Friday - May 09, 2014

Twice As Bad As Bonnie And Clyde?

Vendetta Squad, or just another episode of The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight?

MIAMI (CBSMiami) – On December 10, more than two dozen police officers from across Miami Dade County converged on a blue Volvo that had crashed in the backyard of a townhouse on 65th Street just off 27th Avenue.

As the car was wedged helplessly between a light pole and a tree, nearly a minute passed before officers opened up – firing approximately 50 bullets at the car and the two unarmed men inside the vehicle.

The two men inside the car survived that initial volley of gunfire, according to witnesses, who said they could see the men moving inside the Volvo. Everything went quiet for nearly two minutes before the officers opened up a second time – unleashing an unrelenting torrent of bullets that lasted almost 25 seconds. By the time it was over, the two men inside the car were dead.

CBS4 News has learned a total of 23 officers fired a total of at least 377 rounds.

Bullets were sprayed everywhere. They hit the Volvo, other cars in the lot, fence posts and neighboring businesses. They blasted holes in a townhouse where a 12-year-old dove to the ground for cover and a four month old slept in his crib.

“It was like the Wild Wild West, man, crazy,” said Anthony Vandiver, who barely made it through the back door of his home before the gunfire erupted. “Shooting just wild; shooting all over the place. Bullets could have come through the window. Anything could have happened man. They weren’t thinking, they weren’t thinking at all.”

Earlier that night, the driver of the Volvo, Adrian Montesano, robbed a Walgreens employee at gunpoint, and then later shot Miami Dade Police Officer Saul Rodriguez in a nearby trailer park.

Montesano escaped in the officer’s patrol car eventually dumping it at his grandmother’s house in Hialeah – before fleeing in her blue Volvo

By 5 am every cop in South Florida was looking for that blue Volvo – intent on catching the man who had shot one of their own.

But what police didn’t realize before they started shooting at the Volvo is there was a second man in the car – Corsini Valdes – who had committed no crime.

And in fact, as CBS4 News was the first to report, both men inside the Volvo were unarmed at the time police caught up with them. All of the gunfire came from police.

Montesano and Valdes were killed by the dozens of rounds that tore through their bodies.

But Montesano and Valdes weren’t the only ones struck – two Miami Dade police officers were hit as well – caught in the crossfire. One officer was shot in the arm and the second was hit in the arm and grazed in the head. If the bullet had struck just a half an inch to the side the officer would have been killed.

The sound of the gunfire was deafening – literally deafening. Two Miami police officers sustained ruptured ear drums from the cacophony of shots.

CBS4 News has spent the last five months piecing together the events of that evening and the hunt for the blue Volvo. CBS4 News reviewed radio transmissions, analyzed video taken during the shooting, interviewed officials from the different agencies involved, and reviewed records related to the officers who fired their weapons.

The nature of the shooting suggests the officers lost sight of their own training and that the officers, caught up in the heat of the moment, failed to listen to their radios or coordinate their actions endangering not only their own lives but the lives of the public.

Without a doubt, Montesano was guilty. He’s on videotape, robbing the drugstore, holding a gun to the cashier’s head as he uses her as a human shield, and so forth. And he did shoot the one officer in the gut. And took his cop car and perhaps his gun. But he committed the crime by himself, and everyone knew that. So the other guy in the car could have been a hostage. We’ll never know. But the car was jammed between a wall and a light pole. It couldn’t go anywhere. And nearly two dozen cops converged on the scene, mere feet behind the vehicle.

Valdes’ wife of 15 years, Elsa Innamorato, was surprised to find out her husband was the second suspect in Tuesday’s shooting. “It’s a shock to me. I just can’t believe it,” she said. “He would get into stupid problems, but basically he was a good dad here.”

Innamorato said Valdes helped her raise her 15-year-old son despite his battle with drug addiction. “I know he’s in a better world right now,” said Innamorato.

Records show Valdes had been charged with more than 40 crimes since 1988, including drug possession and trafficking, battery, burglary and trespassing.

It all began during an armed robbery, at 4:30 a.m. Tuesday, at a Little Havana Walgreens off of 27th Avenue and Flagler. Police released a surveillance photograph of Montesano, as he took a woman hostage at gunpoint at the drug store. Security guard Denefield Ferguson said he witnessed the hold up at the Walgreens as he sat in his car in the drug store’s parking lot. “He shot at me through the back mirror here,” said Ferguson. “I fired three shots at him, and it turned left real quick.”

Compared to Valdes, Montesano’s history with police is scant. He has a single criminal mischief charge on his record. His grandmother expressed her shocked to hear about his “out of character behavior.” Speaking through a translator, she said, “He was so sweet.”

Ok, so Valdes was no angel. But he was not part of this crime. Nor did he even get a chance to surrender.  But while a whole lot of panicky misinformation was published, it took the local TV news reporters nearly half a year to dig out all the facts. And finally an official investigation is underway. It does rather look like the cops lost control of themselves and the situation.

CBS4 News has spent the last five months piecing together the events of that evening and the hunt for the blue Volvo. CBS4 News reviewed radio transmissions, analyzed video taken during the shooting, interviewed officials from the different agencies involved, and reviewed records related to the officers who fired their weapons.

The nature of the shooting suggests the officers lost sight of their own training and that the officers, caught up in the heat of the moment, failed to listen to their radios or coordinate their actions endangering not only their own lives but the lives of the public.
...
Senior commanders admit they are very lucky more officers weren’t seriously hurt or killed. Even more haunting is the danger the residents in the area faced. At the time of the shooting, parents were getting their kids ready for school and across the street men and women stood exposed on a Metrorail platform.

The shooting is being reviewed by both the State Attorney’s Office and the Miami Dade Police Department.

While those reviews will likely take years to complete, what is clear is the Walgreens robbery and the shooting of Officer Rodriguez sent officers across the county into a state of frenzy.
...
“They were saying put your hands up, and the guys were still moving after they shot maybe 50, 60 times,” [local resident] Vandiver recalled. “And the guy tried to put his hands up. And as soon as he put his hands up, it erupted again. And that was it for them. That guy tried his best to give up.”
...
As the smoke cleared and the sun begins to rise officers dragged Montesano and Valdes’s bodies from the car. Although he appears dead, they decide to transport Valdes to Jackson.

Slowly neighbors came out of their homes.

“The policemen that had on the black and white vests were out there laughing like it was so funny,” said one of the neighbors, “because they got a free shot off them people. Shooting all them bullets like that, that don’t make no sense.”

Pity they didn’t have a couple of those MRAPs available. They could have just driven over the car and squashed it flat without firing a shot.



In 1933, when the forces of the law got together and ambushed notorious robbers Bonnie and Clyde, they fired 167 shots, hitting the couple 50 times. That’s less than half as many shots as this incident, and the Bonnie and Clyde ambush went down in history as the definitive case of police overkill.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/09/2014 at 03:25 PM   
Filed Under: • Crime •  
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