Police Shooting: Erick Gelhaus and Andy Lopez

On October 22, 2013, Sonoma County, CA, sheriff's deputy Erick Gelhaus shot Andy Lopez to death.  I wrote about it on Friday, November 1, 2013 - Police Shooting: Erick Gelhaus and Andy Lopez, as did Peter Grant, in The lynch mobs are out again . . .. 

Peter and I differ on our opinions about this particular shoot.

Keep reading as it amuses you to do so, and remember that I'm an inflammatory sort of blogger.

Back in 2013 the question of the day (for anyone bothering to ask) was, Is this a good shoot?  In other words, can a dispassionate, rational adult of average intelligence or better look at what happened and say that Erick Gelhaus is innocent of wrongdoing beyond any reasonable doubt?

My answer is a resounding no.  No, this was not a good shoot, and no, Erick Gelhaus is a long way from innocent.  Here's why.

Glossing over a lot of details that anyone can look up, what happened was that Erick Gelhaus and Michael Schemmel were in their patrol car, with Gelhaus riding shotgun while Schemmel drove.  They were patrolling the Moorland Avenue neighborhood, which they knew to be a high crime area.  On Moorland, just past the corner of West Robles Avenue and Moorland, they saw Andy Lopez walking down the street carrying an AK-47.  Lopez had his back to the car.  Schemmel hit the lights and siren and pulled over to a stop.  Gelhaus pulled his 9mm automatic and piled out, saying behind the door for cover.  Gelhaus yelled at Lopez to drop the rifle, Lopez didn't, and Gelhaus shot him to death.

What Gelhaus couldn't possibly know was that Lopez was 13 years old, and was higher than ten kites on pot.

Lopez is large enough to be an adult, and was carrying an airsoft gun, which is a toy replica of the real thing.  I've seen the airsoft lineup, and they look real.  Real enough to fool anyone if you don't look too closely.

Now, in his own mind, Lopez isn't doing anything wrong.  Getting high on pot is nothing to get too upset about in his world, and carrying a toy airsoft gun isn't dangerous, or against the law, or inherently bad.  So, when Gelhaus screams at him, Lopez likely didn't understand that the cops were yelling at him - they couldn't be, because he knew that he, Andy Lopez, wasn't doing anything bad.

Gelhaus shot him seven times, and I'm betting Lopez never knew what hit him.

My thinking is that neither Gelhaus nor his partner wanted to wait and see what Lopez would do.  Neither one paused to wonder just why anyone would be ambling along carrying an AK-47, and one question that never comes up is the number of times either or both officers have stopped someone for open carry of a long gun in the Moorland Avenue neighborhood, or anywhere at all for that matter.  Does this happen regularly?  I'm thinking it doesn't.

My other thought is that both Gelhaus and Schemmel were mentally prepared to shoot someone.  They were not prepared to ask questions or wait for an answer.  What they really wanted to do at the time of the shooting was shoot.

But the real, concrete reason that I think this is a bad shoot is supported by facts.  Two experienced police encountered a 13 year old boy with a toy gun who was high on pot, and they shot him to death.  And that isn't right.

But here we all are.  Now what?

On December 18, 2018, we have: Sheriff Announces $3 Million Settlement in Andy Lopez Case.  And that, as they say, is that.

Peter Grant wrote about the aftermath here, A tragic police shooting, and its politically correct backlash.  In essence, Gelhaus had his life ruined by the news media, and that isn't right.

In my opinion, Gelhaus is guilty of taking a young man's life.  He'll have to live with that.  As for criminal or civil charges, I agree that as the law was written then and as I understand it, Gelhaus is excused from all criminal charges.  Even if I don't agree with what he did, and I don't, I wouldn't charge him with anything because Gelhaus and Schemmel were acting within the law.  Moreover, the government should have stepped up and protected these men and their family and friends from being persecuted by special interest groups and commercial media.

Nor would I blame the victim.  Andy Lopez got high, and that's a misdemeanor.  That's it.  The entire argument about walking along and carrying a toy AK-47 that looked real, and that being the reason he got shot to death is unreasonable.  Aside from the Second Amendment, we depend on police to be aware of our rights and position as citizens.  That doesn't always happen; it didn't happen here.

I would have awarded the Lopez family funeral expenses, and that's all.

This is nothing more than a lose-lose situation.  There are no winners here.