LOS ANGELES-When two undercover California Highway Patrol officers opened fire on a moving vehicle in Fullerton this weekend, they used a tactic that federal authorities and law enforcement experts consider dangerous and has been banned by police leaders in Los Angeles, New York and several other major U.S. cities.
Law enforcement experts say there's a simple reason many agencies bar officers from shooting at moving cars, even if drivers appear to be attempting to ram them: Police service weapons are unlikely to stop a speeding vehicle, and firing a barrage of rounds might only serve to increase the danger faced by officers and bystanders if the driver is shot and unable to control
the car.
"Only a fool thinks a bullet is going to stop a 3,800-pound car. Nobody is really shooting at the vehicle, they're shooting at the driver," said Sid Heal, a retired L.A. County sheriff's commander and chairman of strategy development for the National Tactical Officers Association. "Then the natural thing is, what's going to happen if you stop the driver? Is it going to prevent the attack? If not, it's fruitless."
The undercover CHP officers, part of a larger detail aimed at combating street racing over the holiday weekend, were monitoring a "sideshow" where truck drivers were performing dangerous burnouts on Sunday evening outside the Santa Fe Springs swap meet, police said. As uniformed officers closed in, 19-year-old Pedro Erik Villanueva, of Canoga Park, fled the area in a red Chevrolet Silverado pickup trick at speeds approaching 90 mph, the CHP has said.
The officers, driving an unmarked car, followed Villanueva for several miles into Fullerton and tried to stop him on North Pritchard Avenue, a residential cul-de-sac, at about 10:50 p.m. Villanueva made a U-turn and drove toward the officers, who opened fire, according to Fullerton police.
Villanueva died at the scene. His 18-year-old passenger was shot in the arm, but is expected to survive. The passenger was not charged with a crime, according to a Fullerton police spokeswoman, who declined to identify him.
According to the CHP's use-of-force policy, officers are allowed to use deadly force to stop the commission of an assault with a deadly weapon, including situations where a moving vehicle is considered the weapon.
A CHP spokesman declined to comment on why the agency's policy was different from other large law enforcement agencies, and referred further questions to the Fullerton Police Department, which is reviewing the shooting alongside the Orange County district attorney's office.
Under the law, officers are allowed to use deadly force if they believe their lives, or the lives of others, are under imminent threat.
The officers who opened fire have not been identified, and a CHP spokesman was not sure of their status with the department on Tuesday.
On Monday, CHP officials said it was not clear if Villanueva knew he was being followed by police officers. The unmarked car was not outfitted with a dashboard camera because the officers were working undercover.
Friends of Villanueva questioned the officers' decision to follow the teenager with an unmarked car, contending that he may not have known he was being pursued by police, but rather feared he was being robbed on the dead-end street.
"If a car is following me, it's unmarked with no lights and doesn't look like cops, I wouldn't stop for them either," said Mohammad Walid, an 18-year-old former classmate of Villanueva's at Chatsworth High School.
Walid said the police account didn't match up with what he knew of Villanueva, a baby-faced guitar aficionado and enthusiastic soccer player who was always upbeat.
"Everything he did made me want to do better myself," Walid said.
The officers' decision to fire at a moving car also drew scrutiny from law enforcement experts, who said many police agencies, including San Francisco, Chicago and Denver, forbid officers from shooting at vehicles moving toward them. Most of those agencies direct officers to try to get out of the way of a vehicle, unless those inside are attempting to use another form of deadly force against the officers, such as shooting at them.
Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Police Executive Research Forum, said shootings like the one in Fullerton have been considered tactically unsound since the 1970s.