When I got home, I went upstairs to my computer office, turned on the computer, and then my scanner. Yep, that's the "police" scanner that I've mentioned before......it can get me radio traffic originating from police, fire, paramedics, airports, aircraft, railroads, businesses, and even satellites if I can know when one is passing over and which frequency it's beeping on.
When I turned it on, I was hearing radio traffic direct some paramedic units to take care of some shooting victims. One of the police frequencies was also active, as that there had just been a multiple shooting near the intersection of Stone and Fort Lowell, and they needed some units to close off the area until the bad guys were caught. They were looking for two of them, and for the next thirty minutes or so there was plenty of radio traffic as they were securing the scene and the paramedics were administering emergency medical aid.
It is here where I'm going to digress and tell you what a scanner can tell you and what it can't tell you.
One, you have a front row seat, so to speak, as you're listening to radio traffic in realtime. If you understand the police codes, you can instantly know what kind of criminal activity is happening.
Two, what you're hearing is not Adam 12, Dragnet, or Hawaii Five-O. It is not fiction. It is "fact", inasmuch as what is being reported on the radio is only the best information available at the time, and may or may not be entirely accurate (most of the time it is, but suspect information is only as reliable as the witness who gave it).
Three, the scanner does *not* tell you some certain things. I knew that there were shooting "victims". The paramedics call them "victims" as that they are people in immediate need of medical treatment, and in that sense the term "victim" does not describe the recipient of criminal activity. The radio traffic, the raw data that is, told a story that kept me in my chair for a good hour or so, but sometimes when the data is re-examined a better understanding of the facts can emerge.
So what really happened?
Four gang members took it upon themselves to rob a business that specializes in stereo installation for automobiles. I don't know why this particular business was targeted, but it was. Four young hoodlums for some reason were suffering from some sort of profit motive. Maybe they had intelligence that there was cash on the premises. In a strictly general sense, and I'm not trying to be racist here, some ethnic groups prefer the use of cash as opposed to credit cards or checks. Given the location of the business, it's not out of the question that there may have been cash on the premises if their clientele in a strictly general sense, uses cash. There may, or may not have been, a few thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills that the criminals were after. And, the criminals may also have been after some merchandise. We don't know.
Anyway, in the course of the robbery, the business owner was shot. The robbers then confronted an employee who was there, and the business owner then picked up a shotgun and shot one of the robbers. The employee then took advantage of that distraction to get a handgun, whereupon a shootout ensued. When it was over, one robber was dead, another was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, another was taken to the hospital for non life-threatening injuries, and the fourth robber was taken to jail. The business owner appears to have only suffered a flesh wound and is alive and well.
I have since checked online court records for further information.
All four of the robbers had criminal records. The one who was killed was 18 years old. Two of the surviving robbers are brothers, and one has already been charged with first degree murder, and the others I'm sure, will also be charged once they are released from the hospital.
Why the murder charge?
Under Arizona law, if a person dies during the commission of a felony, the person or persons committing the felony can and will be charged with capital murder in the first degree. There is potential here for a death sentence, and in this kind of circumstance if the victim of the felony fires a weapon in self defense and kills one of the criminals, it will be the criminal's accomplices who end up getting charged. My understanding is that this is also the case in California. As for the Arizona law, I ended up learning that when I was being questioned for prospective juror service in an instance where an accomplice was killed and the mastermind was charged with murder.
Is that fair?
Well, look at this way. If a robber enters a business waving a gun, I think it's reasonable to assume that the robber is prepared to use that gun if things aren't going to go his way. If you have doubts on that, then feel free to contact that business owner who was shot last night. And I can empathize with that business owner, as that I too was staring at the business end of a handgun when the Jack-in-the-Box I worked at was being robbed. I really thought for a few moments that I was going to die.
Now was it right for the business owner to pick up his shotgun? Was it right for the employee to get his handgun and return fire?
There are no doubt people out there who would rather grieve for the 18 year old who was killed last night in the practice of criminal enterprise. They probably think that the owner and employee lowered themselves by taking this kind of action. Perhaps they think the "system" somehow failed that 18 year old and his accomplices, and that they view the owner and employee as being the "real" criminals. Maybe in some twisted way, the robbers were trying to correct a societal wrong, as that it somehow wasn't right for that business owner to possess more money than the robbers.
I think that's easy for someone to take that kind of viewpoint, especially if that someone has never had the experience of having a loaded gun pointed at them in the commission of a felony.
I know exactly what that's like. I've been in that spot before. And I never again want to be in that spot.
As for that business owner and his employee, their lives will never be the same. They may face retaliatory attacks from other gang members, or they may not. But they were in a position where deadly force was used against them, and they had to return deadly force to escape with their lives. That could not have felt "good" for them. It could not have.
It is unfortunate that there are bad people out there.
It is even more unfortunate when the bad guys force you into a drastic action.
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References:
LINK ONE
LINK TWO
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