A cop's worst fear: Being targeted for doing your job
Shelby Grad
There are still many unanswered questions about the fatal shooting of a Downey police officer on Thursday.
But authorities say he appears to have been targeted by multiple assailants while in the police station parking lot.
For police officers, the idea of being targeted because of their job has long been a fear that comes with the job.
There have been several cases in which gunmen specifically targeted Southern California law enforcement.
In 2004, a 16-year-old killed a California Highway Patrol officer in a drive-by shooting to prove himself to a Pomona street gang.
The boy told police he had not targeted Officer Thomas Steiner, but had wanted to shoot any police officer he could find.
"This was the ultimate hate crime — the random assassination of a law enforcement officer solely based on the victim's status in the community and a uniform worn," Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said at the time.
In another case, LAPD Detective Thomas Williams was fatally shot in 1985 in front of his young son at the boy's school to prevent the officer from testifying in a trial.
Seventeen bullets from an automatic weapon were fired at Williams as he picked up his son from a day-care center at Faith Baptist Church in Canoga Park, prosecutors said. Williams was struck by eight of them. The boy was not injured.
Police and prosecutors called the shooting an act of vengeance in which robbery suspect Daniel Jenkins struck back at Williams for testifying against him at a robbery trial earlier that day. Jenkins was accused of holding up a North Hollywood theater manager while he was dropping off theater proceeds at the Valley Plaza branch of the Bank of America in October 1984.
More recently, there was the case ofChristopher Dorner.
In his weeklong rampage across Southern California, Dorner killed two police officers and the daughter of a Los Angeles Police Department captain and her boyfriend.
In a manifesto written on his Facebook page, Dorner said that he was discriminated against because of his race and unfairly fired from the department, and that he sought retribution against those who wronged him.
This summer across the nation, a series of police killings raised alarms. Two Louisiana officers were killed in separate incidents, and two officers in Mississippi died when they came under fire during a traffic stop.
According to the National Law Enforcement Officers’ Fund, there have been 111 other police killings this year, compared with 101 in 2014.
The killing of the Downey officer is bringing new concerns in the law enforcement community.
Two male suspects ran toward Officer Ricardo Galvez about 11:08 p.m. Wednesday as he was seated in the driver’s seat of his vehicle at the Downey Police Department’s west parking lot in the 10900 block of Brookshire Avenue, said homicide Lt. John Corina of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
The men fired at Galvez, killing him, Corina said. After shooting at the officer, the two got into a vehicle and fled, he said.
A Downey officer driving in the area heard the shots and followed the suspects’ vehicle into Montebello, Corina said, but they ran from the vehicle near Washington Boulevard and Carob Way.
A search for the men was underway Thursday morning, Corina said. Three people were detained, and authorities were searching for at least one more person, he said.
“It appears that this officer was targeted,” Corina said. “It doesn’t look like it was random.”
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| Los Angeles Times | - |
There are still many unanswered questions about the fatal shooting of a Downey police officer on Thursday. But authorities say he appears to have been targeted by multiple assailants while in the police station parking lot.
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