For those that carry be careful and do what you're told. I can tell countless stories of off duty cops who were proned out on the pavement by cops from other agencies.

Cops are trained to yell out what they see for future witness statements. So if one of the cop is yelling drop the gun, or knife, or whatever.

Our academy does not teach our officers to verbally order the suspect to touch his gun and then yell "drop the gun" or to surrender his gun just for the libabily reason. If there's an agency out there that teaches that, then they deserve to be sued.

Alternate viewpoint. Mosher is a lying piece of crap who can't keep his lies straight. I'm looking at the two contradictory statements below that he made on the stand.


The officers were waiting for their sergeant and more officers to arrive before coming up with a plan to enter the store and make contact with Scott, possibly with a shield and some less-lethal weapons, Mosher said.


When questioned about why he didn't use a nonlethal method to resolve the situation with Scott, Mosher said, "We're not trained to subdue people with a firearm with nonlethal means."

This was the thing that jumped out at me from the dispatch log,

emphasis mine.

It appears that the police arrived on scene expecting an agitated armed man who was possibly high on something. I would imagine that that information would color their perceptions of the victim's actions. I am not a LEO but I have worked in a number of EDs as part of my medic training and have encountered people that were high on various substances. They can be erratic and unpredictable. That had to be going through the LEO's minds when they arrived on the scene.

What I would like to know is A) is there a drug problem in that area such that these LEO's might have had to deal with people who were agitated, erratic and dangerous because of a drug and B) where did the statement about him being possibly high come from? Did the Costco employees say that or did someone at the dispatch assume that based on what the Costco employees reported?

I don't think that these are contradictory statements at all. I took it to mean that they are not trained to use less than lethal means in unplanned encounters. He stated that they were waiting for more officers with less than lethal weapons to arrive at which point they would plan how they would take him down with less than lethal force.

That's pretty strong don't you think? How well do you know the officer in order to make such a statement? Have you ever been in a law enforcement shooting situation with other officers and civilians mixed in? Were you present during this incident?

I've watched the inquest fairly steadily. The fact that Erik was demonstrably stoned to the gills leaves much room for the possibility that he acted contrary to the commands the officers were giving or differently than he or any normal person would if he wasn't under the influence. I don't know what the exact circumstances were as I wasn't there. What's been established so far, is that there was the possibility or even likelihood of less than compliant behavior and that the decedent had two firearms. To get more than that we'll have to see the rest of the testimony.

It's not at all unusual to have many wildly differing statements from witnesses and it appears the person with the closest viewpoint has decided to absent herself from providing testimony in the proceedings defined by the County Government for fact finding in such incidents. Also, the family attorney supposedly has 20+ witnesses to the incident. If he were interested in having the Inquest determine the facts, would he not have identified those witnesses to the Coroner? Or might he and the family have some motive for not having the folks testify.

I can tell you that if the District Attorney there believed this was an unjustified/bad faith shooting there'd be no hesitation in proceeding criminally.

I heartily agree with everyone who's mentioned that in no case should a person in these circumstances ever place their hand anywhere near their weapon.

How would you know about that? God bless the American treasure that is beautiful CO - and the nice people that live there - and you who knows other cities DA motives?

IMHO, a good example of what TS and TR said about not taking out a gun when you have a LEO pointing a gun at you, perticularly after telling you not to move when being called because you refused to leave private property with your gun. It doesn't seem like the LEO's would have been shot at by Mr. Scott though.

.



Why would an unarmed loss prevention officer approach an armed man who was putting merchandise in his bag and acting erratically? I think Mr. Lierley is either exaggerating about what occurred inside the store or is incredibly stupid. His story just doesn't seem right to me.

I would have just called 911, maintained video surveillance and provided the dispatcher with real time intel until LE got there.

Answering b would be tough, based upon policy and procedures of that dispatch dept. A better poll of answers to that scenerio could be found in one of the PD/Dispatcher forums of which we don't have.

