*into a vehicle with a hostage https://t.co/qYvWhv1rc1
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) December 10, 2019
In a world with less terrible / outrageous news every day, I have the feeling this incident might’ve gotten more attention.
… Most of those officers — 13 — were from Miami-Dade Police Department, having followed the truck into Broward County during a long chase, said Rod Skirvin, president of the Broward County Police Benevolent Association.
Four people were killed in the shootout Thursday evening at an intersection in Miramar: two robbery suspects who’d hijacked the truck; a UPS driver they had taken hostage; and a bystander, police said.
The shootout happened as a police chase ended after the hijacked UPS truck got stuck in traffic. Gunfire erupted from inside and outside the truck, though it’s not clear who fired first.
Police officers left their vehicles and crouched behind cars — their own and others at the intersection — as shields as they approached, video from the scene showed.
Suspects Lamar Alexander, 41, and Ronnie Jerome Hill, 41, both of Miami-Dade County, were killed, the FBI said.
Also killed were the hijacked UPS driver, Frank Ordonez — who relatives said had been substituting for a colleague who’d called out from work — and bystander Richard Steven Cutshaw, officials said.
Whether Ordonez and Cutshaw were shot by police is under investigation, the FBI has said.
At least 13 police officers were shot at, but none was injured, according to Steadman Stahl, president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association.
The chase began after Alexander and Hill robbed a jewelry store Thursday afternoon in Coral Gables, near Miami, and hijacked the UPS truck, police said.
Police radioed that gunfire occasionally erupted from the truck even as police chased it, CNN affiliate WSVN reported…
Ooooh, hot pursuit! Stealing jewelry is wrong, and pistol-whipping a store employee is worse, but I can’t see how making sure the perpetrators didn’t escape was worth shooting two people whose only crime was going to work that day.
… “Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong,” said David Klinger, a criminal justice professor at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. The incident “was really, really bad.”
But as chaotic and calamitous as the episode was, it was also “a perfect example” of why police are allowed to use deadly force against dangerous criminals, Klinger said. Authorities said Lamar Alexander and Ronnie Jerome Hill had left a trail of violence behind them that evening. Stopping them by any means — even with bullets — was “absolutely the right thing to do,” Klinger said.
“In a situation like this, the police are reactive,” Klinger added. “This is not a situation they want to be in. Their hand was forced.”
The dramatic exchange of gunfire followed a high-speed chase through two counties that thwarted residents’ commutes at rush hour. The men had tried to rob Regent Jewelers in Coral Gables, triggering a silent alarm about 4:15 p.m., police said.
They said a female employee of the store was injured as the robbers and the store owner shot at each other. The gunmen fled north in a truck, then commandeered a UPS truck while the driver was making a delivery, police said. Several police cars pursued the UPS truck, with the UPS driver trapped inside, until the vehicle was boxed in by traffic in Miramar and officers surrounded it….
Geoff Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina, said that other than having a SWAT truck with heavily armed tactical police officers, he did not know of alternative ways that police could have safely ended the pursuit. The gunmen had proved that they were willing to resort to violence to escape and could have endangered other people in the area, such as by hijacking other cars, Alpert said.
“This is why the police are trained to do what they do,” he said…
Cops: We are the only thing standing between the criminals and you
Also cops: [stands behind you when criminals start shooting] https://t.co/SJ68aeNqaa
— Flushcount:TenHat (@Popehat) December 7, 2019
Seems like the cops could’ve given the perpetrators a few minutes, just so the “they shot first” defense would be a little clearer. (Unlucky damned hostage was about to end up dead anyways.) I’m told that Coral Gables is “one of South Florida’s most sought-after shopping destinations”, but we haven’t quite descended to the point where richer zip codes get a free pass on extrajudicial murder, have we?
judge the cops all you want, you have NO idea how you'd react in a hostage crisis so it's easy to say you wouldn't murder the hostage and a bystander while using innocent people as cover in order to save three grand worth of jewelry and a truckload of Amazon packages
— Law Boy, Esq. (@The_Law_Boy) December 6, 2019
Hey in the cops defense, using NPCs as human shields to defend low level loot is perfectly acceptable if your entire view of policing comes from Grand Theft Auto
— Big Malarkey Lobbyist (@MenshevikM) December 6, 2019
Bonus cameo from another newsmaker:
"If you don't start showing enough respect to these officers, they might not protect your community." – Bill Barr, paraphrased https://t.co/DZyl5rWAlW
— Daily Trix (@DailyTrix) December 7, 2019
I Did NAZI That Coming: The President Will Sign an Executive Order Declaring Judaism a Race and Nationality
mrmoshpotato
Using occupied civilian cars as bulletproof shields in gridlock traffic. I don’t think you could call the coming lawsuits frivolous.
