Tragic....

[brj]

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-x...ostemailedlink

[swmike]

Three warning shots? Kind of like throwing a pot roast in the water near a schooll of sharks. What is any LEO responding to think? Someone firing a gun in the air near a crowd. My first thought would be to take out the threat to the crowd, without a warning shot.

Tragic, Yes! Stupid, unfortunately.

BTW, the article said the authorities were interviewing a busload of witnesses. They should be able to get at least one meaningful account. Hope they can figure out which one it is.

[Ronny]

That's horrible. A uniformed officer shooting an undercover officer three times in the back? In the back? Sounds like an itchy trigger finger to me -- the undercover guy didn't have time to explain anything and it doesn't look like the uniformed guy would have cared. But I don't know the whole story so maybe something else was amiss.

[Topthis]

I didn't bother reading the whole story, I got to sick to my stomach....but, shouldn't the LEO said something?...like, "...drop your weapon!", "don't move" or better yet, "freeze...police"?? I hope that there is more to the story and will come out to justify the actions of shooting someone 3 times...in the back...without a word...or warning!

[payne]

I guess that the cop didn't have to order him to drop the weapon. He also must not have seen the fight. If it was a self-defense shooting, it would suck to have just successfully defended yourself then catch 3rounds in the back cause an officer only heard gunfire and saw you holding a gun.

[Talon66]

That's pretty sad. Guy gets killed over an illegal drinking project? I'm not familiar with the whole issue of "warning shots" in that state but I can somewhat understand what may have been going through the cop's mind when he came upon an armed man firing a gun in a crowd. I'll refrain from Monday morning quarterbacking 'cause I wasn't on the field but there's definitely something wrong here with this situation .

[Ronny]

My thoughts exactly. Any sort of hole in a person's back should raise some questions.

[blackmind]

So if you were a cop (or even a civilian) and came upon a scene in which a person dressed like an ordinary partygoer had a gun in his hand, had fired it at least once, and was pointing it at others, presumably to fire it again, you would not think that he was an immediate threat and had to be put down, even if you had to do it from behind?

Or would you stop and try to ask him, calmly, why he had seen fit to fire in a crowd? Maybe you think that time would stop, a la The Matrix, and you could quickly ascertain that he was a victim who was about to be overrun by a violent crowd if he did not defend himself. While that may be the actual thing that was beginning to happen, it could not be clear to the cop who responded on the scene. He had to make a choice. Might have been helpful if it were possible for him to have been able to hear the decedent yell, "POLICE!" or something.


But anyway, shots in the back do NOT always mean someone was shot wrongfully.


-blackmind

[sendec]

Massad Ayoob, in one of his few pieces of research that I like, demonstrated that hits to s suspect's back can be caused by rapid movement of the victim, and not necessarily by deliberate shooting the person in the back.

[Ronny]

Consider the fact that the "BG" was an undercover cop in this situation. I'm sure undercover cops are briefed as to how to handle a situation which compromises their cover otherwise there would be dead undercover cops everywhere, shot down by their own guys when the bust happens. IMO, something went wrong, someone messed up.

Or has it become the policy of LE officers today to shoot first and ask questions later?

[blackmind]

I think that the prime mover of things-going-wrong here was the fact that the cops put undercover operatives in the field to ferret out underage drinking!

Okay, it may not be the best thing in the world to have underage drinkers imbibing, but is it really worth undercover police operations?! When the cost is something like this?! I don't think so.

Besides, we're talking once again about probably 18, 19-year-old ADULTS (by law) drinking alcohol. I say that we either raise the age of "adulthood" to 21, or let 18-year-olds drink. It's the old, "We let them elect the president, we let them get married, join the military, die for their country, drive tanks and fighter jets, but we won't let them drink?!" debate. It's truly screwed up.

