Fort Worth police shoot elderly man

[VMI77]

I haven't gone back through every one of your comments on incidents like this but from those I remember it sure seems like you want to place blame anywhere but on police. Please explain further what you mean by the "current culture of people wanting to force themselves upon police while carrying a gun?" Personally, I'm afraid of the police because they're the only group of people I can't defend myself against if they attack me. The police break into my house by mistake my dog is dead, and if they see me with a gun having woken up in the middle of the night thinking my home is being invaded, I'm dead, and possibly my wife. Officer safety you know. No one else in this country has this kind of license to kill. I don't have a magic phrase like "officer safety" to keep me out of prison. There is no "citizen safety." If a bad cop rapes a woman and she shoots him, SHE is going to prison. Any sane and relatively informed person knows that any contact with police while armed, especially if the weapon is visible, is a possible death sentence. That's not the way it was 40 years ago.

In this case, the old man didn't "force himself on police while carrying a gun." The police forced themselves on HIM. And sorry, no CHL owner gets to pull out a gun and shoot someone without warning without going to prison. If a CHL holder shot someone in the same or similar circumstances, his life would be over. We already know what the result of the "investigation" is going to be: sorry surviving family members, but the officers acted properly in accordance with department procedures. The chances it will lead to charges for the officers are about the same as you encountering a legitimate residential alarm.

When you say the officers don't have to identify themselves you're saying a citizens right to self-defense is ALWAYS subordinate to police, since in the many cases where it is impossible for a citizen to see that a potential threat is the police, such as at night with a flashlight in your face, or coming out of a deep sleep in the middle of the night with your door crashing in, a citizen has to take the risk that the unidentified threat is a good guy. The police on the other hand, can shoot and then say they felt threatened and it's, oops, so sorry. The citizen shoots and it is the police, he ends up dead or in prison. So much for serve and protect.

Finally, in this particular case we come to one of two possible conclusions if we assume good faith on the part of the officers: 1) the old man didn't know they were police and felt threatened; or 2) the old man was tired of living and decided to commit suicide by cop. Which of these two possibilities is the most likely? You're apparently OK with number one; I'm not, and I consider it a police culture problem.

OK guys, this is getting heated. Drop the 'You know what the outcome will be' statements. You do NOT know what will be coming out of this.

Everyone needs to stop jumping to conclusions and let the investigation proceed to determine what happened. Once that is in progress then we can comment on the proceedings, but until that time no one knows what really happened or who was right or wrong in this case.

If we can't stay civil and level headed in discussion the thread will be locked.

OK, sorry, but I don't feel at all heated about it. My comment about the outcome is just based on logic and a belief that the police did not murder him, but shot him as a result of a series of unfortunate events. I don't think it should have happened but I don't see how the officers can be charged with anything either.

[Keith B]

OK, sorry, but I don't feel at all heated about it. My comment about the outcome is just based on logic and a belief that the police did not murder him, but shot him as a result of a series of unfortunate events. I don't think it should have happened but I don't see how the officers can be charged with anything either.

We will see. There are charges that can be brought against the officers if they were way off base. No matter who was right or wrong, this case is terrible for everyone and should have never happened. Will wait to see the outcome of the investigation.

[baldeagle]

In this case, the old man didn't "force himself on police while carrying a gun." The police forced themselves on HIM.

How in the world do you know this? Are you privy to inside information the rest of us don't have? 1) We don't know who initiated the contact. 2) We don't know the nature of the contact (did the owner have his gun pointed at the officers? Was he aggressively moving toward them? Was he sitting passively in a chair and they blew him away?

And sorry, no CHL owner gets to pull out a gun and shoot someone without warning without going to prison. If a CHL holder shot someone in the same or similar circumstances, his life would be over.

How do you know there was no warning?

A single case of a CHL holder shooting someone without first warning them would disprove your statement. There are sufficient videos on Youtube of exactly that happening that I don't even need to post them. There is no requirement in the law to warn someone before shooting them, and in some circumstances it would be foolhardy to do so.

