By now many of you have probably heard of the unfortunate and tragic event that resulted in the death of a 7-year-old Detroit girl, Aiyana Stanley Jones. This horrific tragedy is now making headlines nationwide and the city of Detroit is starting to feel the pressure.
The shooting took place during a raid of a home in search of a murder suspect. The details remain unclear as what to exactly happen, but it is believed the girl was shot by one of the participating officers.
Not much is certain at this point as to what exactly happened to cause the officer’s gun to be fired. The Detroit Police Department has turned over the investigation to the Michigan State Police.
There is contradicting evidence between the media and authorities, which has continued to grab the attention of people across the country. This is on top of, well known attorney, Geoffrey Fieger’s involvement who is representing the girl’s family and has filed a civil suit. Fieger filed lawsuits both in U.S. District Court and Wayne County Circuit Court which accused the Detroit Police Department for civil rights violations, gross negligence, and conspiracy to hide the facts of the tragedy.
We know this is a touchy subject, but want to know your thoughts on what took and is taken place surrounding this unfortunate event. There have been a lot of shootings lately in Detroit, involving both civilians and police officers as the victims.
How do you feel this should be handled as law enforcement professionals? What could, or should have been done to prevent this tragedy from happening? We invite all comments on this subject, but please remember to be respectful to the situation.
We want to send our condolences to the family of the Aiyana Stanley Jones and are terribly sorry for your loss.
One response to “Police Involvement in Shooting of 7-Year-Old Girl”
Posted by JoeyD
They should not have tossed a flash bang as their primary means of announcing their arrival. The flash bangs only use is for when you have a bad guy or bad guys holed up someplace & they refuse to come out and you have a stand off where you eventually realize you have to bum rush him and shoot him… the flash bang is to stun, blind and disorient the the bad guy so you can run in & shoot him.
This is pretty much just like tossing an M-80 or 1/4 stick of dynamite into a house. you NEVER want to toss it at kids. You always want to make sure there are no kids or other innocent civilians in there before you toss an M-80, 1/4 stick or a flash bang.
Even if you know there’s no one but the bad guys in there, you still don’t need to toss a flash bang until after you’ve attempted to make contact and arrest them or tried to & met armed resistance.
Having met armed resistance should be a primary pre-prerequisite to using a flash bang. Also keep in mind they can cause fires depending on the environment, what they land in or on, and what’s in the atmosphere. Safety of the civilians,the officers and the building all need to be guiding factors in the decision of if & how to deploy any kind of explosives, which flash bangs are.
Also Officers need to have continuous, ongoing access to training and practice scenarios to identify a target as not friendly before firing their weapon.
We still have not been told why the officer in question fired his weapon; so this particular aspect of the question – how to prevent it, cannot be properly addressed because we don’t know what happened, so how can we plan on preventing the unknown.
I for one am very anxiously waiting to hear or read the report as to why the officer felt the need to fire his weapon.
Since it has been reported that the flash bang landed on the girls chest, It could be that the flash bang went off just as the officer was entering the doorway & the sight & sound of the flash bang going off on the girls chest made the officer believe he was being fired at from the vicinity of the little girls chest and fired his weapon in that direction.
If this is what happened, then this would emphasize my statement above that there is a need for ongoing training to practice identifying targets in a hostile & chaotic environment.
Just my humble opinion.
Yer Ol’ Pal,
JoeyD
Posted on June 8, 2010 at 11:13 PM