Sure, the Baby is Dead — But the Cops are Free, so Let’s Party!

From Will Griggs @ the Lew Rockwell Blog:

Four years ago, nineteen-month-old Suzie Pena was shot to death by Los Angeles SWAT commandos during a 2 1/2-hour standoff with her father, Jose Raul Pena. After suffering a narcotics-related breakdown, Mr. Pena took his daughters hostage, barricaded himself in the office of his used-car dealership, and began a gun battle with the police.

At one point, Pena was holding a gun in one hand while using Suzie as a “human shield.” In his derangement he seems to have assumed that putting an infant in the line of fire would deter paramilitary police from shooting at him. He was wrong: The child was shot in the head and died, even as her anguished mother, Lorena Lopez, pleaded with the police to be careful and not to shoot the innocent baby.

Lopez filed a wrongful death lawsuit contending that the SWAT team should have used different tactics; that was the same conclusion, incidentally, reached by a panel appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief William Bratton.

But under the evolving doctrine of police impunity, it is not the privilege of mere mundanes to question the tactical decisions of their betters in blue.

So Monday, after Los Angeles fought the lawsuit for four years,

A judge abruptly dismissed a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the mother of a 19-month-old girl who died when her father used her as a human shield during a furious gun battle with police.

The mother, Lorena Lopez, argued that SWAT officers should have used different tactics during the 2005 gunbattle that left her daughter, Suzie Pena, dead. The city said the officers believed the girl was in immediate danger and were trying to save her.

Granting a motion by the city on Monday, Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu took the case away from jurors as they were scheduled to begin hearing final arguments. Based on trial testimony, there was no way the panelists could have concluded that police officers acted unreasonably, Treu ruled.

City attorneys, of course, dedicated to the integrity of the justice system, were utterly shocked and horrified at the injustice of taking the decision out of the jury's hands at the last moment, and howled for Judge Treu's head on a pike.

Oh...wait. No they didn't. That's them in the photo.

City Atty. Carmen Trutanich, who was being interviewed by The Times when a deputy city attorney came into his office announce the news, jumped from his chair with a cheer and high-fived the lawyer. Millions of city dollars had been in jeopardy, he said.

“This is a case where nobody wins except the citizens, because no one should have been sued in this case,” said Trutanich, who spent four hours personally vetting the evidence with the city's legal team before it went to trial.
...
“Police did everything pursuant to procedure," [said Trutanich] "they were caught in a terrible situation -- in fact one officer was shot as they were charging the door because they believed the father was going to kill the child.”

And as I recall a commentator saying at the time (paraphrased), 'Apparently the prospect that the father would kill the child was so abhorrent to the police officers that they went ahead and shot her themselves to prevent it.'

But it's okay, as it turns out - they did everything pursuant to procedure. Nobody wins except the citizens. Yay!

Think hard, next time you're tempted to punch 911 in an emergency ... Citizens.