I think you need to calm down. This story has obviously gotten you riled up - to the point that you're veering into uncharted and unproven territory with your accusations.

[G26ster]

Now, having a CHL is to blame:

http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/05/31 ... ghbor.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Keith B]

Now, having a CHL is to blame:

http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/05/31 ... ghbor.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You must be reading more into it than I am. It doesn't even say Waller had a CHL. It is only a statement about CHL holders by the neighbor who is a former legislator and co-author on the orignal CHL bill.

[baldeagle]

Now we have an additional piece of evidence that clarifies, to some degree, what happened.

In the original police radio call, officer Benjamin Hanlon is heard asking for help: “He wouldn’t put the gun down. He pointed it at [officer Richard] Hoeppner. Hoeppner fired.”

So, we still don't know where Mr. Waller was when he was shot, but we do know that he pointed his gun at the officers. That's a foolhardy thing to do. We still don't know if the officers shouted a warning before shooting (they may not have had time), whether Mr. Waller understood they were police officers (we'll never know that), and whether or not the outcome was avoidable (we still don't have enough facts).

A trend in law enforcement is officer survival training. As the BGs get more aggressive toward LEOs, the LEOs have sought out training to teach them how to survive a deadly encounter. These guys - http://calibrepress.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; - are at the forefront of that. Their research shows that as officers receive more survival training they become less likely to be involved in deadly force incidents. They learn not to press the issue and not to expose themselves to deadly confrontations. The end result is enhanced officer safety and fewer deadly force incidents - a win-win for them as well as the public. The problem is departments often can't afford to pay for the training, so officers have to come up with the money on their own. Seminars are "cheap" in comparison to other professions, but they're still more than $1000, which is a chunk of change for a junior officer just starting his career.

As for the article, CHL had nothing to do with this incident, so the attempt of this article to blame it for the shooting is blatant bias, plain and simple.

[Jumping Frog]

When these cases come up and then the "blame the LEOs" crowd start bickering with "LEOs are never at fault" crowd, I quickly get bored and start flipping past their comments.

Which gets me to my real point. I wish y'all would just STOP needlessly and thoughtlessly hitting the quote button! Who gives a hoot if your signature is only 4 lines long on my phone if I have to flip past 100 lines of quoted text to see if there is anything word reading!!

[VMI77]

In this case, the old man didn't "force himself on police while carrying a gun." The police forced themselves on HIM.

How in the world do you know this? Are you privy to inside information the rest of us don't have? 1) We don't know who initiated the contact. 2) We don't know the nature of the contact (did the owner have his gun pointed at the officers? Was he aggressively moving toward them? Was he sitting passively in a chair and they blew him away?

Sort of simple actually. He was on his property, there were no police there. He remained on his property and police appeared. The police approached him on his property, he didn't stray off his property to approach the police. It's what happened once the police came on to his property that is in question. Furthermore, I already stated at least twice that I did not believe the police murdered him, so your question of --him sitting passively in a chair and they blew him away-- is just a gratuitous attempt to be insulting.

And sorry, no CHL owner gets to pull out a gun and shoot someone without warning without going to prison. If a CHL holder shot someone in the same or similar circumstances, his life would be over.

How do you know there was no warning?

A single case of a CHL holder shooting someone without first warning them would disprove your statement. There are sufficient videos on Youtube of exactly that happening that I don't even need to post them. There is no requirement in the law to warn someone before shooting them, and in some circumstances it would be foolhardy to do so.

How do I know there was no warning? I don't, and already addressed that possibility. If he was warned and pointed a gun at them then he was committing suicide by cop. It's possible, just doesn't seem likely.

