Fort Worth woman shot in her own home by police

[cabanafrau]

The PO that killed her neighbor was convicted and that was also in Texas.

What a shame the PO didn't just knock on the door and call in the house to make sure she was OK.
Why when he saw "a person" in the window he didn't ask if it was her?
It wasn't like the neighbor called to say they saw someone suspicious at the house.

Such a tragedy, my heart goes out to her family.

Maybe he could have thought out of the box a little and walked up to the door and called out hello, police, is everyone all right in there, does anyone need help? Nah, much better to handle it professionally by peering through windows and shooting at the first thing that moves. She would have been better off going to bed for the night with her door wide open. Tragic she wasn't safe in her own home. I feel for her family and for the neighbor who tried to do a good thing for her.

That department needs to seriously review how they train and certify people to wear the badge and carry a gun.

 

[Hikergirl]

Maybe he could have thought out of the box a little and walked up to the door and called out hello, police, is everyone all right in there, does anyone need help? Nah, much better to handle it professionally by peering through windows and shooting at the first thing that moves. She would have been better off going to bed for the night with her door wide open. Tragic she wasn't safe in her own home. I feel for her family and for the neighbor who tried to do a good thing for her.

That department needs to seriously review how they train and certify people to wear the badge and carry a gun.

I was thinking that no amount of training is going to change someone who is so jumpy that their instinct is to just shoot without assessing the situation.
I understand the stress that POs are under, and I cant imagine being in situations where your life is in danger, but this wasn't a situation like that. He may have felt it was, but there doesn't appear to be any reason he reasonably should have. SHe wasn't fleeing with a weapon, she wasn't reaching behind her back, or pointing something at him. He just shot, almost immediately.
How can you train someone like that?

They definitely need to figure out new ways to weed out those people not psychologically capable of protecting and serving.

 

[SaintsManiac]

I feel so bad for the neighbor. Ugh.

 

[skyblue17]

Situations like this just make it very hard to trust and stay calm in situations where police are in your home. We recently had the police in my apartment building, as they were looking for a former tenant who had lived in a different apartment. It was not a good experience for us, and that was with it ending ok. My mind was immediately jumping to ways it could have gone wrong or been handled differently, and how little control we actually had.

Hopefully this woman having a gun in her home is not held against her in this case. All we hear is how important it is to have guns for self defense in your home. What an awful situation.

 

[luvsJack]

Aren't wellness checks usually done with the officers knocking on the door and actually CHECKING on the homeowner? I cannot understand how on earth it went from a wellness check to guns drawn.

Since she didn't have the gun in her hand in the video from the cop, I don't see how there being a gun in the house would have any bearing on it. She didn't have time to even react to him yelling "let me see your hands" before he shot her.

 

[cabanafrau]

I was thinking that no amount of training is going to change someone who is so jumpy that their instinct is to just shoot without assessing the situation.
I understand the stress that POs are under, and I cant imagine being in situations where your life is in danger, but this wasn't a situation like that. He may have felt it was, but there doesn't appear to be any reason he reasonably should have. SHe wasn't fleeing with a weapon, she wasn't reaching behind her back, or pointing something at him. He just shot, almost immediately.
How can you train someone like that?

They definitely need to figure out new ways to weed out those people not psychologically capable of protecting and serving.

Police approaching a building and shooting into the windows is an extreme action, only taken under extreme circumstances. There is NOTHING in this situation to lead to that type of police action. Even if this officer had peered into that window to see someone standing there, gun in hand, pointed back out at him it didn't rise to the level of him shooting his gun. He clearly does not understand the boundaries under which he was authorized as a law enforcement officer to use deadly force. That doesn't preclude him being psychologically unfit to ever be granted authority to carry the gun as a sworn officer in the first place -- that is something else this department needs to seriously review their standards on as well.

Hypothetically let's say I am a gunowner, loud and proud, well known to family, friends, neighbors, etc. My neighbor is staunchly anti gun under any and all circumstances, loud and proud, etc. I arrive home from a shooting competition or the shooting range and my neighbor is outside when I get out of my car and begin unloading. As we talk back and forth(completely casually and civilly) while I unload I say where I've been and eventually end the conversation by saying I've got to get inside because I've got to get my guns cleaned so I can get to sleep at a decent hour for a busy day of competition tomorrow. Under the idea that police officers are free to approach private residences without identification or warning and shoot based on the simple fact they either see a gun(s) or a person with a gun it becomes possible that I can be shot by the police in my home while cleaning my legally owned guns because my neighbor called in a complaint about someone with a gun at my address.

That's extreme hyperbole. The situation we have in this woman's fatal shooting is actually worse in several ways. Whatever information dispatch passed along there was no report of weapons or guns, there couldn't have been. There was no report of an actively violent situation. The officer never identified himself to the "suspect" before deploying deadly force. I don't believe the victim even had a weapon in her hand. nor do I believe the officer even saw a weapon or anything threatening before firing. I'll go out on a limb and say I don't believe the alleged gun was even discovered in the home until long after she had been murdered.

In the immediate situation it doesn't even matter if there was an illegal gun in the home. The plain and simple truth of it is there were no reports of threatening or violent behavior in the situation at hand. It was incumbent on responding law enforcement in the situation to observe and protect. If there were questions about a potential threat and the officer did not feel he could investigate or handle alone he was responsible to monitor and call for backup before engaging -- with words and identifying as police.

