A Real Hero Story
#walkbackwednesday
My favorite story from Real Shootouts of the LAPD is a hero story. Recently, it’s become fashionable to berate POlice officers, imply that everything they do is horrible and corrupt, and call for the POlice to be ‘defunded.’ Rarely does the media focus on the heroic acts that officers are sometimes called upon to do for the public. This story is one example.
OFFICER-INVOLVED ANIMAL SHOOTING – 035-14
Link to LAPD Categorical Use of Force Report
The entire Public Report is available at the link above. Here’s a synopsis of the incident.
Officer A, later identified as Officer Jennifer Aguila, and her companion Officer B were off duty and had just arrived home from grocery shopping. When they arrived home, Officer Aguila noticed two neighbors outside their home acting frantically.
Officer Aguila went over and asked if they needed help. One neighbor replied that he was locked out of his house and his pit bull dog was attacking his four year old child inside. The neighbor said the back door was open but apparently it was not readily accessible from the front of the house because rose bushes blocked off the back yard. Officer Aguila immediately took action. She jumped over the neighbor’s fence and picked up a small stick.
Since the animal was a pit bull, Officer Aguila told Officer B to bring her an off-duty snub nose revolver from the car. Officer B brought the revolver and tossed it over the fence to Officer Aguila. She then made her way to the back. To get to the back door, she had to plow through the rose bushes that blocked off the yard.
Through the partially open sliding back door, Officer Aguila observed that the floor was covered in blood and the pit bull was next to the child, attacking it. According to the Board of POlice Commissioner’s report, “the pit bull was removing and eating the child’s flesh.”
Office Aguila discarded the stick and scanned the room for other dogs but saw none. The BOPC report reads:
Officer A moved into the living room with the revolver in a two-hand low-ready position. In defense of the child’s life, Officer A fired four shots at the pit bull in a northwest direction at a downward angle. Officer A fired on the move, from a decreasing distance of approximately twelve to seven feet.
LAPD Board of POlice Commissioners
To save a child’s life, she made entry, closed with, and did battle with a large, vicious, literally ‘man-eating’ dog. Her weapon was what is commonly referred to as an “arm’s length gun,” a snub nose revolver.
After the first four shots, the badly injured child stood up and, in a disoriented manner, began to walk toward the dog. Fearing the wounded animal would again attack the child, Officer Aguila then closed to within three feet of the dog and used her final round to deliver a coup de grâce into the dog’s rib cage.
Officer Aguila then picked up the child, went outside, gave it to its parent, and had them call for a Rescue Ambulance. When the parent was unable to provide first aid for the child, Officer Aguila took the child back and applied direct pressure to the child’s wounds until the ambulance arrived.
If that’s not a hero, I don’t know who is.
News reports https://www.dailybulletin.com/2014/07/08/fontana-family-pit-bull-mauls-4-year-old-child/ indicate that the child was badly injured in the attack. Both his ears were severed, one completely, and one left hanging by a strip of flesh. The severed ear was found under the dog by another officer. The child also had numerous puncture wounds to the head and face. Odds are that without Officer Aguila’s intervention, he would have been killed. The severed ear was successfully re-attached by surgeons because the officer who found it immediately put it on ice and took it to the hospital.
The BOPC Public Report says the Officer Aguila had been an LAPD officer for 2 years and 7 months.
Not all the stories in the book are hero stories but that one is. I enjoy stories about real heroes so I had to include that one.
Link to my store
Real Shootouts of the LAPD – The Book
Any time a Los Angeles Police Officer fires his or her weapon, whether on or off duty, a thorough investigation of the incident is conducted and then reviewed by the LAPD Board of Police Commissioners. The Board has provided unprecedented transparency by posting Summaries of those investigations for every firearm discharge since 2005.
This book is a collection and analysis of those reports. They are stories of Officer Involved Shootings, Officer Involved Animal Shootings, and Unintentional Discharges drawn directly from those reports. The Public Reports also include the Board’s Findings (rulings) as to whether the incident was In Policy or Out of Policy. Contrary to popular belief, not all LAPD Shootouts are ruled to be In Policy.
