Tragic hijacking and shootout in Miami

https://miami.cbslocal.com/2019/12/06/hijacked-ups-driver-frank-ordonez-shootout-police-pursuit/

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The home County for the LE agency owes the families of the UPS driver and bystander a lot; much more than just the blood money for a very poor on-scene decision. Incredible lack of forethought for the results of their actions.

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Couldn’t have politely put it better. Watching the footage it appeared they did not need advance so quickly. Adrenaline is a very dangerous thing if you can’t control it. I’m not spend a lot of time being and arm charm quarterback however nothing changes my number one rule with firing a weapon.

You are responsible for every round you send until it stops.

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Given the large number of cars all around the UPS truck, in front and behind… how did they choose to shoot?

“They disregard the hostage, they disregard the people around the scene, they went out there like the old west, they shot everybody,”

I think that’s consistent with what is on the video.

So very sad.
I’ll donate on the gofundme in the article.

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There has been a big shift with what we expect from police with all the active shooter stuff. They used to only have to be protectors. Now we ask them to be hunters. But they have not had the proper level of training on how to decide when to flip the switch. I’m not giving them a pass but I’m not letting the people above them not get their do criticism.

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I know it’s very early on in the investigation of the shooting in south Florida, but I’ve heard a lot of critical comments directed at police who were involved. I attribute that partially to media bias against police, and partly to civilian tendencies to view police as overly aggressive. I have no first hand law enforcement experience, but I spent my adult life working as a private investigator. I’ve held a concealed carry permit for decades. I still hold one. I still carry concealed. I’m not so quick to judge the actions of the officers on the scene. I prefer to hear the actual evidence (not speculation). We don’t know at this point whose bullets hit the two innocent victims. I have been attempting to put myself in the place of the officers. I’m not so sure that I would have done anything different than what they did. The fact is, they had two hard core violent criminals who had already shot one person at the jewelry store and fired on the officers while they were on the run. When they got stuck in traffic, they started shooting again, with many potential shooting victims all around. It seems to me that stopping those shooters right away was a priority for the officers. I don’t think they had a choice. Also, if you were one of those motorists caught in the crossfire and were armed, would you engage the bad guys? I have my own thoughts and opinion on that, but I’d like to hear from others. what do you think? Thank you

Dan

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@DanRyanPI I moved your post here on the thread where some folks are already discussing this case.

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I think we have to keep in mind that we did not see all that went on at the scene. We don’t know if there was an event or a specific act committed by one or both of the suspects that prompted the officers to open fire. In my 34 years experience as a private investigator working criminal cases, the public seldom gets complete and/or accurate facts from the media. The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO is a good example. Almost from the moment the shooting occurred, the media’s kneejerk reaction was to make this another racially charged shooting. All they said was that ANOTHER white cop killed an unarmed Black man. The public bought that line. When the officers are later cleared, there is an uproar. Obviously the grand jury or prosecutor’s office determined that Michael Brown made some sort of move which the officers interpreted as threatening. They feared for their lives so they fired. That is tragic but not reckless. As I said in my post below, I thought the officers could have determined they needed to stop the suspects from shooting with so many potential victims all around them. Could the UPS driver and the motorist have been his by a ricochet? Whose bullets killed the innocent bystanders? These are questions we have no answers to yet.

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As I have said in other posts, it’s time to step back, take a deep breath and wait until the incident is investigated. In addition to all of the police, there were potentially dozens more victims in the cars that were in the backed up traffic. No one here was there and helicopter footage and a news bobble head don’t provide the facts. What if both of the innocents were shot by the carjackers? No one here can dispute that right now anymore than I can prove it was not the police right now.

