not again

LAPD brass plead for calm; protesters egg station

LOS ANGELES – Police Chief Charlie Beck pleaded for calm and vowed his department would conduct an exhaustive investigation into a bicycle officer's fatal shooting of a drunken day laborer with a knife.

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I'll be the first to say that LAPD often go overboard in their reactions (I was once stopped on a bicycle and thrown against a wall for reaching for my license after I was asked for it), but by all accounts this case involves a drunken man with a knife attacking an officer. If anything warrants deadly force, something like this does. Sure, maybe they could have subdued him otherwise, but an officer might have been hurt or killed in the process. Yes, this is a tragedy, but a person who attacks the police with a deadly weapon has to expect consequences.