Citizen Involvement in Police Shootings

In the past 11 1/2 years, there have been more than 150 people shot by the police in Orange County and not one officer has been found guilty of any wrongdoing or prosecuted by the district attorney. As long as his staff of investigators continues to justify every single case involving police officers, any reduction in police shooting is unlikely to occur.

Most of the police agencies are switching from the standard six-shot revolver to rapid-fire, 9-millimeter semiautomatics, which have two to three time the firing capacity.

With all the millions of dollars in lawsuits charging the police with excessive force, I doubt that increasing their firepower using weapons that can fire up to 19 rounds in a matter of seconds is going to reduce the rash of shootings.

There have been far too many cases where unarmed suspects have been shot or killed here in Orange County. I think it’s time that responsible non-police citizens get involved in some of these shooting investigations where unarmed people have been shot and killed.

How could the police be justified in shooting unarmed people in every single case? Don’t they carry batons or Mace? Why all the shooting?

If Orange County citizens were involved in some of these shooting investigations, the number of shooting incidents would be reduced and there wouldn’t be all these millions of dollars in lawsuits.

MICHAEL MOHON

Santa Ana