Cop did what?

We may not have time to cover this in detail, but the Castle Rock, Colorado, PD says that random spray-and-pray from an AR at a moving car full of burglars is a “reasonable” police technique, and the officer who missed the burglars and hit a passersby’s car ought to be commended.

The Douglas County, CO, District Attorney agrees. They also demand that the media keep the trigger-happy cop’s name secret.

Oh, Secret Police. Is that really where they wanna go?

It gets better. They guy who covered his wife as the Castle Rock bozo’s rounds plowed into his parked car instead of the inept cop’s moving target is himself… a retired Nevada policeman and state patrolman. Mike Cardella thinks, both as the victim here, and as a matter of professional pride, that the Castle Rock incompetent’s “actions were reckless.” Ya think?

Castle Rock’s ace investigators have been unable to determine how many shots the cop fired, or what else he hit, but he didn’t hit anybody (not even his targets). Which is a good thing, as along with Mike and Susan Cardella, an entire high school was in his beaten zone.

Now, the department says:

The Police Department takes great pride in making the Town one of the safest communities along Colorado’s Front Range.

Funny way they go about it.

‘You guys can spray and pray if you like, but the Big Guy is a fan of precision fire.’

The Castle Rock Police Department is famous in Constitutional law for a 2005 Supreme Court case which ruled that the Department’s actions enabling a child murderer were perfectly OK. (FMI: Wikipedia, USSC cases at Cornell). No word on whether one of the cops from the 1999 incident at the root of this ruling was the doer this time.

In the 1999 incident, kidnapped children Leslie, Katheryn, and Rebecca Gonzales were murdered while the cops blew off four 911 calls and a personal visit. The responsible, or per the Supreme Court irresponsible, officers for the Gonzales murders were named Aaron Ahlfinger, Brink, O’Neill, Ruisi and possibly others; Ahlfinger promised the kid’s mother he’d put out a BOLO for the missing kids and their kidnapper, but he went to get chow instead, and still hadn’t sent the message when the killer rolled up to the station with the three dead kids in his truck looking for Suicide by Cop.

CRPD has a weak history of gunfight performance. In the shooting incident in which the killer of the Gonzales kids, their father Steven, was killed, one officer (Paul Stever) fired wildly, another (Jason Maes) initially forgot to take his shotgun safety off, and a third (Eugene McComas) couldn’t get his shotgun out of the cruiser rack.

FMI: The Denver Channel (ABC7)