LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — Eight Los Angeles
police officers broke their department's policy when they opened fire on
two women, wounding them after mistaking their truck for one driven by a
rogue ex-cop wanted in a manhunt, officials said on Tuesday.
One woman was shot twice in the back and her adult daughter was
wounded by flying debris. Last year, they received a $4.2 million
settlement from the city.
Police Chief Charlie Beck recommended to the city's police
commission that the officers be found to have violated the Los
Angeles Police Department's use of force policy, and the panel
agreed in a unanimous vote.
Officials on Tuesday declined to disclose what discipline the eight
Los Angeles Police Department officers would receive but Beck said
it could range from intensive training to firing.
The officers opened fire on the two women on February 7, 2013 during
a manhunt for former LAPD officer Christopher Dorner.
The police commission decision came on the one-year anniversary of
Dorner's online manifesto vowing revenge for his 2008 dismissal.
Dorner, 33, killed four people before he died on February 12, 2013,
in a fiery standoff with officers in the mountains near Los Angeles.
"While I certainly empathize and understand the conditions and
circumstances that led to this particular officer-involved shooting,
I hold our police officers to the highest standards in the
application of deadly force," Beck told reporters.
He added that the officers did not respond how the LAPD expects
personnel to reasonably react to perceived threats.
Authorities,
after seeing Dorner's manifesto on Facebook, launched a massive
manhunt for him and placed protective details on a number of LAPD
officers he was feared to be targeting. He had already killed the
daughter of a retired police captain who years before had
represented him at a disciplinary hearing, and the young woman's
fiance.
Early on February 7, Dorner was spotted driving a grey Nissan Titan
pickup truck and opened fire on two Los Angeles police officers
assigned to a protective detail in Corona, California. He soon after
shot and killed an officer in nearby Riverside.
A few hours later, police on a protective detail before dawn in the
Los Angeles suburb of Torrance, 55 miles west of Riverside, saw a
blue Toyota Tacoma and mistook the vehicle for the one Dorner had
been driving, officials said.
The women inside were delivering newspapers and when one threw a
newspaper that hit the ground at a house, an officer thought that
sound was a gunshot and opened fire, with seven other officers at
the scene joining in, Beck said.
"This incident has been found to be out of policy for all officers
involved," Beck said.
(Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; editing by Lisa Shumaker)
