Officer cleared by Phoenix police board in homeowner shooting

Status
Not open for further replies.
Bula

Bula

Member
Joined
May 22, 2006
Messages
927
Location
Scottsdale, AZ
Officer cleared by Phoenix police board in homeowner shooting

A Phoenix police officer who mistakenly shot an armed homeowner during a search for an intruder was cleared of wrongdoing this week by a committee that reviews such shootings.
The ruling by the Phoenix Use of Force Board determined Officer Brian Lilly acted within police policy in the incident, in which he fired six shots at the homeowner amid the confusion of a home invasion last September.
The shooting hospitalized homeowner Tony Arambula, who earlier this year sought a $5.75 million settlement in Phoenix Sgt. Sean Coutts were named in a lawsuit filed last week in Maricopa County Superior Court.
Arambula, 36, was armed and holding a suspect at bay when he suffered gunshot wounds to his back and arm, according to the complaint.
Arambula claimed Lilly shot him twice as he lay bleeding on the floor of his living room, his wife and two young sons nearby.
The suspect, Angel Anastacio Canales, had broken into Arambula's home near 32nd Street and Thomas Road as officers tracked him from a "shots-fired" call in the area.
Arambula had the gunman cornered in his 12-year-old son's room when the officer opened fire.
"This is the type of thing that so severely demeans the credibility of these (police) review boards," said Michael Manning, the attorney representing Arambula.
"Physically, it would have been impossible for (Lilly) to see Tony's face or the gun," he said. "They admit on the 911 call that they didn't warn him."
Officer Jerry Gannon, Lilly's representative from the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, said it took less than one minute from when officers entered the home searching for a Hispanic male suspect to the when Lilly reacted to seeing Arambula holding a gun.
Gannon and other members of the organization's board said the shooting was difficult to avoid, considering the fluidity of the emergency scene.
"If Brian would have known there was a homeowner in there, he probably would have hesitated," Gannon said, "but if he had hesitated, and it was the (suspect), the outcome could have been tragic."
Phoenix Public Safety Manager Jack Harris will review the Use of Force Board's ruling and make an official determination on Lilly's shooting.
Click to expand...

by Michael Ferraresi - Sept. 26, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
 
A fully furnished residence in the middle of the night and the officer didn't think maybe there was a homeowner there? I hope he wasn't at the top of his class.
 
(It's hard to judge without having all the facts, but) this sure doesn't sound good.

So will the 911 operator be prosecuted for their role in this shooting? If it isn't the fault of the officer on the scene, then it seems inescapable that it would be the fault of the 911 operator.
 
Need a transcript from the 911 call, doesn't say who made the call, whether or not he or his family called 911 and advised them he was there and holding a suspect at gun point. Were the lights on or off, did he do a normal reaction to a sudden disturbance, i.e., and swing towards the officer when he arrived on scene? Lots of information not here. Yes, by this account and this account only, he could have a lawsuit, but a whole host of details not recounted here may change the picture entirely.
If you are holding someone at gun point, and you have family available, might be advisable to have one of them one the phone with 911 during the whole thing, to be able to let them know what's going on, if possible. Don't try to do it yourself unless you have a voice activated hands free phone, set it down on a table/dresser/nightstand next to you and yell into it.
Of course, I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.
 
Not enough info available here to know if this was just a tragic accident or a negilent mistake. Could be either one, but we don't know enough to say either way.
 
armoredman, 911 call was made. Shooting occurred while shootee was on the phone with 911 dispatcher, who was told -homeowner was armed and detaining an intruder. It was on a Wednesday night, 8pm and all the lights were on. 911 tape from homeowners phone, has officer Lilly stating "I fu**'ed up" and when asked by his supervisor on scene "was his (homeowner's) gun down here?" Lilly's response, recorded on tape "I don't know, I heard screaming and I fired" into homeowners back.
 
A mistake is not necessarily "wrongdoing". It is highly likely that the homeowner will be compensated to the extent that it is possible through the civil justice system.
 
So the officer fired 6 shots at the homeowner before realizing 'oops'? And of course he was cleared....un-freaking-believable. If a civilian saw a silhouette of a man with a gun drawn on his property, sneaking around his house, and opened fire, only to have it be an officer, you know for sure it would be a completely different outcome. :banghead:
 
The problem is again they dont give all the info.

When the officers showed up to the house the home owners wife ran out screaming "he's got a gun, he's got a gun!" She said nothing about her husband being the one with a gun. The officers go inside and see a man with a gun pointing it at another man on the ground. He fires at the gunman and finds out afterwards its the homeowner. The officer didnt try to cover anything up and admitted the mistake whole heartedly.