For the Armed Citizen, these reports and the analyses provide valuable information about what really happens before, during, and after the gunfire. This first volume covers Off Duty incidents so the situations are very similar to those faced daily by The Armed Citizens. This book gives us the opportunity to learn from the experiences of highly trained police officers about what to do when criminals come for you.
For those who are just interested in the challenges police officers face, this is also a book you will enjoy.
Click the image below to purchase the book.
Duel at the Dumbster (Part VI)
Something similar to the Snow Murders happened several years ago. I call it Duel at the Dumbster and wrote a series of articles about it.
Part I https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2018/09/21/lessons-from-the-duel-at-the-dumpster-part-i/
Part II https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2018/09/22/lessons-from-the-duel-at-the-dumpster-part-ii/
Part III https://tacticalprofessor.wordpress.com/2018/09/28/lessons-from-the-duel-at-the-dumpster-part-iii/
The Snow Murders prompted me to find out what had transpired for the shooters in the meantime. Whoops, Covid affected the father and son also. Their trial has been delayed indefinitely.
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/crime/article242568611.html
The Dumbster Fire video was previously available on LiveLeak, entitled Two Fat Hillbillies Kill [Man whose mouth writes checks that his ass can’t cash] Over Garbage but it doesn’t seem to be available there anymore. Fortunately, the star-telegram update article also includes the full video of that foolish confrontation and killing.
Unlike Jeffrey Spaide, who committed suicide after killing the Goys, no doubt the legal fees for the Millers are continuing to run. Even if they are found Not Guilty, they will be in hock to their lawyers for the rest of their lives.
The year after the Duel, I made a visit to the site as part of my trip to the SHOT Show.
Duel (Part IV)
Duel (Part V)
“There are men in this world,” [Don Corleone] said, “who go about demanding to be killed. You must have noticed them. They quarrel in gambling games, they jump out of their automobiles in a rage if someone so much as scratches their fender, they humiliate and bully people whose capabilities they do not know. I have seen a man, a fool, deliberately infuriate a group of dangerous men, and he himself without any resources. These are people who wander through the world shouting, ‘Kill me. Kill me.’ And there is always somebody ready to oblige them.”
–Mario Puzo in The Godfather
More surreal than I thought
I rewatched the video of the Snow murders. It was even more surreal than I initially realized.
Lisa Goy got her phone out of her pocket after Spaide re-emerged from his home. Once she had the phone out, she said “Go ahead” three times as she closed the distance toward Spaide. She held the phone up in the air. Between Spaide’s sixth and seventh shots, she said, “You’re on video.”
Spaide then fired his seventh shot, which hit James Goy. Lisa Goy then holds the phone even higher as she takes another step toward Spaide. Note her foot placement as compared to just before her husband was shot.
Spaide then shoots her with his eighth shot.
As someone said, it’s like they were in separate realities at the moment. Sort of like Tenet.
Someone correctly commented on my Facebook post, “Your last words shouldn’t be ‘Go Ahead!'” To which I added, “Or ‘You’re on video.'”
Don’t encourage people
If someone threatens (to kill) you with a gun, don’t encourage them. We saw that in the Duel at the Dumbster also.
“Lisa Goy at one point returns to her shoveling, but stops again to call Spaide ‘scum’ in the seconds before he returns with a handgun.
‘Go ahead,’ she urges her armed neighbor. ‘Go ahead.’
The group continues to shout until Spaide opens fire on the couple, striking them both several times.”
https://www.aol.com/news/surveillance-video-shows-pennsylvania-couple-160733616.html
Walking Back the Cat
Walking Back the Cat is a term used in the Intelligence community for deconstructing events to learn from them. This is the first in a series I’m calling #Walkbackwednesday. It’s useful just to have an idea of how events unfold even from a simplistic viewpoint. A visual representation often leads to a better understanding of what occurred. Veterans will recognize this as a ‘sand table’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_table#Military_use exercise.
