I have tremendous respect for the police who are asked to do an impossible job and stay alive at the same time.

But this is just nuts:

"It's 100 percent clear that they had no idea who was in that vehicle and just lit it up," says attorney Christopher Driscoll.

Driscoll is representing Maggie Carranza, 47, and her mother, 71-year-old Emma Hernandez, the two women who were shot on Thursday, Feb. 7 in Torrance, CA by LAPD officers. The officers were on the hunt for Christopher Dorner, and claim to have mistaken Carranza and Hernandez's truck for Dorner's.

"They had a description of the suspect, they had a description of the suspect's vehicle. The two women obviously do not match that description in any way," Driscoll says. 

ReasonTV's Tracy Oppenheimer sat down with Driscoll to discuss how this tragedy could have happened.

"When an officer is injured, or goes down, or is threatened, the team mentality really steps up," Driscoll says, "you have that concern that individual citizens' rights are going to get trampeled [sic] when the officers are attempting to get justice for their brothers.

Officers should display a little more discipline than that. But it also raises the question as to whether Dorner is a dead man already - even if he wants to give himself up. Just as there is "suicide by cop" there is also "rough justice" for cop killers. As a practical matter, the police may feel it wiser to shoot first and ask questions later - despite the violation of Mr. Dorner's constitutional rights.

When abstract theory meets a life or death situation, the latter usually wins out. The cops don't see the Constitution as a suicide pact. They will take whatever action they feel will keep them safe - and then worry about the constitutional niceties later.