The wifes story has now changed a bit since they got a lawyer. She is now saying she told the officers something more along the lines of "excuse me officers, I would like to inform you that my husband is a legal owner of firearms and is currently holding our home intruder at gun point" (sarcasm).

As far as the review board, its run by officers, city workers and civilians. They can only determine the outcome by what the officer knew at the time of the shooting. Thats why a "bad shooting" can be in policy.
 
I remember hearing about a similar incident last year. For me, it served as a lesson learned: do not have a gun in hand when the police arrive.

Right or wrong, a person who has a gun in his hand is at some risk when the police arrive to investigate a home invasion call.

I would judge the likelihood of said person being fired upon by the law enforcement officers as being greater than remote, if not likely.

Consider the situation: the police receive call a from someone who states that there is someone in the house unlawfully who has a gun. The officers have an immediate objective: to prevent the intruder from harming anyone or taking a hostage.

The intruder presents an immediate threat not only to residents but also to the arriving officers. Should one of the officers encounter someone in the house with a gun in his hand he has no way of knowing--nor any reason to believe--that that person is not the intruder, and he has to make an instantaneous decision. Does he wait, potentially allowing a dangerous intruder to shoot an innocent person and possibly the officer himself? Does he shoot immediately? Does he warn (how many time have we heard that one should not give a warning to an intruder)?

One way to reduce the level of risk would have been for the callers to have given a full description of the armed homeowner and of his location in the household.

The other would be for the homeowner to not be holding a gun in the first place.

That's one of the obvious, unavoidable risks of detaining someone at gunpoint when the police arrive. Applies not only to civilians but also to off-duty officers and detectives.

It is a risk I would try to avoid.
 
It makes my skin crawl to hear memebers of the LE community refer to non-LE as 'civilians'. You're not in the military, so you're a civilian too...
Click to expand...

This keeps coming up, not sure why.

Under the Geneva Convention "civilians" are people who are not designated combatants, that's true.

The dictionary, however, says (this is from several, pick your favorite)

a person who is not on active duty with a military, naval, police, or fire fighting organization.

one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force

a person who is not a member of the police or the armed forces

A person following the pursuits of civil life, especially one who is not an active member of the military, the police, or a belligerent group.



Use of the term "civilian" by police and fire personnel is entirely correct, your skin may now stop crawling.

If you research the source of the word you find things like this:

One whose pursuits are those of civil life, not military or clerical
Click to expand...

So under the original meaning of the word Priests were not civilians either.
 
This seems like a tragic case of mistaken identity, not a case of police corruption. You have to put yourself in the officer's shoes at least a little bit if you want to understand how this situation could have happened. Whether or not the shoot was "good" or "bad" from a legal perspective is mostly concerned with what the officer knew to be reasonable at the time of this incident.

The morale of this story, at least as I think it should pertain to THIS site, is that you should always be aware of the possibility that you may be injured/killed by so-called "friendly fire" when acting in a defensive situation. This has certainly happened to a number of off-duty officers over the years, who were shot by fellow officers who believed that the off-duty officer was the criminal.

When guns are involved in a critical incident, things can happen VERY VERY fast. This incident is tragic, but I don't think it necessarily means that the officer should be held to be criminally liable (at least not without a lot more information). Whether or not the homeowner was shot in the back is mostly irrelevant without more information; for all we know the homeowner could have been turning on the officer when the shots were fired, or the officer could have believed that the homeowner was a suspect who was about to shoot the person proned out on the floor (presumably the homeowner in this officer's eyes). Moreover, the fact that 6 shots were fired by the officer is equally irrelevant... 6 shots can be fired extremely quickly by a trained shooter who is shooting in a defensive situation!

Here's my drill when acting off-duty (keep in mind that I may act in situations where others may not, just due to my job responsibilities). If something happens where I need to get involved off duty:

1) Call 911 as soon as practical
2) Identify myself as an officer
3) Describe my clothing, and that I am armed
4) Describe the suspect
5) Explain the situation (robbery suspect at gun-point, etc)
5) Demand that dispatch relays this information to the officers that will be responding, and again describe my clothing!
6) Be very very aware of my movements and actions when the uniformed officers show-up, and be ready to comply with their requests.

** My family also knows that if they call 911 they are supposed to relay this same information about me, and the situation**
 
Rocket lad, are you going to retort to TexasRifleman or not? Rocket lad, I don't know how long you took to read and assess the posting habits of regular posters in this forum, but if you don't know what you are talking about, you probably should think before you post, or else you just make yourself look less than reputable in the "intellect" department. :rolleyes:

Good job Tex, thanks for clearing that up to that person; it makes MY skin "crawl" when ignorance and sudden impulse driven posters forget to filter out their opinions.
 
Rocket lad, are you going to retort to TexasRifleman or not?
Click to expand...

