding his baby girl in one arm while blasting away at the police with another doesn’t lend itself to a loving description of “She died in her father’s arms.” That may be “literally accurate” but it steers one to a misleading interpretation. That’s like saying that Hitler had his loving arms around Eva when they died together–just like Romeo and Juliet. As Sgt. Friday would say, “Just the facts, Mamm.”
I think that I may need to edit your book chapters before they go to the publishers. At least, stick my comments in the margins to make the readers think.
BTW, congratulations to the LA Dodgers for not letting Barry Bonds tie Hank Aaron’s HR record.
The SWAT team is only going to wait so long for a drug crazed lunatic with a stolen gun to blast away at the police and anyone else that moves before they decide to take him out (hostage or no hostage).
Pena had wounded a police officer and died with his small child in his arms protecting his torso with her tiny body while firing his weapon at officers.
I should point out that Pena was an illegal alien. This has nothing to do with how the police responded or should have responded, but is a symptom of enormous problems that illegal’s have put upon our support services like police, fire, hospitals and schools.
Because of our Nanny state mentality, the use of the police as the final arbiter for any family dispute is repeated over and over again,. Police are often called to the same home a dozens of times to settle family arguments.
The other reality of this situation is that if the police were not called, most likely everyone would be alive and well today. The over dependence on the state, created by our welfare system and ever expanded by Democrats will only ensure that this type of tragedy is repeated over and over again.
Listener, well put. (And you’ve just successfully added some new books on my To Do list.)
Woody, I think your notes-in-the-margins idea has real merit.
And, yes, not happy to see the Dodgers lose, but at least they stopped the steroid guzzling Bonds.
Lady reports that her drugged-up husband held her and her 16-year old daughter at gunpoint overnight.
If you hear this story, no matter what LE agency your working for, its a no-brainer.
Your job is to immediately go over and get this guy before one of the victims decides to go over and do your job for you. To make things worst, the auto dealership is just walking distance from the victims/suspect’s residence. Any agency would have walked over and pinned down the guy at the dealership and requested immediate back-up.
During their probationary training, did anyone ever tell these guys the concepts and priorities to a good felony crimal report involving elements like a GUN, drugs, alcohol usage, domestic violence, and being held HOSTAGE. You got to be kidding me.
The question that I hear from everybody in the surrounding community is, “Why in the hell did she (the wife) give this A-O the baby?”
This is not common reaction from a mother. When my wife gets upset, she wont even give me the baby to change her smelly diapers.
A lot of people are concern that maybe the mother was involved in drug usage too. Didn’t the baby come back showing tracable amounts of cocaine? No one wants to handcuff the mother for child endangerment….but she got really close to it. But as noted above, all this could have been avoided. I cant believe that a 16-year girl has more courage than those LAPD officers. I’ll give her a gun and a badge to patrol my streets.
Poplock, if you know this much, then I’m figuring you know the rest of the back story.
I sure wouldn’t have given him the baby either (but then again I wouldn’t have stayed with the fool given what was going on). To add to everything else he had a whole other family on the side. Quite a piece of work, that Raul.
This is a very complicated story and, as you likely know, there’s only so much that either the police or the press could say publicly.
I’m aware of the stuff about the trace amounts of cocaine. Lord, who knows? I guess. My gut feeling is that she wasn’t using, unless it was just a bit to placate him when he was waving a gun around and threatening her and the 16 year old, the night before. But certainly I could be dead wrong. I know some folks whom she worked for and they never saw any sign of it. But that doesn’t guarantee anything.
What I do know is that Lorena was an abused woman in bigtime denial, who closed her eyes when he abused…..let’s just say others in the family. Evidently the guy was high functioning and charming in his own way—except for the fact that he was a vile, abusive, philandering SOB.
The story among the family members and close friends is that the baby would always calm him down, so when he came over to the house that day and demanded Suzie, rather than have another confrontation, they relented and said okay. Again, I wouldn’t have done it; your wife wouldn’t have done it; but Lorena was exhausted and trying to avoid another hideous fight. (And she’d just reported him earlier in the day, and filled out the paperwork for a restraining order.) It was a fatal choice, as it turns out. But, sadly, I get it.
I agree, to my mind, the real victim in all this—other than the baby—was not so much the mom. It was Ilsy, the teenager. She broke my heart.