Police Shoot and Kill Man for Watering Lawn, Family Awarded 6.5 Million

[FreakinDJ]

Police Shoot and Kill Man for Watering Lawn, Family Awarded 6.5 Million

Douglas Zerby was finishing up watering his lawn when neighbors, completely brainwashed by the police state, called the cops because they saw Zerby holding what they thought was a gun. It was actually a water hose nozzle.

Officers approached the position of Doug Zerby and without any warning whatsoever, fired upon Zerby, fatally wounding him with 12 rounds that entered his chest arms and lower legs.



“The money doesn’t bring my son back, which is all I really want,” Douglas Zerby’s mother, Pam Amici, said after the verdict, chocking back tears.


Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/police-shoot-kill-man-watering-lawn-family-awarded-6-5-million/#e5KyYH2GbQuXqFcf.99

[PowerToThePeople]

1. Punishing tax-payers for the negligence and aggressiveness of cops is NOT a solution.

YES! Cops in jail for 2nd degree murder sounds about right to me.

[Comrade Grumpy]

2. You have to indict and convict them first. Good luck with that. Cops get away with murder...

...on a regular basis.

Cops investigate themselves, then give the results to prosecutors, who rely on cops to make their cases. In the rare case when a killer cop is actually indicted, they are even harder to convict because juries tend to be sympathetic.

The tax payers are the cops' bosses. Maybe if taxpayers hurt enough, they will do something.

Until then...happy hunting.

[PowerToThePeople]

9. Cops get away with murder on a regular basis

Yes, this is a major issue that needs addressed.

[Major Nikon]

32. That is often addressed through lawsuits

Prosecuting the offenders doesn't address the situation if nobody is willing to change. They can always hire more cops. When your taxes go up or the police force has to do without, people often start to question if the status quo is worth it. Then again Sheriff Joe is still in business despite tens of millions paid in lawsuits with much more in the works. Some people really are that stupid.

[salib]

44. The Sheriff Joe example is why there must be criminal charges also

Just like with Wall Street bankers, we must change laws and regulations, yes. We must fine them and sue them, yes.

But most important is, we must hold them criminally accountable, and we must hold the decision makers criminally responsible.

Bringing it back to police officers, the ones who fired on the victim are only part of the problem. Hold all responsible parties responsible. That is a basis of justice.

Certainly, it is quite true (demonstrably) that potential criminal prosecution goes much much farther toward motivating those in charge to ensure that they cannot be charged. Right now, that means ensuring that they are above the law. End that "option" and we will see a complete turnaround in police behavior and activities.

[Major Nikon]

54. I think there's better ways of doing that

What some European countries do is they have independent entities that police the police. It works quite well.

[DallasNE]

35. The Taxpayers Are Not The Cops' Bosses

If they were this wouldn't be going on on a regular basis. Cops are their own boss. They use rounds designed to kill yet, in this case, pumped 12 rounds into the victim. Is it time to limit magazine capacity for cops? In a recent case a cops bullet fragmented and a single round took out both lungs and severed the aorta of the victim, who died.

Fining the taxpayers for a wrongful death is like fining the stockholders for the corruption awards against companies. Fines punish the wrong people while also failing to end the criminal activity. Indirect methods solve nothing. Put some disincentive in there -- jail time, in other words, to instill personal responsibility.

[Comrade Grumpy]

43. The taxpayers are ultimately responsible. They elect the officials who are supposed to oversee...

...the police. If taxpayers don't want to shell out for these wrongful death payments, they need to elect people who will reign in the killer cops. Otherwise, pay up. Sorry.

[DallasNE]

49. You Missed My Point

About there not being a level playing field. So, first, level the playing field. Good luck with the moneyed interests ever allowing that to happen.

[rock]

47. The Barney Fife rule sounds good to me

[Live and Learn]

40. +1 nt

[Ed Suspicious]

3. Would you prefer the family receives no compensation?

I don't think it's an either pay them or jail the other situation. Both are key.

[PowerToThePeople]

8. It is not my quote

It is from the linked article.

To me the quote is correct. No sum of money paid by tax payers will make the cops change their actions, nor does it remove the murderers from society. It does not solve anything. That said, I do not feel it is wrong that the family won this compensation in civil court.

