Man shot to death by Meridian police, family questions tactics

[Sage of Seattle]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...US&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-05-15-09-33-41

May 15, 9:33 AM EDT


Man shot to death by Meridian police, family questions tactics

MERIDIAN, Idaho (AP) -- Police shot and killed a knife-wielding man whose his family said he had been acting erratically, and relatives say officers should have tried to coax him to surrender or used nonlethal means to subdue him.

Ricardo Benitez, 47, lunged at six officers seconds after they found him wielding a knife in a bedroom at the family home Sunday night, Police Chief William E. Musser said.

Benitez was shot three times in the chest by one of the officers and was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after midnight Monday, he said.

"Taking the life of a person is always a difficult thing for a police officer," Musser said in a brief news conference Monday.

He would not answer questions and did not comment on the family's criticism, saying the case remained under investigation by the Ada County Critical Incident Task Force, with Boise police taking the lead.

All six officers have been placed on paid administrative leave, a standard procedure in shootings by law enforcement personnel.

Police said they were summoned by relatives who said Benitez had threatened them with a knife and violated a protection order that barred him from contacting the family.

Terry Benitez, told the Idaho Statesman she called police after her estranged husband started speaking incoherently and acting oddly, at one point grabbing a bread knife but never threaten anyone in the family with it.

She said she only wanted her husband to be removed from the house so he could get medical treatment for advanced hepatitis C, which can cause abnormal behavior, and planned to file a lawsuit against police.

The officers assured her they would use nonlethal force and were not bringing live ammunition into the house, she said.

"I called for help from the people who should have been here to help me, and look what they did - they shot my husband," she said.

Police Lt. Bob Stowe acknowledged that Benitez was not threatening anyone when officers entered the house and would not say whether they tried to convince him to come out.

When asked about his wife's claim that the officers said they were not bringing live rounds into the house, Stowe said, "That's so far out there, I don't even know what to say."

Wow. I try very hard to be fair in my thinking and perceptions regarding police, so I think I'm going to side with the cops on this one. I mean, I've heard of cops saying really stupid things, but promising not to bring live ammunition into the house? On the other hand, it sounds like the police had at least some advanced warning of what the situation was, so with all of the tools available to help arrest and/or subdue this EDP (taser, baton, pepper spray), I find myself asking why the pistol was the answer? Flame me all you like for "Monday morning quarterbacking" and so on, I don't mind.

And why weren't the mental health crisis dudes not called to the scene? Isn't that their job?

Finally, however, I think that it makes it clear once again that (to paraphrase) "police are not eloquence, they are force." If it were me, what would I have done? I dunno. I guess if I felt safe even with my estranged spouse wielding a knife (as the wife states she did), I would think long and hard -- twice -- about calling the police.

 

[HUMONGO]

knife+lunging at cops=clean shoot

 

[ZeSpectre]

knife+lunging at cops=clean shoot

+1

 

[Leanwolf]

"The officers assured her they would use nonlethal force and were not bringing live ammunition into the house, she said."

Nope, the woman is lying.

As for "Why didn't the police just bring in the mental health crisis managers?" to talk to the man... Meridian, Idaho is a small town. Much, much smaller than Seattle, Washington. They don't have "mental health crisis managers" sitting around waiting for a "mental health crisis" to go solve.

All "bread knives" I've seen are long and serrated. Not too hard to cut a man's neck open with one of those.

Rubber bullets, or shotgun "bean bag" shells?? At room distance you can easily kill a man with those.

With Domestic Disturbance calls, cops know just how easily one can go super nova. 99.95% of the time in a D.D., there are alcohol, illegal drugs, prescription drugs, mental problems, uncontrollable anger, and just outright adrenalin stoked, down and dirty hatred running rampant in the situation.

Cops hate Dometic Disturbance calls because they know just how extremely dangerous they can be.

I live next to Meridian. I'll wait for more clarification as to what happened and how it happened.

L.W.

 

[marksman13]

sounds like a clean shoot to me...I have never known cops to unload their weapons before entering a house on a domestic distubance call. Can't imagine that any officer would tell someone that they were coming in without bullets to deal with an individual wielding a knife of any kind. Sounds like someone trying to make a living off of the city of Meridian.

 

[ArfinGreebly]

She's Lying

Terry Benitez, told the Idaho Statesman she called police after her estranged husband started speaking incoherently and acting oddly, at one point grabbing a bread knife but never threaten anyone in the family with it.

Right.

Brandishing . . . but not threatening.

She said she only wanted her husband to be removed from the house so he could get medical treatment for advanced hepatitis C, which can cause abnormal behavior, and planned to file a lawsuit against police.

But she didn't call for an ambulance or medical team. Just the police.

She's lying.

Help! Help! My husband is in there with a knife acting crazy . . . but please don't hurt him!

 

[Ala Dan]

I didn't read the entire episode, but anyone wielding a sharp blade
at me in a hostile/threatening manner is asking too get shot~!

 

[TheFederalistWeasel]

Stupidity will get you killed...

 

[HUMONGO]

I have never known cops to unload their weapons before entering a house on a domestic distubance call

Exactly. Domestic disturbance calls are the most likely to need to weapon. They usually involve alcohol and extreme tension. Plus, more than once, police have been assulted by the person who called them when they arrest the original subject.

 

[Geronimo45]

Tasers and pepper spray are used for unarmed folk, IIRC - equal or superior force is the name of the game, as far as I know. If this guy was unarmed, then you can go in and try to use less-than-lethal methods.