We are creating expectations to be law enforcers, psychologists, social workers, doctors and counselors, all with a high school diploma and a year of police training. We are expecting police to know whether the person with the gun wants help or wants to kill people. We are judging the police based on watching frame by frame videos of a 6 second incident spread over 5 minutes that show exactly what happened when the officer had to make a decision in a fraction of a second that could decide whether he or the kid with the gun was going home that night. In the middle of a life and death fight, there is no instant replay, no mulligans and no second chances.
Under the laws of most states, if a person is killed by another in the commission of a felony, the person committing the felony is guilty of murder, even if that person was not the killer. This is called felony murder and even applies when the police kill one of two or more suspects, the other(s) can be charged and convicted of murder. Since the founding of this country, the felony murder rule has been largely accepted because it is foreseeable that the acts of a felon in the commission of a crime may lead to the death of another person.

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Dan,

Just to add to your point as many people seem to either have forgotten or glossed over, especially once the story got national media traction.

  1. Michael Brown was fleeing on foot from a liquor store he had attempted to rob.
  2. He got into a physical altercation with the officers on the scene when they attempted to apprehend him.
  3. He was attempting to take the officers gun. That’s why he got shot.
  4. There was a significant size differential between Michael Brown and the officer he was struggling with.

How Michael Brown was even considered a victim of a racially motivated shooting is so far beyond my understanding. He was shot due to his decisions and an officer of the law doing his job.

I am no apologist for LEO’s. I will and have called b.s. on LEO involved shootings. But not on Michael Brown.

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In response to MikeBKY

You are absolutely right. We need to hold our collective judgement. All of us need to wait for all of the evidence to come in.

For everyone else
Does it suck that innocent lives were lost? Yes it absolutely does. Are we/they responsible for every bullet we expend? Yes we/they are. But there is a mitigating circumstance here that no one seems to be taking into account here. That is that the 2 men in the truck had already shown a “depraved indifference for human life”. That is an “enhancing circumstances” that can accelerate a LEO’s decision cycle.

But let’s hindsight it, say the officers do nothing, and the 2 men who have already robbed a business, caused someone to be injured, led a miles long chase through busy streets, carjacked another someone and are holding him hostage, egress the UPS truck, shoot their way to the front of the traffic jam (that is only a fleeting traffic jam caused by a red light, so very well may be why the LEO’s were advancing so quickly), carjack another car and possibly shoot more people, take more hostages. How much carnage occurs? The 2 criminals have already shown that

They Do Not Care.

Now the pursuit continues. What then? Rinse, repeat ad nauseum, until
A) They get away.
B) The perfect scenario occurs for a textbook takedown.

Sometimes there is no perfect scenario and LEO’s are darned if they do and darned if they don’t.

The onus of these deaths is not on the officers, it is on the 2 criminals who forced this confrontation.

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I have a legal question. For the sake of argument, lets say the hostage and the innocent bystander died from bullets that came from the officers’ weapons. Had the two hijackers survived, would they be charged with their murder?
If so, it is fair. But what is different about a situation when armed civilian defends him or herself from criminal violence, and their round inadvertently strikes a bystander? Are there different rules?

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@Alexander8 different rules… yes, and different in every state too. :woman_facepalming:

In a lot of places, if anyone dies during the commission of a felony, all criminal parties can be charged with murder or manslaughter during the commission of a crime… even if they don’t pull the trigger. That means that a get-away driver in a car outside a bank can be charged with murder even if they weren’t in the bank and didn’t have a gun… because one of their partners-in-crime shot someone inside the bank.

I would expect that if an innocent bystander is killed by an officer’s round during the commission of a crime by a criminal, that criminal might be charged with murder or manslaughter. BUT … and its a big but… that depends on the laws of the state.

Maybe @MikeBKY can check my work here. :wink:

On the other side of it is civil liability and I’m not even going to try to speculate on that one because it’s complicated and … every state is different.

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Yes @Zee, that is a good summary of the felony murder doctrine. And it, as well as civil liability, are questions of state law.

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As far as civil liability goes, civil claims could definitely be pursued against the hijackers, assuming there was a way to recover, although that is unlikely. Claims can also be pursued against the police, BUT, they are likely protected by qualified immunity.

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