Oh, and while I was in New York recently, in Suffolk county, I saw a sign on a gas station door that said that Suffolk county law prohibits sale of tobacco products to anyone under 25 years of age. WTH?!!? A 22-year-old ADULT with a mortgage, a car, a wife, and a kid is not allowed by law to purchase tobacco products?! What kind of MADNESS is this?!

I'm not a smoker, but this nanny-state crap is FAR out of hand!!

-blackmind

[Res O. Lushin]

Consider the fact that the "BG" was an undercover cop in this situation

The "undercover cop" worked for the UCF campus police, not local law enforcement. Word on campus is he approched some students about underage drinking (showing no badge), a fight broke out, and the kid he was fighting with ended up getting shot in the gut by this "undercover cop". That is when a local LEO nearby acted accordingly.

Yes it is unfortunate and never should have happened. My question is why didn't UCF notify local LE about their employees working off property?

[Erik]

Lots more details are necessary...

However (in no particular order):

It will be difficult to justify the UC's gun being introduced. (By the UC.)

Warning shots, if that is what they were, were not merited. (They never are unless you're at sea.)

Cops are likely to "know" my first two points and assume the actor is a threat.

Threats shooting into the air and the crowd are dealt with quickly and decisively.

That means shooting.

Back shooting is allowed.

All of which a UC should know and casue him to act accordingly.

---

My best to the officers involved and their families.

[Harley Quinn]

Very tragic indeed. Now we will never hear the side of the Officer killed. Usually someone will come forward with the truth in something this tragic.

But then who can say it is the truth? The Officer had a reason to pull the gun
and I don't think he did it for a warning shot. It will come out in the wash but to who's satisfaction.
I really feel bad for the Officer who was shot and killed but he is gone.

The families and the officer who killed this man will have to live with it the rest of their lives. Tragic, but it happens all the time just slightly different circumstances. Those are the ones I really feel for, they are in for a long rough haul.

The guy went down doing his job. Like we have all said, tragic.

Should the officer who fired the shots to the back of the victim have said something before firing? Yes, in my opinion. I bet he wishes he had.

Harley

[Double Naught Spy]

That's horrible. A uniformed officer shooting an undercover officer three times in the back?

If the use of lethal force is merited, where the person gets shots is not a legal or moral issue. It just shows that the person getting shot didn't cover their 6 very well.

but, shouldn't the LEO said something?...like, "...drop your weapon!", "don't move" or better yet, "freeze...police"??

The LEO probably felt he did not have time to waste by yelling such things because some madman opened fire in a seemingly uncontrolled manner.

Massad Ayoob, in one of his few pieces of research that I like, demonstrated that hits to s suspect's back can be caused by rapid movement of the victim, and not necessarily by deliberate shooting the person in the back.

It wasn't so much rapid movementof the victim as it was slow movement of the person firing. You can't tell me that the officer firing at the "suspect" fired each shot at the front of the guy an d the guy turned each time to absorb the shots in the back.

I dont' know what people's hangup is with shooting somebody in the back. From a tactical standpoint, if you have to shoot somebody, you really don't want them to know that you are going to shoot them or where you are shooting from if you have any fear they will retaliate or could retaliate by returned fire. If you can't be a sniper in a gilly suit, .308 rifle, 300 yards away in a hide, but instead are a cop on the beat with just a pistol, do you really want to be in front of the guy that is already firing? Nope. Being at the shooter's 6 is a tactically good location if you havea shot.

[jcoiii]

Did I read this correctly? An undercover officer is "breaking up a fight" or "involved in a fight" or something to that nature. During said altercation, the undercover officer draws his gun and fires a couple of rounds? Is that what it said?

Witnesses said Jenkins pulled out his badge and his gun and fired the weapon. Some said he fired the gun into the air, and one person who claimed to have seen the incident said Jenkins shot a student in the leg.

Yep, that's what it says. Hmm, local cop patrolling. Sees college kids fighting. Sees/hears gunshots. What was he supposed to think?