And if the cops killed the UPS driver and bystander, I know a police department that’s going to get the shit sued out of it.
And for what? Insured stones and metals that we put a ridiculous high value on for some reason.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
War on Christmas bystanders
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
The cops were just being job creators. They created another job opening at UPS.
Steeplejack (phone)
???
Amir Khalid
It’s like that moment in Animal Farm when you can’t tell the humans and the pigs apart anymore, except now it’s the cops and the hoodlums you can’t tell apart.
WereBear
Why I fled Florida, part 2639487612934 to the power of 3218976493281.
Gvg
I think it’s not just the cops that are undertrained, it’s their bosses, and the “experts” who are supposed to be devising their training, and the publi-us. This has been going on so long that we don’t really see it.
The criminals took a hostage which is kidnapping and you don’t want them to be able to take more because then it gets really…difficult. They needed to de escalate and get a professional talker in. They also needed to not always all of them shoot back. It’s all the bullets flying around that aren’t neeeded. The criminals know the cops are armed. Anyway, it seems like the bosses can’t even imagine how they could have controlled things to a better conclusion. Not good leadership.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
I’m a graduate of the University of South Carolina College of Criminal Justice and Dr. Geoff Alpert was my Master’s thesis chair. Most of the time I agree with his expert opinion. He’s been an expert in the field of pursuit and deadly force for many decades. However, this time I have to say that it didn’t make a lot of sense. He almost always counsels law enforcement not to pursue because the end always ends up being violent in one way or another. It may have been that because they had a hostage they were obligated to pursue. In which case they should have still descalated and tried to get a hostage negotiator. But it doesn’t sound like they had the opportunity. If in the end they determine that the perpetrators did fire first then there would have been no opportunity to deescalate and the cops would have been justified in responding. Having been in their law enforcement shoes I can tell you that making those split-second judgement calls is incredibly difficult. And it’s far too easy to judge them if you haven’t been in their shoes. On the other hand I have been a civilian for many decades now and this story does seem beyond the pale. Hopefully we can trust the investigation to be thorough and honest.
chopper
i would assume UPS trucks have some sort of lojack on them to deal with (at least) possible theft.
Kattails
Aaand I heard just the other day that of course if we outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns. Wouldn’t it have been great if a couple of the people in the cars had pulled out their Glocks and started “helping”?
Tenar Arha
@Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ: Basically this episode once again convinces me that the police especially should want to discipline & remove their bad apples, & loudly.
I look at what’s been reported, & it has all the elements of a huge fustercluck. Including a jewelry store owner who apparently (?) shot his own employee & maybe started the violence in the first place. I mean, who knows…the only other witnesses are dead or dependent on him for work & injured. By the time the 2 separate county groups of police were involved, & using innocent bystanders in traffic as shields, maybe all reasonable responses were really gone if there was firing from the vehicle.
So, on the one hand, I suppose I agree about split second decisions & not knowing how you’d react. Of course, that’s why you train, so you’ll react appropriately.
And I think this is where police departments nationwide have failed in supporting their public trust. If they can’t even prevent an officer like Timothy Loehmann from ever working as police again, even with his own Cleveland supervisor’s reports regarding his bad reactions in training (& then how he killed Tamir Rice), then why wouldn’t I second guess every police decision…including split-second ones. It’s the police & their refusal to remove their worst employees who taught me not to trust their split-second decision-making skills.
Tenar Arha
@Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ:
@Tenar Arha: I should note, I really do get that every county, town, city, & state have their own, usually different policies, but this is where all the national organizations should be screaming about being able to fire & ban bad police officers, & AFAICT this isn’t happening. Is it?
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@Tenar Arha:. I agree with everything you said. It does come down to training and the ability of the profession to weed out the bad apples. Which they have been horrible at doing so. There’s a lot of historical reasons for this and a lot of structural reasons that continue to keep agencies separate. That separation means a lack of information sharing and is something that professionals within the system have been trying to correct for many decades. I could write an entire book on the dysfunction of our criminal justice system and how it has created the nightmare we experience today. And the fixes are just as complicated as the problem. But on the essential core problem, we agree.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
From all of the commentary I’ve seen, that is the case — all UPS trucks have a tracker on them that would have allowed the police to track it from a distance.
Some angles seem to show that the police shot the driver multiple times as he was trying to crawl away. If so, that’s a MAJOR fuckup. Killing the hostage that you (allegedly) started this shootout to try and save.