A Santa Ana friend of ours was posting on Facebook last night about this killing that happened right outside his home around 10 om. He was unable to get any photos himself because the Anaheim police – there in Santa Ana – had taped off too large a perimeter:
The cops just killed someone behind my house. This whole thing was just really awful and unnecessary IMO. At first I heard the bird and figured it was just whatevers SanTana stuff. Then I saw the post. You could hear them trying to talk him to get out of the car for hours. Then it’s like the police just got impatient shot gas first and then shot bullets right after. They didn’t wait for the gas to do anything.
My neighbors and I heard everything, this happened right behind my house. It’s really sad and didn’t need to happen. He could have been tased, they could have waited him out. A number of things could have been done to avoid this outcome. It’s really horrible that the community had to listen to someone get murdered because police got impatient and don’t care to handle someone’s crisis appropriately.
The news reports out this morning, as well as the APD press release, call the victim an “armed robbery suspect,” but do not claim that a weapon was found on him or his car. They also describe the vehicle he was driving as “stolen.”
This sure makes it sound like this was some armed MENACE, out on some RAMPAGE SPREE, that the APD thankfully put out of commission, doesn’t it?
Actually the young man, whose family we’ve be in touch with (second hand), was OUT ON BAIL for a robbery, he had no weapon, and he had just borrowed his girlfriend’s car without permission after a quarrel. More details coming real soon, along with his name.
But the most disturbing part for now is – why the hail of gunfire when this unarmed man exited the car after being tear-gassed? This is the kind of thing that future suspects, who MAY be armed, will remember when being coaxed into surrender.
Here is a video, courtesy of “OC Hoods” on Instagram. More to come…
MORE
Press reports say that District Attorney Todd “he feared for his life” Spitzer will be in charge of investigating this … but if we’re correct that the guy wasn’t armed, it should go instead to Attorney General Rob Bonta, under AB 1506.
Our Santa Ana friend posted this morning:
This happened 100ft away from my house. It was a really messed up situation, the entire neighborhood had to listen to him have his life taken by the police. Traumatizing to say the least. It’s bad enough that we have to worry about SAPD, apparently now it’s ok for the police from other cities to come to Santa Ana and shoot people. The disregard for the community here is disgraceful, one of the officers could have easily missed and a bullet could have hit myself, my son, or my neighbors. My condolences go out to his family.
https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?height=317&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fmikey.pinedagarcia%2Fvideos%2F277390987575256%2F&show_text=false&width=560&t=0
https://www.facebook.com/mikey.pinedagarcia/videos/277390987575256
His name was Brandon Lopez.
And it turns out he was a cousin of new Santa Ana Councilman Johnathan Hernandez, who witnessed the whole thing (see today’s Voice of OC.) Jhonathan, who ran partly on a platform of police reform, says his cousin Brandon was having a “mental health crisis,” putting this event in the context of the larger movement of involving more mental health specialists responding to such situations, instead of armed police, something this blog has written about here.
Thursday morning – Statement from City of Santa Ana
The City of Santa Ana offers its deepest condolences to the family of Brandon Lopez, including his cousin, Santa Ana Councilmember Johnathan Ryan Hernandez. Mr. Lopez died on September 28 following an officer-involved shooting involving the Anaheim Police Department in Santa Ana.
Mr. Lopez leaves behind four children, his mother and his father. The City grieves with Councilmember Hernandez and the Lopez family.
The City of Santa Ana encourages anyone who is in need of mental health support to seek help. The Orange County Health Care Agency offers a suicide prevention hotline at (800) 273-8255, a survivor support line at (714) 547-0885, and a support line for anyone who needs mental health or substance abuse support at 877-910-WARM (9276).
Santa Ana Police Department officers weren’t involved in the shooting and provided perimeter support during the incident. Read Santa Ana Police Department’s statement: https://local.nixle.com/alert/9000350/
The Anaheim Police Department’s statement is available at https://www.anaheim.net/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=2212
Update Thursday night
(That is actually a great picture of Brandon on the right.)
About 150 to 200 people got together at Bristol and Santa Ana Blvd last night (Thursday.) Brandon sure had a lot of friends and relatives, apart from turning out to be the cousin of Councilman Johnathan Hernandez, who did most of the speaking until Brandon’s father Tony Lopez took the mike.
With a long white ponytail and beard, Tony looks like Karate Kid’s sensei Mr. Miyagi, and has seen a lot of good and bad things since in the 55 years he’s lived there in the Santanita neighborhood.
When he heard Tuesday night that his son Brandon (Anthony Brandon Lopez actually, father of four of Tony’s grandkids), was stuck in a car a block away and surrounded by Anaheim SWAT cops, he RAN down the street to the scene, ducking right under the crime scene tape, and demanding then begging to be allowed to talk to his son.
And what did the Anaheim Police do?* Tony got the impression they didn’t even believe he was Brandon’s father, but in any case they locked him up in the back of one of their cars, for the hours it took them to get around to killing Brandon. I’m told the police also wouldn’t let Brandon’s girlfriend Rosie speak to him. These are people who probably could have saved Brandon’s life, but it seems that’s not what the Anaheim SWAT team wanted. *UPDATE – turns out it was the SAPD that locked up Tony in the car. More to come…
Brandon’s parents and children last night, photo from Vigour Times.
If the girlfriend reported the car as stolen, that’s what gave them the excuse.
My guess is that they shot him because he was running. But what do they *expect* someone to do when a tear gas canister goes off in their car?