Oh I don't think there is any need to retort, or to make this into a brush up, it's just a shame to see someone all worked up when there really isn't any reason for it.

And for some reason this particular one really offends a great number of people and I've never understood why.

Anyway, way OT.....sorry.
 
Sorry about going OT, let me contribute:

I believe all in all, this shooting was not entirely justified....I am sure that, yes, the wife may have ran outside and screamed something to the officers that is far from what she "said" she "said," but if the 911 tape clearly states that the homeowner advised the operator that "He was armed and had the suspect at gunpoint," the officer did indeed, "(insert here) up." My personal OPINION (yes I've thought my posted opinion through before I posted) in this matter is that the relay of information was insufficient. In situations that involve the (what us officers like to call) the "seven deadlies," radio traffic and communication between ALL PARTIES INVOLVED MUST BE AS CLEAR AND CONCISE AS POSSIBLE! All people involved must clearly be able to state at all times who they are, why they are there and verbal commands/communication, regardless of how high the stress level is of the situation. Without proper communication, people must understand how to utilize as much information with the little amount of time, then tragedies like this occur. Like I said, that is my opinion and there are always 3+ sides to the story. I am glad the homeowner is still alive, but it is a shame that this is the outcome. This only goes to show that not every gunpoint/shooting encounter is the same, but are very much different individually. What is even more unfortunate, is that this case is now on the scales of the justice system and must be analyzed, ultimately, through the eyes of an un-biased jury..."Un-biased jury" <- what an oxymoron.
 
C-Grunt-, that "He's got a gun" comment was from the city of Phoenix's Tommy Thompson. Sgt. Coutts, field supervisor and one of the 3 initally on the scene, stated during police interviews, that the wife told them her husband was inside holding an intruder at gunpoint. The only person that didn't hear, was Lilly. Another fact, she was outside when the police approached her. No one ran out screaming.
 
"The results could have been tragic"...
Click to expand...

[RANT MODE ON]
Well - HELL! - that goes without saying.

After all the life of a policeman IS so worth more than that of a citizen.

Which attitude is mostly what's wrong with cop's today. Officer safety this, officer safety that. Everything they do is for officer safety. They can conduct warrantless searches of your home if your stupid enough to let them in all in the name of officer safety.

You wanna be a cop then you ought to be willing to accept the risk. Officer safety don't trump the 4th amendment...

What? Wait - yeah it does. Because 9 jackasses on the supreme court says it does!
[RANT MODE OFF]
 
When you are trying to determine whether an act is criminal or not, somewhere in there the person's "intent" is part of the equation. I'm not saying the officer didn't make a mistake or that the city won't be held financially responsible, but I don't think that the officer acted with the intent to go in there and shoot the homeowner instead of the suspect. Mark
 
A mistake is not necessarily "wrongdoing".
Click to expand...

damien, with that thought process hunting mistakes shouldn't be prosecuted either.

The officers go inside and see a man with a gun pointing it at another man on the ground
Click to expand...

c grunt, the officer wasnt even sure he saw a gun

some cops are great, some aren't so good, and some dont have the nerve and/or ability to carry a weapon. When that's the case it gets brushed under the rug alot of the time. It doesnt mean the cop doesnt feel awful about it, but if it were you or I, we would be feeling awful and looking at some jail time. A review board wouldn't say "he was just trying to protect his family and home, and made a mistake, or what ever. There would be a trial and we would be in hand cuffs. And i highly doubt if the "Homeowner" saw another man barreling down the dark hall without identifying himself as a cop armed with a hand gun and shot him, and it turned out to be the cop shot, would a "review board" let him off. Double standards shouldn't exist no matter what. "LE" or not the officer was wrong and should be treated just like You or I.
 
I remember hearing about a similar incident last year. For me, it served as a lesson learned: do not have a gun in hand when the police arrive.

Right or wrong, a person who has a gun in his hand is at some risk when the police arrive to investigate a home invasion call.
Click to expand...

What should he have done, hand it to the perp to hold for him when the cops came?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Bula
  • Locked
Man shot 6 times by police to file suit against Phoenix
Replies
13
Views
2K
WardenWolf
W
S
  • Locked
Phoenix Police Shoot Homeowner and Plan Cover-Up After Home Invasion 911 Call
Replies
13
Views
2K
rbernie
rbernie
D
  • Locked
Police shoot homeowner six times
2 3
Replies
68
Views
3K
Fred Fuller
F
F
  • Locked
Homeowner pursues suspected thief, shoots him
Replies
21
Views
1K
Larry Ashcraft
Larry Ashcraft
4
  • Locked
Police: Homeowner Kills Alleged Intruder
Replies
16
Views
1K
45R
4
Back
Top