Woman Armed With Cordless Drill Gunned Down By Police

In a bizarre incident police gunned down a 19 year old woman who was wielding a black cordless power drill.  San Jose police allegedly were responding to a 911 call from a woman threatening to kill her family with an Uzi if they didn't show up. As is becoming ever more typical in the American police state, the cops did show up and the incident ended with a hail of gunfire. Granted the power drill did somewhat resemble a gun but one would expect that professionally trained police officers would be able to somehow tell the difference in broad daylight. The incident took place before 11 am on a clear California morning not in darkness which would have at least made the inability to identify the drill as not being a gun more feasible.

According to a story on the incident from the San Jose Mercury News entitled "San Jose police: Officer shoots, kills drill-wielding woman who threatened her family":

The young woman called 911 and said she was going to kill her family with an Uzi if the cops didn't show up.

When they arrived, the 19-year-old woman emerged from her home with what looked like a weapon in each hand. Officers yelled at her to drop what she was holding.

She released something from one hand but continued approaching them, still holding a larger item.

As she drew closer, Officer Wakana Okuma fired and the woman crumpled to the ground.

That's how police and witnesses described the dramatic scene Thursday morning that ended with the fatal shooting of a mentally ill woman in front of her duplex on busy Blossom Hill Road, two blocks east of Oakridge Mall in South San Jose.

Police later discovered that the woman had been holding a power drill, which was painted painted black and measured about 13 inches long on one end and 12 inches on the other, they said in a news release.

But there are still many unanswered questions about the city's second officer-involved shooting of the year, including who the woman was and why she threatened her family.

But police said the 911 call required a quick and strong response.

"We had a call, somebody with an Uzi threatening to kill family members," San Jose police spokesman Officer Albert Morales said. "It was a very serious situation, a very dangerous situation for our officers."

Note that Morales’s statement addresses that the situation was “a very dangerous situation for our officers", an all too familiar refrain that underlies the “us versus them” mentality that has manifested itself within the psyche of American police personnel. Other than taking out the woman with extreme prejudice there apparently wasn’t much thought given to any others who could have been caught up in the crossfire. Just acceptable collateral damage to the shoot first and ask questions later police here in The Homeland.

There seems to be a growing reluctance to actually attempt to deescalate such situations or use non-lethal methods to deal with potential threats, it is always all about the cops now. That such violence is becoming more commonplace should be very alarming to Americans, especially when combined with the ongoing militarizing of the police.