Police Shooting of Unarmed Man Questioned
by TChris
As the linked article points out, videos don't always tell the entire story. Yet the story apparently told by a video recorded by a Chino resident on Sunday is tragic.
[T]he video appears to show a deputy ordering 21-year-old Elio Carrion to his feet, then shooting him as he tries to stand. Carrion, an Air Force policeman who recently returned from Iraq, underwent surgery for wounds to his chest, ribs and leg and was listed in good condition Wednesday at the hospital.
Carrion was a passenger in a Corvette, which crashed following a brief chase that ended when the car crashed into a wall, authorities said. Authorities said no weapons were found on Carrion or the driver, Luis Escobedo. ... Escobedo said he and Carrion were trying to cooperate with the deputy.
"We were trying to explain to him, we were not armed," he told reporters. "Elio had nothing to do with this."
The FBI is investigating the incident. Experts who have viewed the video are disturbed by the officer's decision to fire multiple times at an unarmed man who posed no obvious threat.
"It's a criminal act," said Roger Clark, a former Los Angeles County sheriff's lieutenant who routinely testifies in court as an expert in police tactics. Clark has worked both for police officers and for citizens who have sued the police. "He shot an unarmed man who was complying with his orders," Clark said.
David Klinger, a use-of-force expert who teaches at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, and wrote a book titled "Into The Kill Zone: A Cop's Eye View of Deadly Force," said the recording was "the screwiest thing I've ever seen. It makes no sense."
"What I saw was totally incongruous with standard police doctrine," said Klinger, a professor of criminology and onetime LAPD officer.
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