The first time police opened fire on a completely innocent person was bad enough, but now we’ve got two separate instance of LA cops spraying bullets because they thought that they saw Chris Dorner. Dorner, who has killed three cops and is still on the loose with a promise to kill more, is nothing to joke about. But neither are cops blasting away at innocent civilians who driving cars that aren’t like Dorners and who look nothing like Dorner. In the first case, they wounded a newspaper delivery woman and her mother who were driving a truck that is not the same make, model, or even color as Chris Dorner’s. The second example is no better:

His pickup, police later explained, matched the description of the one belonging to Christopher Jordan Dorner — the ex-cop who has evaded authorities after allegedly killing three and wounding two more. But the pickups were different makes and colors. And Perdue looks nothing like Dorner: He’s several inches shorter and about a hundred pounds lighter. And Perdue is white; Dorner is black.

“I don’t want to use the word buffoonery but it really is unbridled police lawlessness,” said Robert Sheahen, Perdue’s attorney. “These people need training and they need restraint.”

It reminds me of the way that gun-control advocates are always saying that we can’t afford to have concealed carry permit holders because only highly trained specialists would be able to react to a crisis rationally. Every time I hear that, I know that I’m talking to someone who has never actually followed stories of police violence. Sadly, these embarrassments are pretty much par for the course.

I don’t want to make light of this situation, but as Michael Yon has pointed out (Facebook), police incompetence and media lust for blood are making this so much worse than it has to be. And it’s already bad enough.