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LAPD officer killed a man in a Costco store

Published by USC Bedrosian Center on

MSN, Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune quoted Jody Armour of the USC Gould School on the recent shooting of an off-duty Los Angeles police officer at a Costco store in Corona.

Off-duty police, like private citizens with firearm permits in California, are legally allowed to discharge their weapon in self-defense in the event of an imminent attack and if there is no ability to retreat from the situation, said Jody Armour, a law professor at the University of Southern California.

“The real question will be whether a reasonable person in the situation of the shooter would have believed he was under attack, threatened with death or serious bodily injury,” he said. “The shooter has to feel like they’re about to be attacked and there was no less drastic alternative.”

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Bedrosian Center