[brj]

Hopefully not paraphrasing what someone has already stated, but I would guess that the University's policy of monitoring underage drinking with armed undercover officers may need to be reviewed. I am not advocating underage drinking in any form, but it was a football game, which equals tailgating/partying/alcohol. As bad as it was, this situation could have easily been much worse, with a crowded parking lot of bystanders.
Lack of details notwithstanding, a very difficult spot for all of those involved.

[afewloosescrews]

I am a student at UCF and have a little background on what happened as well as some interesting effects following the shooting...

1) The UCF police are all pretty pathetic... not capable of handling more than speeding tickets and jaywalking violations. They briefly handled a shooting at a local apartment complex while I was there in the Spring and they looked like deer in the headlights. I lost all respect and confidence in them watching them try to handle a crime scene and eventually the State cops came and took over and sent the UCF police home. I don't know why they would send one of their police officers in an undercover situation with probably very little to no training. I am also unclear about what his purpose was at the football game... if he was trying to make arrests wouldn't it make sense to give him some uniformed backup? If he was trying to stop a fight, wouldn't he identify himself as a police officer? I don't have any law enforcement training, but the UCF police are a huge joke on campus.

2) Local police were not informed that UCF had any police on the ground. From what I understand, the UCF police are contracted out by state law enforcement and are essentially state law enforcement officers. So, it might not have been the school's responsibility to inform the Orlando PD. There has been a lack of communication and some friction between the UCF PD and the OPD in the past... so a lack of communication is pretty typical from what I understand.

3) Following the incident, I recieved an email from the president of the school informing the student body of what had happened and that rowdy students and underage drinking were responsible for the shooting. I have also heard that we might be banned from tailgating now before football games to prevent something like this from happening again. I just hope that the investigating body is a little more realistic about the actual causes of the shooting.

On another note... Why were undercover cops used in this situation? I would think that uniformed police checking ID's and just having a presense would be more of a deterent than one undercover police officer who had no backup? Anyhow, that is some of what I have noticed... And finally a topic that has brought me from lurking in the shadows of TFL.

[leadcounsel]

My opinion is that WE WASTE too much time, effort, and law enforcement resources on underaged drinking.

Who really cares if a 19 year old has a beer? They do it anyway. Shoot, I bet every single one of us drank when we were underage, but society is just so judgemental and hypocritical...

And then a man gets shot over it. What a waste.

We, as a nation and as localities, need to focus on the REAL problems which make people, especially youths, WANT to drink. It's a simple economic "supply and demand" analysis. If there is a demand, there will always be a supply. The best approach is to remove the demand portion of the equation.

[jcoiii]

LC, you lost your bet. I didn't take a drink til I was 21.

afew,
I have to say, as a campus police officer, it saddens me that you have to deal with poor campus police. There is another campus in my area that is notorious for poor campus police. At my school's graduation, which was held at this other's facilities, the super-campus-cop that one of my teammates talked to liked to brag that "we make more arrests that the local city PD." Well, since this is probably one of the more assinine statements I've heard, you can tell their attitude about being on campus.
I can say that if we had some kind of shooting on campus, we are required to call in either the County or TBI to handle the investigation, due to the fact that the "other" school tried to handle a death on campus themselves and the State made a law demanding outside help in all future incidents. And honestly, since I just started this whole LEO thing about 6 months ago, I'd probably be giving the deer in headlights look too, just hopefully not where you could see it

[Harley Quinn]

Yep he makes sense on this one. The problem with not trying to control is then you lose the funds from the Federal level. OH politic's you either love it or hate it.

There might be a good arguement here regarding if he was a rouge and out there taking on a student he did not like in uniform, then watch from a far going after said student.
Maybe the UC was drug enforcement and they were doing Coke?

Lots of what if's and what for's You can bet it will be washed over to keep the student's from knowing really what happened. Pretty tragic for a campus, usually they are going to go for their image.