[Ed Suspicious]

17. I think we're largely in agreement. The only obvious differences in point of view is that I think

these settlements on some level do pressure departments to enforce better behavior. Probably not enough, but I can't image it having no effect.

[frylock]

26. and yet we see the incidents increasing at an alarming rate

[ut oh]

27. I think on top of jail time..

the officers should be financially obligated somehow, and his superiors.

Put some actual financial burden on them and they might think about changing their behavior. Or if it's the supervisors and chiefs on the hook, then they might actually try to pass policies that mitigate the improper shootings in the future.

[grahampuba]

28. every penny,..

spent on compensating surviving family members of police murders should come exclusively from the pension fund of the department that was found negligent.

[DFW]

68. I was about to say

Let the greater part of the financial burden fall upon the members of the precinct of the offending officers. The people who work for that precinct know who the offending cops are, even if we never will. When it affects ALL of their pockets negatively, and straight cops suffer due the actions of incompetent/corrupt fellow cops in their precinct, I can well imagine that "internal affairs" will end up referring to far more than just a few official investigations with "inconclusive" results.

[kcr]

6. Yes it is.

If taxpayers don't like it they can do something about it. We are responsible for our community as citizens and taxpayers.

[tosh]

25. +1.

It is the taxpayers and ONLY the taxpayers who can put and keep pressure on local powers to adopt change in police policy.

[DallasNE]

38. How

In the world of Citizens United can you accomplish that. The NRA and other money interests subvert such efforts.

[tosh]

53. I think we still wield more power on the local level.

I may be dead wrong where large urban areas are concerned, but in the smallish cities where I live and do business, the taxpayer/voter does still have a large amount of power. It doesn't take much to get a band of like-minded citizens to attend city council meetings and stir up some noise. These mayors and councilmen want our votes and support and will usually respond in a positive way. They don't much like being phoned and blessed out on a regular basis, LOL!

[closeupready]

12. Yes, it is effective. So I think this judgment is perfect.

YMMV.

[FreakinDJ]

13. The fact Civilian Courts find them liable should be telling us all some thing

These shootings would NEVER stand up to civilian review

[HereSince1628]

23. I disagree. That cost is a motivation for greater transparency and accountability

I can think of nothing with more tranformative than the will of 51+% of a municipality's population outraged over the cost of court awarded liability claims because municipal employees screw up

[grahamhgreen]

64. Agreed. Need convictions for psycho shooters of all stripes.

[NYC_SKP]

4. Those neighbors were gun nuts, suffering from an irrational fear of guns.

They're partly to blame.

The cops, absolutely fucked up.

RIP, Mr. Zerby.

Travel home to Oahu, check in, load boxes

[avebury]

5. How could the neighbor be so clueless?

I don't understand why no criminal charges were filed against the police officers.

[Blue_Tires]

7. I hate these amateur-hour aggregate sites which can't be bothered

to even link to the stories they leech off from:

http://ktla.com/2013/04/05/verdict-reached-in-douglas-zerby-wrongful-death-lawsuit/
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/04/local/la-me-ln-police-who-shot-man-holding-water-nozzle-65-million-verdict-20130404
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/11/douglas_zerby_update_da_long_beach_police.php

Not surprisingly, the DA cleared the Long Beach Police of any wrongdoing...

[KamaAina]

10. SalmonChantedEvening has a word for cops like this: Douchebadges.

Spread it far and wide!

[JNelson6563]

16. Ha! Good word!

Thanks for passing it on! Will use in the future!

Julie

[malaise]

21. Perfect

[dipsydoodle]

11. When did this happen ?

I could only find links to April.

[FreakinDJ]

15. Dec 12 2010 - takes a while to end up in civilian court

[uponit7771]

14. YES!!!

[gollygee]

18. What?

He was just holding a water nozzle? Should that have an orange cap to alert police that it isn't an actual gun? (/sarcasm)

There is something really really wrong going on. And I'm guessing it's been going on for a long time but social media wasn't here for people to connect the dots.

[dipsydoodle]

19. The case was settled in April - Zerby Family Gets $6.5M in Nozzle Shooting Case .

I can only assume your link is to a parasite.

SANTA ANA, Calif. (KTLA) — The family of a man fatally shot by Long Beach police in 2010 was awarded $6.5 million in damages by a federal jury on Thursday.

“The money doesn’t bring my son back, which is all I really want,” Douglas Zerby’s mother, Pam Amici, said after the verdict, chocking back tears.

