Larry Wilson: Pasadena police shooting is not ‘horseplay'
Horseplay is when you and your kid cousins decide to play touch football in the rain and tear up your aunt's precious dichondra lawn.
It is not when grown men in police uniforms point their 9mm Glocks at each other in mock gunplay in the department parking structure and, surprise, surprise, one of the officers ends up getting shot in the shoulder when an itchy trigger finger goes awry.
This is unprofessional behavior at its wildest extreme, dangerous to all involved, potentially deadly to any citizens who happen to be passing by.
And yet that's precisely what happened way back in September in a Pasadena Police Department parking garage in an incident that involved a serious injury to one officer and which is only now becoming fully public.
Pasadena police Chief Gene Harris referred to the officers' actions as "unsafe and out-of-policy horseplay."
It is so much more than that. The shooting, which a video of the incident shows in full, involved one officer pulling a gun on another driving up to him in a department vehicle. The first officer holsters his sidearm. But the driver has apparently pulled his own gun, and a shot is seen going through the windshield and hitting the first officer in his left shoulder. He goes down, as other officers as well as the driver rush to his aid.
After we reported on the incident, a friend of mine who used to work in city government wrote me:
"I have disdain for senior officers (especially police and firefighters) who dismiss critical incidents with euphemisms." As a top city official, she wrote, "I repeatedly heard ‘horse play' or ‘boys will be boys' as justification for not taking appropriate disciplinary action. Sadly, I've lost respect for Gene Harris."
Any kid who's ever taken an NRA safety course knows the first principle of carrying a gun: "The principle is simple: always treat every firearm as if it is loaded, and never allow the muzzle to cover anything you are not willing to destroy."
So this kidding around speaks to a deep cultural problem in the Pasadena Police force. If they'll point their loaded guns at themselves, will they point them at us, willing to destroy?
When the shooting, kept under wraps, happened late last summer, police now say that the officer who fired his weapon was "separated from the city." Only after the video was released - it's hard to tell whether it is from a mobile phone camera or a department dash cam - did the chief say that "several" other officers have now been placed on administrative leave.
"When questions arise about conduct, we act," Harris said. "Thorough investigations take time, and I won't rush one at the expense of the truth. What I can promise is that I will be as transparent as California law allows and share information with this community as quickly as I'm able."
We shall look forward to that information, and to what changes will be made in department culture and training to ensure that our police officers act as responsible adults.
Thursday at random
So Mike Futrell, the city manager of Riverside who had accepted a job as city manager of Pasadena until he didn't, has resigned as city manager of Riverside. This comes a week after Futrell's wife, Susan Freeman, announced that she had filed a claim against Riverside. The City Council was to discuss disciplinary action against Futrell and he just cut the cord instead.
"Facts matter, process matters, free speech matters, reputation matters and women's voices matter," Freeman says in a social media video that will remain one of the most bizarre moments in public life in Southern California government history, seeing as she was accused by city staff of making unwanted and harassing calls, texts and emails. "I am Susan Freeman, and today on behalf of every American, I filed a claim."
She filed that claim for you and me!
Write the public editor at lwilson@scng.com
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