I can understand a though. I can't gell you how many times, I've responded to PCP calls in a district where PCP is common. I've personally seen a guy on PCP my size bust out of hand cuffs like the Incredible Hulk.

No Sir. What I'm saying is that another witness said he seemed to be in a daze and refused to comply with commands at least five times. My thoughts are that he could have pulled out the weapon when he was being told to get on the ground prior to being told to drop it.

It's my experience that most often in a situation, even as basic as a car accident, that most times 5 witnesses will have 5 different stories... why? because they aren't trained to look for things. After the fact they start piecing things together and give a statement of what they think happened, unfortunately it's not always right. These witnesses have had a lot of time to read the stories in the paper and watch the news and have been able to "remember" what they saw before testifying.

Don't get me wrong this is a sad story and I'm sure, as people who know him here have said, that Mr. Scott was a good guy. I'm not saying that it was wrong for him to be on painkillers if he was using them for pain. I am saying that for whatever reason he didn't seem to be acting rational this day.

Let me ask this question to everyone and know that I mean no disrespect. If any you were on what has been described ( by medical experts ) to be a near lethal amount of painkillers would you still carry CCW?

Derek

Quite the opposite. Unplanned encounters are a primary reason for tazers, nightsticks, pepper spray, etc. A traffic stop is a "planned encounter" by an individual officer. And you don't "taze" somebody for running a stop sign.

You use it when the situation suddenly goes to hell and becomes a "tazer situation", something you weren't planning on doing when you asked for license, registration, and proof of insurance.

And, he wasn't waiting for more officers. He was waiting for someone who outranked him, so that they would be the pinata hanging in front of the chief if things went south. ;) That's conjecture, but conjecture with real life experience behind it.

Both sides of the 911 call are now posted at

http://www.lvrj.com/multimedia/Costc...103659964.html

Newly retired from that office. I've worked on prior inquests and know how the incidents are evaluated. A bad faith shooting would, without doubt be prosecuted.

Sure it's strong.

Per Mosher, LVPD doesn't subdue people with guns using less than lethal means.
He was standing at the door waiting to possibly possibly use less than lethal means.

LV PO-43-04 directs that " The TASER® may be used when a subject is displaying active, aggressive or aggravated aggressive resistance to an officer
attempting to conduct legal law enforcement activities (see 6/002.00, Use of Force, for definitions).

I see "we don't do that", and "I was preparing to do that" as contradictory, and therefore one of them false. "We don't do that" and written Dept policy that Las Vegas PD *does* do that, is also a direct contradiction. Therefore, he's a liar IMNSHO YMMV.

He also denied that he had given any commands.

When told that he was on tape he *remembered* "show me your hands" and "get down on the ground". (I suspect he *remembered* after hearing the tape of the 911 call.

He remembers that Erik initially followed commands.
His answer, less than 2 minutes later was that that Erik did *not* follow commands.

Yes, he's a liar.

I don't know him, don't need to in order to spot his changing account of events.

I've never shot anyone as a LEO, but I've been in situations where shooting was well within dept. policy and state law, with trigger "halfway down", but didn't fire.

Nope, I wasn't there.
Yep, he's a sack of shit :(

Maybe it's just me.
 

I know that eye witnesses, especially in a crisis situation are the *worst* sort of evidence, so I rely a lot on what I can personally "discern"at leisure.

I'm wondering if there's anyone as disconcerted as I am at the following sequence of "commands", especially LEOs and former LEOs.

Show me your hands.
Show me your hands.
Put the gun down.
Get down on the ground.
Get down on the ground.

Followed by gunshots.

If Erik *hadn't* dropped his weapon after command #3, would anyone here have switched to "Get down on the ground" (with the gun still in his hands and *aimed* at you)?

I have, and I can tell you that I never heard a shotgun blast less than three feet away from me and I can also say that the three officers involved all saw things differently and none of us were liars.