Recently, I was asked for my thoughts on the death of a young man named Mike Cho. Cho was gunned down by police officers in La Habra, Calif. The only information I had at that time was that Cho made an attempt to strike the cops with a tire iron prior to his expiration.

It sounded like a righteous shooting to me.

I’ve since had some time to find more information about the shooting. Here’s what I’ve learned so far (from words and video): on December 31, 2007 at approximately 2 p.m., police officers were responding to a vandalism call. A surveillance video showed two cops tactically deployed behind the open doors of a police vehicle. The suspect (Mike Cho) walked towards them with a tire iron in his left hand, and a cigarette in his right. Police said that they ordered him to drop the tire iron. Instead, Cho turned approximately 90-degrees to his right and walked away, off camera. Both cops lowered their guns and followed. Off camera, Cho raised the tire iron over his head in a striking position. In response, police officers shot him a total of ten times.

There have been a lot of questions as to why the police did what they did. Why did they have their guns drawn? Why did they have to shoot the kid ten times? Why didn’t they use a taser or some other less-than-lethal weapon?

The answers to those questions are so blatantly obvious (and have been answered in other forums) that I won’t go into them here. Instead, I have questions of my own: why would you approach two guys with a tire iron in hand, especially when their guns are leveled at you? Disturbing to me is the manner with which Cho approached the two cops, puffing on his cigarette. Slowly. Deliberately. Like he didn’t give a fuck. Why? Was Cho on drugs? Was he crazy? Did he commit suicide by cop?

My thoughts on the death of a young man named Mike Cho, for what they’re worth: it was a tragic death, but one the suspect brought upon himself. Unless some new information is released that will sway my opinion otherwise, I’d say that the shooting was righteous.

Note: Check out the Los Angeles Times for an article about the shooting. A Korean language news source showed surveillance video of Cho’s encounter with La Habra police, moments before the shooting. A clip has been posted on YouTube.

Tags: death · la habra · michael cho · police · shooting

Hip hop night. Closing time. Knuckleheads who couldn’t get into the club loitered across the street. Punks without a post-club coital date turned into parking lot pimps. Idiots drunk, high or a combination of both. Dumbfucks with guns.

I stood my post at the front door. Tense. Anticipating.

Yelling and cursing in the parking lot across the street. Posturing. Two idiots “motherfucking” each other. Three gunshots silenced one motherfucker. The crowd scattered like cockroaches. Cars spilled out of the parking lot, sped towards the freeway.

One Jeep Cherokee remained in the lot, passenger door wide open, crimson puddle underneath. Groaning from inside the car.

I approached the car. A fat black man in the passenger seat bled, arm hanging limp by his side. Blood trickled from his seat, slowly made its way to the growing blood pool on the ground. I asked: “Where’d you get hit?”

“Yo man, nigga shot me in the motherfucking ass!”

I bit my tongue, tried not to laugh.

Tags: blood · hip hop · nightclub · shooting

It was another busy night for the car prowler. He slowly cruised through residential neighborhoods, looking for cars owned by fools naive enough to leave their goodies on their dashboards or seats. His modus operandi was simple: smash and grab. He used a punch tool to silently shatter car windows, and his mitts to grab the goods.

Things were going good for the thief until he saw a pair of headlights in his rear view mirror. He was being tailed. Probably by someone wanting to be a hero. A goddamn vigilante. He had just the thing to scare the average residential do-gooder–a pellet gun that looked exactly like a 9mm Beretta.

The car prowler sped up and made a couple of left turns. His pursuer kept pace. He slowed down at a wide intersection, stopped and slowly got out of his car with the pellet gun in hand. He turned around, attempted to level the pellet gun at the silhouette of his pursuer.

A bright flash of light was the last thing the thief saw before hitting the pavement. He died without hearing the gunshot that killed him.

Tags: burglar · death · shooting

Ten minutes until opening time. I took my post at the front door of the nightclub. The ropes weren’t even set up yet and the line stretched down to the end of the block. A guy was sitting on the sidewalk curb in front of me, blood leaking from his head. He looked Cambodian. Maybe Vietnamese.

Turned out Bloody Guy got into a shouting match with three black guys, or so I heard later on. They put the boots to him and rang his bell with a lead pipe, knocking him out. He woke up from his nap in a puddle of blood. One of our busboys, on his way in to punch the clock, saw the guy laid out on the pavement. He felt bad and went to the kitchen to fetch a towel. That’s about the time I showed up for work.

Bloody Guy stood up, holding the soiled towel over his wound, and made some calls from a nearby pay phone. He stared at me as he conversed. Blood trails covered his face like a crimson spider web. Foreign words and red spit popped out of his mouth at machine gun pace.

I might have been a meat-headed bouncer, but I had enough sense to know that there was rarely an innocent victim of a beating in or around a nightclub. If the fight wasn’t over some broad, it was usually over something equally stupid, like mutts scrapping over alpha dog status.

A pack of pint-sized mugs appeared from across the street. One of them yelled out to Bloody Guy. It sounded like a question. Bloody Guy yelled out a response. Vietnamese. Definitely Vietnamese. The volley of questions and answers continued as the pack crossed the street like rabid, angry dogs. Bloody Guy joined his pack. All the yelling, shouting and posturing culminated into something that sounded like a battle cry.

As the pack ran off to hunt for Bloody Guy’s assailants, there were giggles and laughter from the people outside of the club. To the crowd, Bloody Guy’s cavalry looked and sounded like a bunch of ankle-biting Chihuahuas posing as Pit bulls. There was nothing menacing about adolescent-sized men.

Minutes later, a series of gunshots rang out less than a block away from the club. A couple of us bouncers and the busboy ran down the street and turned a corner in time to see Bloody Guy’s pack spilling out of an alley, tails tucked between their legs. In addition to the leaking wound already on top of his head, Bloody Guy had a couple of fresh holes in his gut. He collapsed at the mouth of the alley.

Later, a couple of cops told me that the Vietnamese guys found the black guys sitting in a car, smoking weed, pre-funking. They surrounded the car, kicking and shouting, but didn’t figure out until it was too late that the driver had a .38 in the glove box. Two out of five hits. Not bad for a doped-up knucklehead.

Me and the busboy watched as cops put up yellow tape. We stood there for a few minutes, while Bloody Guy got loaded into an ambulance, then walked back to the club. “You think he’s gonna make it, bro?” he asked. Always with stupid questions, that busboy.

“Nope,” I replied. “They might as well start digging the grave.”

The busboy looked at me in disbelief. “What about some positive energy, dude? What happened to your compassion, bro? I think he’s gonna make it, man!”

Fucking moron, I thought to myself. So what if the fool ends up in the morgue with a tag on his toe? “Five bucks says the fool is dead,” I declared, extending my right hand.

“Ten,” the busboy replied. We shook hands, sealing the bet, before he went back inside of the club to do what busboys do on a busy Saturday night.

I returned to my post at the front door. Back to work. The crowd had grown even larger. Most were too oblivious to notice the yellow tape or the flashing red and blue lights. Those who did were too preoccupied with getting into the club to care.

Tags: blood · nightclub · shooting