Multiple Fatal Shootings of Suspects by Bay Area Law Officers in Recent Days

Bay Area law enforcement agencies killed four suspects in a 28-hour period between early Saturday and Sunday morning, a string of fatal officer-involved shootings that came less than a week after the Feb. 26 killings of two Santa Cruz police detectives on Branciforte Avenue.

Police in Hayward, Union City, San Jose and San Francisco fatally shot the four suspects in apparently unrelated incidents, according to multiple news reports March 3 and March 4.

Also on Thursday, Sonoma county deputies shot and killed a kidnapping suspect during a pursuit from Santa Rosa to Guerneville, sfgate.com reported.

"We do see clusters of shootings that are just totally unrelated and just random. You have to analyze them individually," Geoffrey Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina who studies police use of force, told sfgate.com. "But when you see a cluster that follows officers who are murdered or ambushed, it certainly raises a red flag. You really need to have an extra filter put into the investigations."

David Klinger, a former police officer and an associate professor of criminology at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, doubted any connection to the slayings of the Santa Cruz officers.

"These types of clusters happen around the country," Klinger told sfgate.com. "They happen in groups, and there won't be any for a while, and then one or two will happen, and then it will be fairly even, shall we say, across time. . . . The fact that unfortunately two officers have been murdered is, in all likelihood, unrelated to the subsequent shootings."

Santa Cruz police Det. Sgt. Loran "Butch" Baker and Detective Elizabeth Butler were investigating a misdemeanor sexual assault when they approached the door of Jeremy Goulet's residence Tuesday afternoon in Santa Cruz, authorities said. Goulet was killed by other officers in a subsequent shootout.

A memorial service for Baker and Butler is planned at 11 a.m. March 7 at Kaiser Arena, home of the Santa Cruz Warriors, on lower Front Street.

Thousands are expected, said Santa Cruz Police Chief Kevin Vogel. Overflow seating will be at Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, 307 Church St. in Santa Cruz.

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