Actually, a single case would not disprove my statement. If there were 100 such cases and in one a shooting without warning didn't result in prison, but 99 did, the statement is still true, it would still be true if it was 40 times out of a 100. It just changes from a certainty to a probability. But I think we're talking about two different things. My remark was intended to reflect an analogous situation. Surely you're not going to tell me that if a CHL holder thought his life was in danger, pulled out his gun, and shot someone, and that person turned out to have a cell phone or a hose nozzle in his hand that he wouldn't end up in prison? Do you think you could go looking for a burglar you just saw run out the back of your house intending to get a description for police, walk onto someone else's property where you thought he'd run, see them point a gun and you, draw and shoot them, and not go to prison? Yes, you might get off, but the odds are against it.

I think you need to calm down. This story has obviously gotten you riled up - to the point that you're veering into uncharted and unproven territory with your accusations.

Sorry, but you don't know anything about me, and I'm not at all riled up. I haven't accused anyone of anything --I've made analogies and hypothetical comparisons. Again, I've stated quite clearly that unless you believe the officers murdered him, and I don't, then the shooting was the result of a series of unfortunate events. To say that the police culture has changed over the last four decades in ways that are not beneficial to the police or to citizens is not an accusation; it's an opinion.

[G26ster]

You must be reading more into it than I am. It doesn't even say Waller had a CHL. It is only a statement about CHL holders by the neighbor who is a former legislator and co-author on the orignal CHL bill.

Keith, I see a definite inference to CHL laws by the headline, statements throughout the article about CHL, and by statements such as, Then and now, some police oppose expanded gun rights because they fear such confusion. (Fort Worth is an exception. Carter convinced the late police Chief Thomas Windham that more good than bad would come of the new law.) and the statement by Patterson preceded by, "the original author of the law " and "Direct any complaints to Austin." No mention of the legality of any lawful gun owner having one for defense of the home (Castle Doctrine), only references to the CHL law as if this was the reason the victim was armed. I believe the intent of this article was to influence voters, who have no clue as to the Castle Doctrine or CHL laws, and to blame the CHL laws as making this tragedy possible. MHO

[VMI77]

but we do know that he pointed his gun at the officers.

No, we don't KNOW that. We might accept it as a fact but there is also reason not to accept it as a fact. You're quoting a radio call made after the shooting. If the officers thought they screwed up and were afraid of the consequences they could have made the radio call for cover. Logically, to accept it as fact you have to believe that all police officers tell the truth all the time. Not even DA's believe that. I've been called to jury duty twice over the last few years and every DA over four selection pools said unequivocally that the police lie and that you cannot accept the testimony of a police officer as true simply because he's a police officer --and he was talking about circumstances where what an officer said put a defendant at risk, not himself.

[VMI77]

You must be reading more into it than I am. It doesn't even say Waller had a CHL. It is only a statement about CHL holders by the neighbor who is a former legislator and co-author on the orignal CHL bill.

Keith, I see a definite inference to CHL laws by the headline, statements throughout the article about CHL, and by statements such as, Then and now, some police oppose expanded gun rights because they fear such confusion. (Fort Worth is an exception. Carter convinced the late police Chief Thomas Windham that more good than bad would come of the new law.) and the statement by Patterson preceded by, "the original author of the law " and "Direct any complaints to Austin." No mention of the legality of any lawful gun owner having one for defense of the home (Castle Doctrine), only references to the CHL law as if this was the reason the victim was armed. I believe the intent of this article was to influence voters, who have no clue as to the Castle Doctrine or CHL laws, and to blame the CHL laws as making this tragedy possible. MHO

Of course it was.....that's the MO of the left, let no tragedy go to waste.

[baldeagle]

Sort of simple actually. He was on his property, there were no police there. He remained on his property and police appeared. The police approached him on his property, he didn't stray off his property to approach the police.

And you got this information where? I saw nothing in the article that stated where he was before the police confronted him, where he was when the police confronted him and who approached whom. The only thing we know for certain is that he was dead in his garage. Given that people can travel some distance when shot before succumbing to their wounds, any statement about his or the officers' location at the time of the incident is pure speculation. And that's a poor basis for accusing anyone of anything.

but we do know that he pointed his gun at the officers.