I find it hard to believe that they have undercover, unless they just came to the school and then work it for a six month period and write and photo all activities and then later get warrants and serve.

Then the guy is burned and he either moves on or goes to uniform. It creates major hostility when a cop befriends then burns fellow persons doing the same thing he did. Not my choice of duty.

The above is very common in large cities where they move officers from division to division. New York and Chicago and Los Angeles have numerous
areas and most of the police have to live within just to be able to respond quickly.

When it comes to light they may hang this victim out to dry or they might back him. It will show it's ugly face pretty soon.

As I said in an earlier post, the uniformed is going to have many bad days a head hopefully he does not eat a bullet. Many of them do.

Harley

[MikeGLI]

I am also a student at UCF, and I noticed today on the local News, they have still shots of the UC and his gun directly behind the head of one of the students. The school news paper and Orlando Sentinel both have several different stories due to so many different witnesses. From what I read, the bottom line is this.... Things got a little out of hand, the UC pulled his firearm and discharged a few "warning shots" to get control of the situation, OPD who had no knowledge of a UC being on duty, fired three shots and killing the UC. The only big difference b/w the Orlando Sentinel and the UCF news paper is the UCF paper indicated the UC shot the student, whereas the orlando sentinel indicated a student was shot, but they didnt speculate on who shot him.

Harley Q:
The paper also stated the UC was working in conjunction with ATF. The whole idea was to discourage underage drinking. How an undercover officer was going to implement that idea is beyond me....

[RsqVet]

I hope that the person truly responsible for this --- presumably some dumb butt university administrator gets hung out to dry as well, I agree that the overall mission --- stoping underage drinking --- is questonable to begin with, the thought of sending one guy UC or uniformed to do anything about it is so stupid it defies any reason, if it's a problem et a bunch of officers, blanket the area check ID's and round up the underage for whatever it's worth.

And as the incident stands in my mind if the UC fired warning shots, as most seem to agree, then the patrol officer acted acordingly unless there is something yet to come out, He saw an armed man behaving in a way no TRAINED LE officer would and acted to neutralize the suspect --- remember this guy had 25 years in, I'm willing to bet if a buch of other thigns were diffirent he might have made a diffirent decesion, however when you have unidentified gun holder shooting said gun recklessly at no aparent immediate threat to life, what else is one to think? In a crowded parking lot no less? ,

[281 Quad Cam]

Why patrol the area with uniformed police officers who can let the kids know of their pressence - thus stopping things from getting out of control.... When you can just have this happen all the time?

From what I heard from some newspaper sources is that witnesses said the undercover cop NEVER announced that he was an officer or showed his badge. The "warning shots" are surely not part of department policy, and is an outright lie anyway. He did shoot a student... Not a UCF student but a Valencia community college student. If you are firing warning shots, which is a bad idea anyway, and a student is hit, something else is terribly wrong.

What might this mean for the rest of us who wish to legally defend ourselves? Think about it. A retired cop out of uniform opened up on a man who had fired 3 shots. That man was an officer presumably defending himself as the story goes... That could one day be any of us... Shooting in a perfectly legal defensive situation... Only to get splatted and killed by a nearby off duty cop... That is what opened my eyes about this situation.

[R1145]

I realize I don't have all the facts, but it seems that the UC operation was the reason for this tragedy.

I agree with screwloose: Kinda lame to have a UC working alone in a crowd situation. Aggressive and highly visible patrols are a strong deterrent, and Iquestion the need for an UC operation targeting MIPs. The other officers working the event should have been notified of UC operations.

A couple of officers here got swarmed by gangbangers several years ago, and one got beaten with his own baton. They managed to retain their weapons, though, and got saved by the "cavalry". I speculate the UC in this case got swarmed, and decided to go down fighting.

As a uniformed cop working an event, when you see a disturbance in the crowd, then a gun shooting, you're going to take out the shooter.