This was a job for one of the social workers that could have been hired at a lower salary under “Defund the Pokice” principles.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: This comment is anonymous MISINFORMATION, which blogs and other news outlets always get immediately after an incident like this. Often they are from police who are assigned to social media, and the author’s name is of course fictitious. Absolutely nothing true in this comment. But I want people to learn to question comments like these…]
Hey Greg,
Inside info……………..Mr. Lopez was ARMED, Swat team member in the lookout position had a visual of him placing handgun in his waistband while in the car as well as doing tons of meth and cocaine though-out the entire standoff. When he comes out of the car running, he places his hand on his waistband (slow and pause the video). It was already determined ahead of time, that if he went for his waistband (gun) the swat team would use deadly force. This was not a job for mental health crises team.
I don’t believe you, but I’m printing your comment anyway. I’ve never seen a case where a gun was retrieved and it wasn’t announced immediately.
On these stories we get lots of anonymous questionable comments.
Maybe he was armed with an inhaler, or a Happy Meal box, or a Wahoo’s dinner knife. Anything can used by one of these lowlifes as a weapon.
And imagine, passing your hand near your waist as you’re running away madly! Nothing good can come of that.
Also, a new detail was added to the Voice story – the state AG is going to look at the case. Like I said – another sign he wasn’t armed.
As soon as I saw this clod use the term “waistband” I knew what I was dealing with. I always think of 70’s polyester pants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sansabelt
Hmm. It’s so interesting. I believe almost nothing of your tale. It sounds so much like a police department press release. Eventually we’ll be told the 20 cops feared for their lives.
“Inside” what? [Rude follow-up question omitted, for now.]
Inside info…Great! I’ll ensure you are deposed when the time is right.
That’s not true at all. Ian Douglas has no evidence whatsoever of his claims and they are defamatory. You would be best served to delete his attempt at inciting racial hatred and his misinformation campaign.
I considered deleting it; it’s questioned and contradicted by every comment that follows it. I think it’s important for people to see how anonymous disinformation immediately gets planted in the media, and I’m sure this person’s name is not Ian Douglas. He is either a cop assigned to social media disinformation, or some malicious asshole.
I can see the argument that this should just not even be given oxygen.
I think what I’ll do is edit the comment so that it’s LABELLED misinformation.
It is a nice day for the Governor to sign EIGHT NEW POLICE REFORM BILLS, some of them a big deal. Especially after the US Senate gave up on their George Floyd Act. (Seems the police unions got to the Republicans’ TOKEN REFORMER Tim Scott.)
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-30/newsom-approves-sweeping-changes-to-californias-criminal-justice-system
I’d like to say here “California leads the way again!” But then you see things in this article like “California now joins FORTY-SIX OTHER STATES that have procedures to block abusive officers from transferring jobs.”
“Mr. Lopez died on September 28 following an officer-involved shooting involving the Anaheim Police Department in Santa Ana.”
Why, gosh. Do you think there might even be a cause-and-effect relationship between the two facts in the sentence?
Here, I’ll help: “Anaheim cops shot and killed Mr. Lopez on September 28, in Santa Ana.”
The trend I see on Twitter now (but nowhere else for some reason) is everyone sarcastically asking, “but HOW was the officer involved?”
“Involved” sound like they said “hi” to each other. The language is muddled by bureaucrat-speak but it’s hard not to detect a desire to alienate the cops from the negative.
Of course the media do precisely the same thing. “Kelly Thomas had a scuffle with the cops and then fell into a brain dead coma.”
The syntax of that statement is extremely … “involved.”
*This is called “The Ferguson Effect”. “What do you call a Police shooting of a man of any color on the street?” “Practice!”
Would be interesting to see…if the firearm found was a “Ghost Gun”? How come all these folks that get shot are never wearing MAGA hats? Just wondering!
Law Enforcement Officers are empowered by rational-legal authority to discharge a service weapon to kill an armed robber the split second the armed robber aims a firearm or exhibits a premeditated provocative motion to apply real or perceived deadly force at the officer. The People and the Courts give law enforcement officers legitimate authority to assassinate an armed robber when an officer’s life is in danger or public safety is at risk.
So smartass, what the fuck does this have to do with Brandon Lopez, who was not committing armed robbery, did not have or aim a firearm, and made no “provocative” motion toward the police?
Crawl back in your hole for another couple years.
(At least this guy uses his real name though, unlike most of these police propagandists.)
OMG, this brain-diseased moron is still alive?
I’m guessing he’d been institutionalized for a few years.
When he got out (recently, apparently) he discovered that Genevieve, the mother of Manuel Diaz, whom he constantly insulted and harassed, had died half a year ago. So twice he tried to post some big devout prayer for her and Manuel here, and it seemed sincere, but it was too creepy for me to approve given his history with them. So he posted that on the kleptoblog instead.
Whatever they did at the institution didn’t help. This fucked up cat is insane.
What gets me that this is a human life. And do I believe police to defend themselves? Absolutely. But somewhere along the way there seems to be no accountability. You would think because it involves the taking of a human life there would be penalties for things like mistaking a cell phone for a gun. In any other Situation that kind of mistake would result in manslaughter charges. It seems like every citizen is not only assumed to be armed and bent on shooting cops. I may not be the most astute observer of history but is seems to me pulling a gun and squaring of with a cop is not the secret to a long life. So the idea that a large percentage of our population is signing up to to pack a gun and and pull it on officers of the law.seems to Defy logic
I’ve started doing a frame by frame analysis. It wasn’t a cell phone. The bright light shining on him cast a dark shadow of his hand on his body.
Go look at the show-motion portion of the video.
Yeah, I thought it was a shadow too. They didn’t say he had a cell phone on him. He obviously left the car pell-mell confused, not thinking about what he’d have with him. I don’t know how that water bottle got under his corpse, but that wasn’t in his hand either.
Still they’ll say it LOOKED like a gun. Even if it did, did he actually look threatening to the police? Look at the guy HBPD killed a few days earlier – now HE looked threatening!