Robbery and police chase leads to four deaths, including robbers

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Quote :

Four people are dead after a UPS truck was commandeered following an attempted armed robbery on South Florida's glitzy Miracle Mile Thursday, leading police on a two-county rush-hour chase that ended in a hail of gunfire, authorities said.
Two people suspected to have been the robbers, the UPS driver and an uninvolved nearby motorist were killed 20 miles away after the nationally televised freeway pursuit, said George Piro, special agent in charge of the FBI's Miami field office.
The incident began in Miami-Dade County at about 4:15 p.m., when two people tried to rob a jewelry store on the Miracle Mile, the downtown stretch of Coral Gables that is home to many glamorous stores and restaurants, Piro said.
The suspects exchanged gunfire with the owner of the jewelry store, and a worker was being treated for undisclosed injuries, Coral Gables Police Chief Ed Hudak Jr. said. At least one bullet hit a window at City Hall, where no injuries were reported, he said.

When I first saw the headline, I thought this was going to be a mass shooting like the one in Odessa, Texas. The article says the whole chase was televised, so I wonder if anyone here would be able to get a copy of it.

I don't know what to make of this. I feel like sometimes police chases are a really bad thing. Of course, these were armed and dangerous people that needed to be apprehended. But this police chase got an uninvolved motorist killed. I'm not sure if the UPS driver was killed before the chase or not. Sometimes these long chases are really dangerous to the public, but I don't really know what else they were supposed to do. I don't know enough about law to speak on that.

hvernon wrote:

I don't know what to make of this. I feel like sometimes police chases are a really bad thing. Of course, these were armed and dangerous people that needed to be apprehended. But this police chase got an uninvolved motorist killed. I'm not sure if the UPS driver was killed before the chase or not. Sometimes these long chases are really dangerous to the public, but I don't really know what else they were supposed to do. I don't know enough about law to speak on that.

I hear some police won't give chase if it's a lesser crime at stake, because a chase would cause unnecessary risk. There was a police chase near where I lived and a bystander got run over and killed.

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Quote :

The violent scene unfolded on live television. Dozens of police officers, guns drawn, swarmed a hijacked UPS truck hemmed in by rush-hour traffic at a busy intersection. Inside the vehicle, two men suspected of armed robbery had taken the driver hostage. Outside, the officers took shots with innocent bystanders trapped in the cars in between.
It was, experts later said, a nightmare scenario.
The Thursday shootout in South Florida left four dead — the two hijackers, the 27-year-old abducted UPS driver and a 70-year-old man who happened to be idling at the light on his way home from work. It also left a mountain of unanswered questions.

As video of the violence circulated on national news and social media, some, including the UPS driver’s family, criticized police tactics, saying it was irresponsible for officers to exchange fire on a crowded street. Others saw that the first responders had no other option, that they had no choice but to confront a deadly threat.
In the weeks to come, investigators will have to address some thorny and complex issues about police use of force, researchers and law enforcement officials said. Who fired the shots that killed UPS driver Frank Ordonez and motorist Richard Cutshaw? How many bullets were fired and from where? Did the officers’ actions put innocent lives in danger?
“Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong,” said David Klinger, a criminal justice professor at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. The incident “was really, really bad.”

[...]

The men had allegedly tried to rob Regent Jewelers in Coral Gables, triggering a silent alarm about 4:15 p.m., police said.
They said a female employee of the store was injured as the robbers and the store owner shot at each other.

So now there's allegations that the police might've gotten people directly killed in the shoot-out. I bet there's going to be some firings over this.

Also interesting that the article notes that the robbers got into a firefight with the store owner too, but weren't killed or injured. If the gun control proponents catch wind of this I'm willing to bet they'll use it as a cudgel to attack the idea of defensive gun usage.