No, we don't KNOW that. We might accept it as a fact but there is also reason not to accept it as a fact. You're quoting a radio call made after the shooting. If the officers thought they screwed up and were afraid of the consequences they could have made the radio call for cover. Logically, to accept it as fact you have to believe that all police officers tell the truth all the time.

And to reject it as fact you have to assume that all police officers will lie all the time. My assertion would be that at this time, that's all the evidence we have, so it's all we can discuss. Speculation serves no useful purpose except to buttress an opinion not based on facts.

[TrueFlog]

A burglary alarm call is way to common, and in my experience of going to hundreds of false residential alarms, a true waste of tax payer resources. Many larger cities are stopping the response all together unless there is something more. It is always the home owner setting it off accidentally. I cannot even recall ever responding to a valid residential alarm. Regarding experience, you are going to get whatever two units are available. If they were on their own, they are out of the training car and respond to calls accordingly. That is how it works everywhere. If something comes up, then a supervisor or senior officer will respond to assist if warranted.

I read some postings in here about the wrong address. It is easy to not find the correct address in the dark. Many people have poor if no lighting, and do not have their address displayed in a visible manner. When responding to calls like this, you want the element of surprise and are not going to spot light each house to find an address because you have to treat each alarm as a potential valid alarm. Everybody should take the time and make sure they have it on their house. One day you may need EMS and the extra time they take trying to find the house could be deadly.

I agree that having PD responding to alarm calls is a huge waste of taxpayer money...all that does is support the companies that sell the alarm systems, and provide the purchasers with a false sense of security. I also agree with your comments on experience...in an ideal world it'd be nice to always have an older more experienced officer on the scene, but that's not realistic, and at some point the rookies have to be cut loose on their own. Anytime something like this happens, you can always wonder if more experience might have made a difference, but we will never know. As to the wrong address...there I will take issue...the officers have the duty and responsibility to make SURE they are at the right location BEFORE they take any aggressive action, period. The risks to both the homeowner and the officers are just too high to do otherwise. If they have ANY doubt, then they don't need to be walking around to the backside of the property unannounced...better to let a "possible" burglar get away, than get in this situation. In this case, if you look at the video, you can plainly see the address stenciled on the curb at the end of the driveway...right where they approached. They just screwed up and went to the wrong house, and killed an innocent man because of their mistakes.

That's the "old way," as incident after incident continues to demonstrate. Now we have SWAT raids on innocent people because someone at another address was SUSPECTED of selling marijuana and the police got the wrong address. Lethal force is used so people won't consume a drug that is probably less destructive than alcohol. You see the NYPD expending over 40 rounds on a guy armed with a wallet and the LAPD emptying their guns in a vehicle without even knowing who is in it. The police now launch SWAT raids on people for selling raw milk and not paying their student loans. The police go to the wrong address and shoot dogs first and ask questions later. "Officer safety" now seems to have priority over every other consideration. Remember how the police sat out side Columbine HS while two teenage boys continued their killing spree? How often do you hear the mantra "a LEO just wants to come home to his family at the end of the day?" Have you ever heard it said about an innocent victim of a police shooting that "he just wanted to come home to his family at the end of the day?" I've heard from a number of recent combat vets that the military has more restrictive ROEs in WAR ZONES than LEO's in the US. But apparently, the military is concerned with not alienating the locals, something which our government here at home doesn't care about so much.

Read the comments following articles like this one: they are overwhelmingly critical of police behavior and express the belief that the police are above the law. Incidents like this, which as you point out, seem to show that LE too often lacks any sense of proportion. So we have a LEO saying that he's never responded to a legitimate residential alarm and at the same time using the alarm call as the justification for shooting an old man in his garage. The police just didn't act like this 30 years ago. You can even see it in the movies. For instance, compare "Dog Day Afternoon" made in 1975 to "Inside Man," made in 2006. Both movies depict the NYPD response to a bank robbery involving hostages. Among other things, In one, the police treat the hostages with concern and respect, and in the other they treat the hostages as criminals. Guess which is which? "Mistakes" like this are all too common and the end result will be increased distrust of the police which will breed reciprocal mistrust of citizens (what we used to be called, now we're "civilians"), and that in turn will lead to more incidents like this one.

