Monday, July 11, 2016

SOMETIMES IT JUST ALL GOES SIDEWAYS

By Bob Walsh

The best training, best intentions and best execution still sometimes do not produce the desired results. A case in point.

On this past Monday the San Jose (CA) police were summoned to a situation. Relatives of Anthony Nunez, 18, called the cops and said he might be suicidal. The cops arrived at the home on Feller Ave and it took about 15 minutes for them to make contact with young Nunez. He then emerged from the home bleeding from an apparently self-inflicted head wound and holding a handgun.

The cops retreated to the other side of the street and spent the next 15 minutes trying to get Nunez to go along with the program. He kept walking in and out of the house gun in hand, sometimes pointing it at himself. (It would be interesting to know at this point if the cops knew whether or not the house was occupied at this time or it could have made a lot of difference on how things went.)

About ½ hour into the situation Nunez pointed his pistol at the cops. They opened fire with rifles, killing him. So far at least nobody is accusing the cops of being insensitive racist bastards or of screwing up their response.

That is an unfortunate thing about the real world. Sometimes you do everything wrong, you fall in the cesspool and come up clean and smelling sweet. Sometimes you do everything right, have good procedures and follow them carefully, and the situation still turns to shit.

EDITOR’S NOTE: SFPD Inspector Sledge Hammer once used a bazooka to blow up a whole building just to dispatch a sniper on the roof. In order to prevent Nunez from killing himself, Hammer would have shot him the second he pointed the gun at his head.

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