 

[PollyannaMom]

I feel so bad for the neighbor. Ugh.

I know - I can't imagine how awful he feels, trying to help and it ending up like this.

 

[Klayfish]

Situations like this just make it very hard to trust and stay calm in situations where police are in your home.

Seriously?? Ok.

 

[kdonnel]

How many of us have been in a high danger, high adrenaline situation where your life may end based on a split second decision you make?

I have not and have no idea how I would react.

This was a threat / no threat assessment gone wrong. Horrible wrong.

For too long people have placed people in authority positions (military, police, fire, etc) on a pedestal like they are something better then the average person, a hero. The truth is they are just people and WILL make mistakes, in this case a deadly mistake.

 

[cabanafrau]

How many of us have been in a high danger, high adrenaline situation where your life may end based on a split second decision you make?

I have not and have no idea how I would react.

This was a threat / no threat assessment gone wrong. Horrible wrong.

For too long people have placed people in authority positions (military, police, fire, etc) on a pedestal like they are something better then the average person, a hero. The truth is they are just people and WILL make mistakes, in this case a deadly mistake.

I'm willing to leave that room for doubt in a dark alley situation or one with reports of screams and shots fired. Even if the report in this situation had been sighting of an intruder entering the home the standard for police involvement step one is NOT fire into a window at the mere sight of a person. That's not the procedure for an active hostage situation with an active gunman either.

 

[Hikergirl]

Seriously?? Ok.

The pp has a point. This incident is an example of how a simple phone call from someone just to check to see if a neighbor is OK can go horribly wrong.
This wasn't even a high risk incident- where the police were actively chasing someone through the home, or answering a call that someone was in immediate danger. It was a simple welfare check.
If someone can be killed in their own home by a PO coming to their home to make sure they are OK, then there is a risk that anyone can be killed by a PO in/around their home for any reason.

 

[morgan98]

I have said it before and I will say it again, I engage with law enforcement as little as possible. I am a law abiding citizen, for the record. Things like this just show the less interaction, the better.

 

[skyblue17]

Seriously?? Ok.

Yes, seriously, at least combined with the recent experience I had. There was literally nothing this woman could do to avoid this situation. And when you hear about things like this happening, more and more it seems, how do you know to trust that the police that happen to be in your own home aren't going to escalate? I'm genuinely curious. I feel lucky that the police in my situation did not escalate further, but they did escalate beyond what I thought was necessary. Perhaps I'm still a little shaken up by the experience.

 

[monsterkitty]

How many of us have been in a high danger, high adrenaline situation where your life may end based on a split second decision you make?

I have not and have no idea how I would react.

This was a threat / no threat assessment gone wrong. Horrible wrong.

For too long people have placed people in authority positions (military, police, fire, etc) on a pedestal like they are something better then the average person, a hero. The truth is they are just people and WILL make mistakes, in this case a deadly mistake.

Yes things went horribly wrong. All because the officer didn't follow protocol.

 

[kdonnel]

I think it would be very useful for the jury members when it comes to trial time to participate in threat / no threat training to see how often they make a mistake.

Not everyone is Will Smith in Men In Black, able to discern that the little girl with the physics book is the only threat In a split second.

 

[cabanafrau]

Situations like this just make it very hard to trust and stay calm in situations where police are in your home. We recently had the police in my apartment building, as they were looking for a former tenant who had lived in a different apartment. It was not a good experience for us, and that was with it ending ok. My mind was immediately jumping to ways it could have gone wrong or been handled differently, and how little control we actually had.

Hopefully this woman having a gun in her home is not held against her in this case. All we hear is how important it is to have guns for self defense in your home. What an awful situation.

If they report that the gun was not legally owned, I want a seriously thorough investigation by an outside agency to eliminate as much as can be the possibility that weapon was planted after the murder by a police officer.

 

[Anchored]

I think it would be very useful for the jury members when it comes to trial time to participate in threat / no threat training to see how often they make a mistake.

Not everyone is Will Smith in Men In Black, able to discern that the little girl with the physics book is the only threat In a split second.

Don't choose policing for a career if you are spooked so hard by the sight of a sweet woman through a window that you will MURDER her.
Full stop.

 

[cabanafrau]

I think it would be very useful for the jury members when it comes to trial time to participate in threat / no threat training to see how often they make a mistake.

Not everyone is Will Smith in Men In Black, able to discern that the little girl with the physics book is the only threat In a split second.

There isn't enough resources in this country to lab test every piece of evidence collected in criminal cases. There aren't even resources to lab test any pieces of evidence collected in many criminal cases.

Let's expend many hours of private citizens' time and countless funds to train jurors in threat/no threat training -- no matter if the jurors in question would pass the requisite physical tests necessary for police academy candidates to even begin basic law enforcement training.

Maybe if we can impose upon jurors' time just a bit more after their MiB fantasy adventure we can have them go over the basic and remedial protocols for officer response to dispatch call and scene approach similar to those in the case in question?

 

[kdonnel]

Don't choose policing for a career if you are spooked so hard by the sight of a sweet woman through a window that you will MURDER her.
Full stop.

Until you are IN that situation how do you know that is how you will react?

 

[cabanafrau]

Until you are IN that situation how do you know that is how you will react?

To get IN that situation there are some prerequisite steps that must be taken. Skipping them comes at a cost.