“I would just rather have Doug standing here next to me right now. But this is all we can hope for, and I’m very happy with the result.”

The jury deliberated for one day before ruling that officers Jeffrey Shurtleff and Victor Ortiz were negligent and used excessive force when Zerby was shot and killed.

Read more: http://ktla.com/2013/04/05/verdict-reached-in-douglas-zerby-wrongful-death-lawsuit/#ixzz2lPEZ34rY

[FreakinDJ]

39. But notice the Cops were cleared of all wrong doing

Some thing is "Fundamentally Flawed with the Process" when Cops can gun some one / anyone down in cold blood with No Warning what so ever and are free to return to the police force AND DO IT AGAIN

But Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell, who was in court for the verdict, said he was disappointed by the decision.

He says the officers were cleared in an internal probe and still defends their actions.

“Their actions, we believe, were in immediate defense of life,” McDonnell said. “That’s the way we judge — based on the circumstances known to them at the time.”


Read more: http://ktla.com/2013/04/05/verdict-reached-in-douglas-zerby-wrongful-death-lawsuit/#ixzz2lPjNszUV

[dipsydoodle]

48. I wasn't disputing what had happened.

I was drawing attention to a waster site publishing an article which made it appear as though it happened yesterday - Thursday. They made no mention of this being an historic incident.

Not only shouldn't the police have been cleared the family should've taken civil action against the ****s who called them in the first place.

[Glassunion]

20. NRA talking point

The only way to stop a good guy without a gun is with a bad guy with a gun... Or something like that.

[eqfan592]

41. VPC talking point: only police are to be trusted to carry firearms...

...because only they have the training to protect the public from lawn waterers.

[Shrike47]

22. The guy was apparently drunk, sitting on a step and playing with a nozzle.

The defense (cops) admitted they gave no warning, yelled no order to drop, etc. they said, they feared, they shot.

Big judgments do spur training of police not to shoot every damn person they see.

[frylock]

24. fuck tha police

[SoapBox]

29. Agreed.

[DeSwiss]

30. Too. Many. Cops.

WANTED: Low IQ Cops & MORE

Can I Be a Cop With PTSD?

K&R

[Rozlee]

37. Send. More. Zombies.

They won't get much of a meal on their miniscule brains. I was reading some psychology journal once that claimed 15% of most police forces consisted of sociopaths. Sociopathic personalities are drawn to occupations of that have positions of power over people and the ability to control their lives like police work, the clergy and surgeons. The occupations that drew the least sociopaths were those like craftspeople, nurses and teachers. I don't know about those last two. I was a nurse and our favorite motto was, "Nurses eat their young," referring to how viciously we treated newly licensed nurses and I've had teachers from hell. But, I believe the sociopath cop theory. I'm a minority and I used to be poor once, so I've seen them in action among those that can't fight back.

[tblue37]

59. I knew a man once who tried to join the DEA, even though he was a

heavydruguser. When I asked him why, he said, "Can you imagine the fun I would have with a badge, a gun, and the power to .ake dealers give me drugs for free?"

I bet many applicants think that way.

[Rozlee]

67. Doesn't surprise me.

Another factoid is that cop families are 2 to 4 times more likely to have domestic abuse than the general population. Whether that's related to the work they do or the dispositions of the police officers themselves is a question for the shrinks.

[gopiscrap]

31. fucking asshole cops

[RKP5637]

33. Some cops are out of control, but none with the authority seem to want to control them, it's

always us versus them ... and, that is not a healthy society IMO.

[hughee99]

34. The important thing is that no one was harmed by this weapon.

The water nozzle appears to have a pistol grip AND, with a hose attached, could be considered "high capacity". It's also "fully automatic" in the sense that you pull the trigger and it just keeps firing. I'm sure the police were just trying to protect all the little overheated kids and liquored up college student in white T-shirts from the dangers that such a weapon presents.

[RC]

50. You'd think that hose attached to the nozzle would be a clue to our Finest Men in Blue.

Or maybe that stream of water coming out? Or better yet, both might be clues he was just watering the lawn?

But then maybe the uniforms weren't trained in investigative work, huh? Didn't know what to look for.

There needs to be some level of murder charges automatically made when stuff such as this is done by law enforcement.