There are a number of lessons to be learned from this incident. These will be discussed in the future. The original story is here. https://myfox8.com/news/juvenile-shot-taken-to-hospital-after-burglary-attempt-in-winston-salem-police-looking-for-2nd-suspect/
Who’s there?
“Who’s there?”
Learn to say it in your sleep.
“When you have a home where you have family members, you have to be even more careful and wait that extra second and do everything you can to make sure you know what you’re dealing with when you’re about to use deadly force,” [Martin County Sheriff] Snyder said.
Well said, Sheriff Snyder.
Many of my colleagues disagree with my assessment that decision-making is far more important than marksmanship and technical proficiency but I’m sticking to my guns on the subject. Every incident like this I read about makes me more of a ‘bitter clinger’ to my opinion.
“Daddy, where’s Mommy?”
“I accidentally killed her before you were even born. I’m so sorry I took your Mommy from you.”
If anyone thinks that man will ever sleep through the night again, they’re wrong. My prediction is that he will also die young, leaving his child without any parents at any early age.
Have a plan
As the late William Aprill was fond of saying,
Spontaneity is overrated.
“That’s what heart surgery is,” he said with a soft laugh. “It’s a script. To you, it probably looked like I was just sewing those collars into Meeko’s chest any old way. But every motion was planned, tested, practiced. Turn my hand eight degrees and poke the needle through; swivel my hand back 22 degrees and draw the needle up four inches; turn my hand back just so and bring it to the left a half inch: a precise number of stitches, pulled just so tight and no tighter. What heart surgery takes is remembering an incredibly long and complicated script and following it exactly, step by step.”
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/no-pulse-how-doctors-reinvented-the-human-heart
The idea of having a script, i.e., a very specific game plan, doesn’t just apply to heart surgery. One of the learned aspects of firearms competition is to develop a plan ahead of time and then follow it through.
The quaint Google translate version of the story’s precis reads:
That’s what it’s about
* On Friday [note that the incident actually occurred the previous Wednesday] night there was an exchange of fire between the owner of a gun shop and burglars who had tried to gain access to his shop in Wallbach AG [Switzerland].
* What the perpetrators did not expect: The owner is a marksman and former Swiss champion in dynamic shooting [IPSC].
* One person was injured in the shooting. The POlice assume that this is one of the perpetrators, as no injuries were found on site.
Whether it’s IPSC, IDPA, GSSF, ICORE or some other form of competition is largely irrelevant. What is important is the concept of having a game plan ahead of time and then putting it into action when you get the ‘GO’ signal.
Before there was an FDIC
In the days before the FDIC, if banks didn’t protect their assets they had no assets.
“They aim to welcome bandits with hot lead.”
https://www.mcall.com/la-me-fw-archives-1928-pistol-training-for-bank-tellers-20171120-story.html
Feb. 18, 1928: Los Angeles Police Chief James Davis, left, with First National Bank teller Madeline Morneau at the police shooting range in Elysian Park. (Los Angeles Times)
Thanks to Michael de Bethencourt of I’m With Roscoe for pointing out the article.
Once you can shoot…
Some instructors, including myself, had an interesting discussion on Facebook about the phrase “once you can shoot.”
My question to the group was ‘What does that mean?’ I asked it as a serious question. The personal journey I’ve made in answering that question over time has been interesting. My answers to myself about it have changed dramatically as a result of some related research I’ve done. The two most significant areas of research were Negative Outcomes and what higher level thinkers in the POlice community had to say. The discussion was involved enough that I wrote a Patreon post about it.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/43213970
I’m making the Patreon post public because I think it’s a much neglected philosophical discussion. At The Mingle this month, I asked the ladies present to write out their personal policy about when to draw or present a weapon. It was the first time that many of them had ever been asked to do that. We need to realize that ‘Have Adequate [Hard] Skills’ is only one aspect of the issues we face.
Marksmanship is a hard skill but soft skills are important too.
tacticalprofessor 
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