A California state legislator wants to give a break to some law enforcement officers convicted of involuntary manslaughter, says the Los Angeles Times. A law that requires more prison time for those who use a firearm while committing a crime would exempt police officers and others “acting in good faith and in the performance of his or her duties.” Jay La Suer, a Republican, said the proposal was prompted by the case of an investigator for the Riverside County district attorney’s office who in July was convicted of involuntary manslaughter after shooting an innocent man to death outside a rescue mission.
“Law enforcement leaders are the ones who first pushed for this [gun law] as a deterrent to those people who use a gun to terrorize people,” said La Suer, a 31-year veteran of the San Diego Police Department and San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. “Law enforcement was not supposed to be a victim of the ‘use a gun, go to jail’ law.”
“We expect our policemen to be superhuman, to fear nothing, and to go to dangerous places and dark corners we’d never go,” La Suer said. “We then expect them to make life-or-death decisions in a split second without ever making a mistake. That happens 99.9% of the time, but I don’t believe this [gun law] was designed to punish them when that accident happens.”
Link: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-guns25may25,1,2398328.story?coll=la-headlines-california