[tblue37]

60. There was no hose. He was drunk, sitting on a porch step waiting for

a friend to come home.

Cops say he was pointing the thing around, like aiming a gun, but cops say whatever they think will justify a shooting.

But even if he was pointing it around, they sneaked up on him, never even letting him know they were there, and shot him with no warning, no "drop it" command.

The thing most surprising in this case is that the victim was not black. Usually a white guy gets a warning before the cops gun him down.

[ailsagirl]

36. OMG

It would be laughable were it not so tragic

Unbelievable

[kath]

42. Fucking, fucking, fucking pigs.

seems like we're now seeing stories like this at least a couple of times a week.
Jeebus H. Christ

[Vashta Nerada]

45. What's with cops shooting first and asking questions later?

It's absolutely disgusting a man is dead because the cops couldn't tell the difference between a gun and the nozzle of a hose.

[Jenoch]

46. The water nozzle does resemble a gun.

The cops needed to announce their presence and give the guy a chance to comply and drop the 'gun'. The guy was so drunk, he might have been confused anyway "gun, what gun?"

[RC]

51. You are defending the cops that are too dumb to recognize the hose attached to a stream of water?

[Jenoch]

52. I read the story and nowhere in there did it say

there was a hose attached to the nozzle. If you can find it, please post a link. I was not defending so much as explaining. The cops were told there was a guy with a gun on that porch. The nozzle resembles a gun. I can see how it could be mistaken for a gun. Anyone looking at it can see the resemblance to a handgun.

[gollygee]

61. Is it illegal to hold a gun anyway?

There was a thread about some guy carrying a big gun into like Sears or something, and people said they'd call the police if they saw someone carrying a gun into a store, and a bunch of the DU gun crowd said it would be stupid to call the police about someone carrying a gun, because it isn't illegal and it would be a waste of the police officers' time.

But now it makes perfect sense to call the police about someone supposedly holding a gun on his own property? And not only that, it makes sense to shoot him before looking closely to see what he's holding, or asking him what it is, or anything?

What is the difference between this guy and the guy in Sears, other than that this guy was on his own property and wasn't actually holding a gun?

[Jenoch]

63. Of course the reaction by the cops is wrong.

I am not a fan of open carry. Your description of somebody with a 'big gun' in a Sears store doesn't have enough details for me to make an informed comment.

I cannot answer for why the neighbors called the cops. If I thought somebody was holding a gun while sitting on a front porch, I would assume they were suicidal before I would assume a homicidal intent.

Read the story. Not that it matters much, but the guy was not on his own property.

[tblue37]

62. See my comment above. He was sitting on a porch step, and the nozzle

was all he had--no hose, no water.

[grahamhgreen]

65. So do electric drills. Water pistols. Paint sprayers. Dozens if common items.

[Liberal_in_LA]

55. and what punishment did the murderers get?

[FreakinDJ]

56. Time Off with Pay

[Faryn Balyncd]

57. So what did cops do after shooting him (& it was obvious he had water nozzle)? HANDCUFF him...

...and watch him die at the scene.


http://projects.latimes.com/homicide/post/douglas-zerby/

[questionseverything]

66. unbelieveable

Douglas Zerby, a 35-year-old white man, was shot and killed by police Sunday, Dec. 12, in the 5300 block of East Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach, according to Los Angeles County coroner's records.

Two Long Beach police officers responded to a 911 call at 4:40 p.m. from a neighbor reporting an intoxicated man holding a "six shooter" that looked like an antique gun.

"The officers had a position of cover and were observing the suspect while other officers were en route," said Sgt. Dina Zapalski, a spokeswoman for the Long Beach Police Department.

Zapalski said Zerby was in a seated position when he extended his arms while holding the gun-like object and pointed it at an officer.

Photo: The water nozzle Douglas Zerby was carrying when he was fatally shot by Long Beach police officers. Credit: Long Beach Police Department Investigators later determined that Zerby was actually holding a black pistol-grip water nozzle with a metal tip, she said.

He was shot in the torso with a shotgun and handgun, then handcuffed, Zapalski said. He died at the scene.

[Marr]

58. That was here where I live, in Long Beach.

The cops here are notoriously thuggish. This is where the cops beat that homeless man to death sometime back.

[madrchsod]

69. my local menards store had several boxes of this gun...

i guess i`d better register the one i bought.