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Excaliber wrote:

EEllis wrote:

talltex wrote:

drjoker wrote:The fact of the matter is, that this is a case of mistaken identity, HOWEVER, if the tables were turned and the old man shot the cop, I seriously doubt that the old man would be out on "administrative PAID leave."

Not JUST mistaken identity...gross negligence also...they were at the wrong address. They responded to an alarm across the street...they approached on foot and walked up the driveway, which has the street address number clearly painted on the curb right at the driveway entrance, and shot Mr. Waller in his own garage when he raised the door.

Yep because bad guys always stay at the reported address and never hid nearby in things like sheds and, oh my, garages.

In fairness, good police procedure for an unconfirmed burglar alarm call, which is false 99.999% of the time, starts with a search of the right address to find out if a crime has occurred and to determine if the suspect is still there or not before moving to other areas.

Starting out at the wrong address and shooting folks that live there without even checking the dispatched location is pretty hard for me to swallow as good or even excusably bad police work.

The results speak for themselves.

Chas.

There's far to little information available for me to offer any opinions about this specific event.

As Gigag04 noted, officers often approach alarm calls (and other for that matter) "dark" so they do not scare the bad guys away. However, approaching in stealth mode not only means the bad guys don't know you're coming, it also means the good guys don't either. The decision on how to approach is the officer's to make, but in my view, he/she should shoulder the greater risk that he could be misidentified as the bad guy by others. It's one thing to shoot a man pointing a gun at someone they know is a LEO; it's quite another to shoot someone doing so not knowing the person was a LEO.

I hope the officers identified themselves and told him to drop the gun before firing, but again, we have no information. I suspect that both officers had their flashlights in the homeowner's face, so he would be blinded and couldn't see that officers were approaching as opposed to a burglar telling him to drop his weapon. Sometimes the best option in such situations is for the LEO to back off, take available cover and get the facts sorted out. I bet two Fort Worth officers wish they had done just that.

The investigation needs to be done by an agency other than the Fort Worth PD. Otherwise, any many will believe the outcome is questionable. What an absolute tragedy for all involved.

Chas.