I blame the War on Drugs for most of this. Of course, a more accurate name would be War On Americans Who May Or May Not Use Drugs. The practice of selling surplus military equipment to LEO's and hiring fromer military to train LEO's and teach them tactics doesn't help much, either.

[VMI77]

Sort of simple actually. He was on his property, there were no police there. He remained on his property and police appeared. The police approached him on his property, he didn't stray off his property to approach the police.

And you got this information where? I saw nothing in the article that stated where he was before the police confronted him, where he was when the police confronted him and who approached whom. The only thing we know for certain is that he was dead in his garage. Given that people can travel some distance when shot before succumbing to their wounds, any statement about his or the officers' location at the time of the incident is pure speculation. And that's a poor basis for accusing anyone of anything.

http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/tarrant/ ... 07171.html

Jerry Waller was killed inside his own garage in the Woodhaven neighborhood early Tuesday morning.

A pair of Fort Worth police officers, who have been on the force less than a year, were responding to a burglary alarm in the area.

The pair was originally dispatched to a home across the street from the Waller's, but for some reason, ended up face-to-face with Waller after he opened his garage door.

And it's a little strange from the logical point of view how you accept the police version and reject the homeowner's version.

but we do know that he pointed his gun at the officers.

No, we don't KNOW that. We might accept it as a fact but there is also reason not to accept it as a fact. You're quoting a radio call made after the shooting. If the officers thought they screwed up and were afraid of the consequences they could have made the radio call for cover. Logically, to accept it as fact you have to believe that all police officers tell the truth all the time.

And to reject it as fact you have to assume that all police officers will lie all the time. My assertion would be that at this time, that's all the evidence we have, so it's all we can discuss. Speculation serves no useful purpose except to buttress an opinion not based on facts.

No, sorry, that's not the way the logic works. In this case knowing that some officers lie, we can't reject the possibility that these two particular officers lied. However, to believe they're telling the truth you have to accept the proposition that no police officers lie, since if any police officers lie, these particular officers could be part of the set that lies. I've repeated several times that outside of the facts I've articulated I don't know what happened. But there are only TWO logical possibilities in this case: 1) the homeowner knew they were police and committed suicide by cop; 2) the homeowner didn't know they were police and got killed because he was afraid of an unknown threat. However, I am curious to know what opinion you think I've expressed --other than my opinion about the evolution of police culture?

[mamabearCali]

Tragic does not seem to begin to describe what happened here. I hope there is an outside investigation.....not that it will bring the man back.



We seem to have a reoccurring problem. LEO's are trained to deal with the dredges of society, but then they don't seem to be able to deal humanely with the rest of society or be able to tell the difference between a thug and a confused grandfather. We have police officers shooting puppies and dogs behind fences, we have police officers nearly killing people who are having medical emergencies. They beat on a door in the dead of night do not ID themselves then shoot the homeowner when he answers the door carrying a gun. We seem to need more training here and a good dose of common sense. I am not anti-Leo but with this reoccurring theme happening more and more often something is amiss. Perhaps it is training, perhaps it is how the training is carried out, perhaps it is who they are recruiting. At any rate if they want to have the cooperation of the public with them in their duties these things need to be fixed. If I am afraid I will be killed in an interaction with the police I am not going to call them. If I don't trust that they will hold up the law in an honorable manner I won't help them in their duties because I don't know what they will do with the info I give them.

I am a very reasonable person, but after years of a story coming out every week of a LEO doing something stupid/criminal and very often getting away with it I start to wonder who these guys are working for.