Deranged dudes with knives = crazy folks that are armed and dangerous.
Not a situation for tasers and mace - assuming these cops had them in the first place. You want a weapon equal to or superior to the weapon you're being confronted with, if you're to come out of the situation safely. If it's a guy's fists, you want tasers, batons, and pepper spray. If it's a shotgun, you want ARs and snipers. If it's an RPG, you want an airstrike.

Disparity of force. You want to intimidate the party you're after, hopefully scaring him into submission and avoiding any violence whatsoever.

 

[220_Swift]

Sounds like mother nature added some extra chlorine to the gene pool.

 

[GhostlyKarliion]

Hmm, not enough information for me to make a decision on this one, sure he was acting violent but officers around here still carry batons for a reason.

All in all, not enough information to make a ruling, glad the officers are ok.

 

[pacodelahoya]

If the news report is accurate, then the shooting was justified imo.

 

[M92FS]

the BG is armed and charging at the L.E.O. , I think the officer who fired his gun was worried about his safety and the safety of the other officers. I think he made a good decision to shoot the man down. I would have done the same thing if I was him.

a cop is also a human being , nobody would wanna get stabbed with a bread knife and ended up in a bodybag.

 

[RPCVYemen]

One time a woman at work was arguing that the police had sed excessive force in an arrest involving a defendant whom they had good reason to believe was armed. She was discussing all of the options the police could have take.

Then I asked her - "Suppose your son was on the entry team. What would you want him to?"

She had really been thinking - "What if my son was the defendant?"

When I asked her what she would want her son to do if he were an officer on the entry team, she was stumped. We talked for a little while - I don't think that she agree with me, but she was definitely thinking.

Here are my thoughts:

1. For our legal system to work, police officers occasional have to arrest dangerous armed people.
   
2. In that situation, the procedure must protect the police officers - or no one will become a police officer. Police already take enormous risks in our society. A sense of self-preservation is in fact a sign of mental health. If don't allow officers to protect themselves, then either no one will beocome and officer, or only folks without a sense of self-preservation will become police offocers.
   
3. That means that in some cases, people may get killed who would not be killed if we were willing to jeopardize the officers in invovled.

It is a sad thing when a person dies. But appears to me that #3 follows from #2, which follows from #1.

When I was working Mogadishu, one of the other contractors brought along her spouse, who had been an police officer for a number of years. I asked him why he quit, and he said, "One too many 'suicide by cop' incidents. There are some people that want to die, but are afraid to do it themselves. So they do a 'suicide by cop'. Usually in a trailer court, and I hate 'em. The last time I had to shoot someone, it was 'suicide by cop', and I decided that was my last one of those. I quit that night."

The man's family may not accept it, but lunging at an armed officer with a knife in your hand may very well be 'suicide my cop'. If someone is determined to kill themselves, it can be very hard to stop them - at the time of the suicide attempt. Maybe before, and if the attempt fails, maybe after. But at the time of the attempt, it's pretty difficult.

Mike

 

[doubleg]

And why weren't the mental health crisis dudes not called to the scene? Isn't that their job?

Their coming to take me away he he ha ha ho ho, to the funny farm. Where live if beautiful all the time...

Maybe they should have took his wife too.

 

[MrDig]

I really dislike these threads, they seem to opperate under the presumtion that all LEOs are suspect for their actions. I was not there and am in no place to judge. I do not put my life in harms way in service of others on a daily basis for a paycheck, nor do I have people tell me I am a A$$h*#e for doing so.
The bottom line for me is this, I am in no place to judge their actions, as I was not the one being charged by the guy with the knife.
This is a Tactical situation not an excersize, Kind of like Soldiers in combat having civilian casualties. Not a good thing to have, but sometimes in combat these things happen. I am certain that taking another life is a horrific thing psycologicly. If it isn't you are a sociopath. Give the LEOs the benefit of the doubt on this one.

 

[bnelson2943]

21 feet rule

Where are all the law enforcement people out there? Every cop I know that's been through the academy within the last 10 years was drilled on the 21 feet rule. It has been proven numerous times in courts of law that an edged weapon is deadly if the assailant is within 21 feet of their victim, even if that victim is armed. We were shown training videos and did drills on the firing range to substantiate this rule. It was enough to convince me that if this happened to me with no practical means to increase that distance, I would use deadly force, which I did once. Regret the situation, but no second guessing. I'm no longer on the job but not because of this.

 

[strat81]

If the husband was in fact mentally ill from Hep C or another medical condition, it's unfortunate - but necessary - for the police to respond with lethal force in this situation.

 

[mbt2001]

Dude, you don't have the right to threaten people with knives and actions and come out of it alive... I think Jeff White said it best. Replace CCW with the word POLICE. See how you would feel if a CCW person shot someone going nutty with a knife and they charged him with a crime....

 

[MrDig]

Excelent point mbt2001.

 

[Crunker1337]

If your safety is threatened in that manner what are you supposed to do? The cops didn't really have a chance to employ non-lethal means.

 

[Scanr]

Sadly, the city will pay off the "estranged" wife only because they do not want to fight a long court trial.

 

[Kali Endgame]

Now the city and PD will pay out $1.4 million, just like San Jose, CA PD did. How long before this guy obtains his Sainthood?

 

[ilbob]

Hmm, not enough information for me to make a decision on this one, sure he was acting violent but officers around here still carry batons for a reason

.

if we assume the information in the story was accurate, it does not seem like there is much question about the shooting being justifiable.

I am baffled by the claim the woman made that the police agreed to bring no live ammo into the house. Just does not seem like something police would ever agree to. If they did lie, so what? Cops lie on a regular basis. If you are stupid enough to believe them, that is your problem.

For the poster who thinks a baton is a good defense against a big sharp knife, I urge you to allow some deranged individual to attack you with a foot long knife while you get an 18" stick to fend him off with.