Whenever there is an officer-involved shooting, we are reflexively asked to withhold judgment until all the evidence comes out. So it is somewhat disconcerting for LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, in providing the first detailed account of the shooting of Margie Carranza and Emma Hernandez in Torrance, to tell the Times in an interview that they were the victims of "a tragic misinterpretation" by officers working under "incredible tension."

We all know the officers made a mistake, or a series of them as the manhunt for Christopher Jordan Dorner unfolded Thursday, but the question is whether their behavior was excusable or not, and whether additional training or even punishment is warranted for the officers, and whether new or better policies and training are needed for all officers. When Beck says that it's not difficult to imagine how officers who were already on edge could make the mistake these officers did, even if he is not commenting directly on this shooting, he risks, suggesting that he has prejudged their behavior as excusable, a suggestion that is particularly troubling for those who live in communities where officer-involved shootings happen regularly.

The public has a right to a full and impartial investigation and an accounting of what happened before judgment is rendered. That's a basic, first principle, and Beck should do nothing to suggest any deviation from it.

As Beck acknowledged, the investigation that will attempt to provide this accounting is still in its early stages. Investigators have yet to collect all the evidence and piece together what happened.

The public has yet to be told basic facts: the number of officers involved, the kind of weapons they used, the number of bullets fired, the kind of verbal warnings, if any, provided before they opened fire, and whether the officers remain on active duty. The public has yet to be told, more fundamentally, how officers could open fire on a vehicle that didn't match the make, color or license plate of the vehicle driven by Christopher Dorner.

We know, in general, that law enforcement officers face many dangerous and stressful situations in the line of duty. Here, the officers, guarding the home of a high-ranking LAPD police official, and on the lookout for Dorner, faced a stressful situation when told he might be heading their way. But how did this stress so cloud their judgment that they opened fire mistakenly, spraying surrounding houses and cars with bullets, and what does this say about the training officers receive to handle the duress of being thrust into a potentially life-threatening situation and to still make critical decisions?

Before the facts have been gathered, and the relevant questions answered, Beck must resist the urge to put his thumb on the scale of public opinion. It is natural that he should want to support his officers and department, but his leadership now, as a public official, is what's most important. When it comes to this shooting, he must be focused single-mindedly on promising and delivering a timely and thorough investigation that provides full disclosure and permits public scrutiny and accountability.

We are a long way from a department and a chief who would defiantly circle the wagons and deny any and all wrongdoing, but Beck risks damaging those gains by creating the impression that public relations in any way could take precedence over public accountability. The decision to use deadly force is the most critical one that a law enforcement officer will ever make, and the department's investigation into that decision must be treated as the most important the department will ever undertake. Any failure in this regard would confirm the worst suspicions of those who remain unconvinced that the department has truly reformed itself.

Beck and his predecessor have worked to allay many of the fears and anxieties that Los Angeles citizens experienced about the police department during the terrible decades when the LAPD functioned as a paramilitary force and treated our most vulnerable communities as the enemy. Beck has done this by insisting on the unvarnished truth as part of implementing policies he correctly characterizes as "constitutional policing." Now, in this moment of heightened scrutiny, is the time to reaffirm this commitment.

Published as an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times

In 2010, the ACLU put out an ad featuring a picture of President Obama morphing over several frames into a picture of President Bush and asking, "What will it be, Mr. President? Change or more of the same?" Now, we may need to revise it, because while Obama definitely seems intent on more of the same, he looks and sounds more and more like President Nixon.

In 1977, Nixon baldly stated, "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." The statement alone is chilling enough, particularly in the wake of the Watergate scandal, but its precise context only makes it more so. Nixon was responding to the question, in his famous television interview with David Frost, "whether there are certain situations . . . where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation . . . and do something illegal."

Nixon's circular statement neatly sums up the imperial presidency and the dangers created when the constitutional balance is upset and the president wields unchecked power. It also bears a striking resemblance to the justifications this administration has used to justify the targeted killing program. And it underscores the way in which the executive branch tends to push the limits of its authority and often exceeds it.

Consider how the targeted killing program -- at least the little that we know about it -- seems to have expanded just in the last year.
Last March, the Obama administration claimed the authority to kill people, including U.S. citizens, in countries in which we are not at war if the president determines them to be a significant threat to the nation. It claimed authority to do this -- to kill Americans -- without any review of the standard for determining when an individual is a significant threat or the evidence against any particular individual, either before or after the killings.

We were told to trust the president, that there is nothing to see or question here, because he understands the need to be "judicious," and because he personally makes the final call on the names of those to be added to the kill list. And we were told that the executive branch alone should decide whether constitutional safeguards are satisfied when the government claims authority to kill.
In other words, if the president orders the killing, it must be legal.

Now, based on a leaked white paper, we learn that the president believes that an "informed, high-level" official of the U.S. government may order the killing of an American -- even if the official has no information suggesting the target is engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S. -- without the president's personal and specific approval.

In other words, if some undisclosed official in the executive department orders the killing, it's legal?

The president seemed intent on garnering credit for making himself personally responsible for these targeted killings. He deserves nothing but the harshest criticism, however, for claiming that the executive can wield the power to kill U.S. citizens with no accountability, whether before or even after the fact.

U.S. citizens, even those accused of being enemies of the state, have the right to due process under the Constitution, and the president can't unilaterally decide that he has provided all the process that is due when he decides to kill them. We should trust neither Obama nor any other president to make such grave decisions without the basic checks and balances that the Constitution has demanded for over two hundred years. That would be true even if we had not lived through the past 10 years, in which so many individuals, including American citizens, have been wrongly accused of being terrorists.

If Obama wants to follow the lead of any past presidents, he might want to consider James Madison, who warned that abuse of power and loss of liberty "at home" is most likely to be justified by "provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."

If the president can unilaterally implement a secret program that kills U.S. citizens abroad based on secret legal standards and secret evidence, what's to stop him from engaging in similar targeted killings here at home? Won't due process likewise give way when balanced against the need to protect other Americans? In other words, won't the alleged threat to national security always trump the inconvenience of permitting Congress and the judiciary to exercise any modicum of oversight?

By Julia Harumi Mass, ACLU of Northern California