[joe_the_user]

Read more closely.

"When officers went to investigate, there was a physical altercation between police and 26-year-old Gerardo Diego Ayala that ended with a fatal officer-involved shooting."

The cops killed one of the suspects then pursued the rest, then a pedestrian died in the chase. But the fricken media did a great job phrasing things so the cops seemed justified, woo-hoo.

See:

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2013/05/santa_ana_pede...

(taken from further on this page, belongs further up btw)

[lostlogin]

I'm more commenting on the number of fatalities. Given how it panned out, it was handled badly. Confrontation there and then was the wrong choice. I don't pretend to have any great solutions, but I'd like to think that any armed confrontation that occurred near me had been done with consideration for what-if scenarios. Confrontation often brings out the worst in people, and it did here.

[lostlogin]

Wow. So every stage went as bad as it could have. Sure, there is a series to events where more people could have died, and I'm sure this will be brought up. There should be some people doing some pretty hard thinking about how they handled this.

[grannyg00se]

Why do you say as bad as it could have? This is a physical altercation with known gang members (if I'm properly informed). It's not going to go well.

I think the difficulty in handling a situation like that in any way other than immediate armed confrontation must be immense. If somebody tasked me with "handling" a gang member I'm pretty sure I'd want a gun, and I'd want absolutely no restrictions or post-event questioning on its use. Obviously I'm not involved in professional law enforcement in LA but even with training I can imagine it to be an incredibly difficult situation.

I think that the hard thinking to be done should be directed primarily at the underlying issues that result in (and support) organized street crime.