Welcome to Anaheim!
The OC Register reports that Anaheim Police Officer Dan Hurtado has been cleared in the March 2012 shooting of a gang member:
The Orange County District Attorney’s Office has cleared an Anaheim police officer who shot and killed a 21-year-old gang member after the man ignored commands to stop and pointed a shotgun at the patrolman, an investigative letter released Tuesday said.
Officer Dan Hurtado was aware of a witness standing nearby and also believed her to be in harm’s way before he fired three shots from a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, he told district attorney investigators.
Should anyone be surprised Officer Hurtado was cleared? He was doing his job. A known gang member pulls a gun, refuses order to stand down, and gets shot.
What never fails to astonish me is the complaints about “police brutality” and “excessive force” that inevitably follow incidents like this — as if the police, and not the gangs, are the problem. These complaints are usually propounded by “community activists,” and those left-libertarians who think the greatest threat to freedom are the police – but are far more understanding of, and even sympathetic to, rioting as a “reaction” to law enforcement activity.
We live in a society founded on the idea of ordered liberty. Gangs undermine ordered liberty. By relentlessly cracking down on gangs and gang activity, the police are fulfilling one of the most basic functions of local government: ensuring the safety of the citizenry and thereby protecting their liberty.
