Thug (Henderson, r.) menaces patrons (l.) Williams is behind the man in white at upper right center.

This is a good shoot:

Williams was seated toward the back of the cafe dressed in a white shirt, shorts and baseball cap.

One of the masked men, identified as Duwayne Henderson, 19, comes in pointing a handgun at customers. The second man, Davis Dawkins, 19, is seen swinging a bat at something off screen, which was later identified as a $1,200 computer screen.

Williams (2nd r.) engages a surprised Henderson (thug, far r.)

As Henderson turns his back, Williams pulls out a .380-caliber semi-automatic handgun, stands from his chair, takes two steps, nearly drops to one knee, and fires two shots at Henderson, who bolts for the front door.

Williams takes several more steps toward the door and continues firing as Henderson and Dawkins fall over one another trying to exit the building. The two eventually run off screen.

The whole thing: Ocala.com. Video at the link.

This is a bad shoot:

LAKE COUNTY, Fla. – Lake County Sheriff’s Office deputies shot and killed a man they assumed was an attempted murder suspect on Sunday, but they now know they shot the wrong man.

In the early-morning hours, deputies knocked on 26-year-old Andrew Lee Scott’s door without identifying themselves as law enforcement officers. Scott answered the door with a gun in his hand.

“When we knocked on the door, the door opened and the occupant of that apartment was pointing a gun at deputies, and that’s when we opened fire and killed him,” Lt. John Herrell said. “Even though this subject is not the one we were looking for when he opened the door. He was pointing the gun at the deputy and if you put yourselves in the deputy’s shoes. They were there to pick up someone who was wanted for an attempted homicide.”

Officials said the deputies did not identify themselves because of safety reasons.

Deputies thought they were confronting Jonathan Brown, a man accused of attempted murder. Brown was spotted at the Blueberry Hills Apartment complex and his motorcycle was parked across from Andrew Scott’s front door.

“It’s just a bizarre set of circumstances. The bottom line is, you point a gun at a deputy sheriff or police office, you’re going to get shot,” Herrell said.

Read more: WESH.com.

It’s worth noting that Herrell’s story has changed several times since the shoot, and he now says that the deputies didn’t ID themselves because they were afraid the suspect would flee. (The idea that beating on a door without ID’ing yourself was for “officer safety” has received a lot of ridicule).

After shooting Scott, the cops spent an hour and a half celebrating the killing of their suspect before they discovered that they’d nailed the wrong guy — they had ignored neighbors to that point; after all, citizens are not cops, so they might as well be criminals — and that the right guy, Brown, suspect in an assault, was sleeping nearby. He was arrested without incident, by police who actually identified themselves in the process.

The shooters remain unidentified: only that they’re police. Secret police. They have been given a paid vacation for the duration of the investigation.

There are people who would insist that the first shoot is bad, but they’re mostly the people who would excuse every action of the skells in the case, and who are emotionally opposed to private firearms. They are wrong. The only real criticism of the guy is for his stance, and for his use of a minor caliber. We do know some guys his age that can’t manage the recoil of a .44 Special or ,45 Auto any more, though; age deals different people different cards, if they’re lucky enough to outlive youth. One of the suspects actually whined to a sympathetic reporter, from jail, that it was no fair shooting him.

And there are people who would insist that the second shoot is good, but they’re mostly the people who would excuse any action by police in any circumstance, and who are emotionally opposed to holding bad cops accountable. The right anwer in this case is a legislative one: authorities should not have sovereign immunity for wrong-door violent raids. Instead they should face joint, severable, personal and unlimited liability and from that point on the fine folks in the tort bar can keep them on the straight and narrow from a public policy standpoint. (An unchecked tort bar is a different problem, and the answer there is loser-pays).

Note also that the police unions always defend the bad cops. If they defend good cops, they don’t seem to get in the papers for it. Purpose of a police union seems to be to support those guys who should be on the other side of the steel bars.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on by Hognose.

About Hognose

Former Special Forces 11B2S, later 18B, weapons man. (Also served in intelligence and operations jobs in SF).