Hunt for Memphis Cop Killer
WHITFIELD: All right. Welcome back. The hunt for a cop killer continues in Memphis hours after the officer is shot and killed during a traffic stop. The officer was shot multiple times. Still not clear why the routine traffic stop turned like this and became deadly. This is the third Memphis officer in four years to lose his life on the job. As CNN's Nick Valencia has details.</s>NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fred, tragedy in Memphis overnight. Veteran police officer gunned down during a routine traffic stop.</s>TONEY ARMSTRONG, DIRECTOR, MEMPHIS POLICE: This is just a reminder of how dangerous this job is.</s>VALENCIA (voice-over): An active search in Memphis for a murder. Saturday night just after 9:00 p.m., 33-year-old Sean Bolton, a veteran Memphis cop, is shot during a traffic stop. A citizen uses Bolton's radio to call in to police. But it's too late.</s>ARMSTRONG: The officer was transported to regional med in critical condition but later pronounced diseased due to multiple gunshot wounds.</s>VALENCIA: Hours after the shooting Memphis police director Toney Armstrong visibly emotional.</s>ARMSTRONG: As a community we say so often, there's a theme that do black lives matter? And at the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves, do all lives matter?</s>VALENCIA: Bolton was the third officer shot in Memphis in the past four years. Speaking to media, the Memphis mayor took the moment to address a rise in the city's gun violence.</s>MAYOR AC WHARTON, MEMPHIS: This again evidences the fact that there are so many guns on our streets in the wrong hands. That's the key thing.</s>VALENCIA: Police have not released details about the suspect. They say all resources will be used to find whoever was responsible - Fred.</s>WHITFIELD: All right, thank you so much, Nick Valencia. Joining me right now from Los Angeles, in California, there is retired LAPD police sergeant Cheryl Dorsey. Cheryl, good to see you. So have traffic stops become even more dangerous as of recent for police?</s>CHERYL DORSEY, RETIRED LAPD POLICE SERGEANT: Thank you for having me on. First let me express my condolences to the men and women on the Memphis police department and the family of Sean Bolton. And you know, police traffic stops have always been dangerous because it's something that we do quite regularly. And it's important that officers maintain diligence, that they don't become complacent in the stopping of motorists. And you know, we want to always let our partners know where we are. Telegraph your location. Go code six is what we say here in Los Angeles on that traffic stop and get out information about the plate so that in the event things go sideways you can have help coming pretty quick. It's always reactionary because we never know who we're approaching and confront being.</s>WHITFIELD: So, it's likely those things happened because it seems like that is, you know, customary to routine. But I wonder also with surveillance cameras, with dash cams, help us understand the tools that will be used to try to find out who did this and how it happened.</s>DORSEY: Well my hope is that the officer had an opportunity to broadcast through communications that he was about to conduct a traffic stop. And that he was able to provide them with some information that might help. And we don't know this, and I understand why they wouldn't want to say. But hopefully he was able to give out the description of the vehicle and the license plate number of the car that he was stopping so they could run that vehicle plate and see who it's registered to and follow up with the registered owner to see if that's the person behind the wheel or did they loan their car to someone else.</s>WHITFIELD: And because of so much that has happened particularly in recent months, in recent years, do you believe that most police jurisdictions are changing the way in which they are training people, you know, with the potential dangers of traffic stops? How is that playing a role?</s>DORSEY: You know, I don't know that officers or departments are doing anything differently. I would hope that they're doing everything the exact same. Because we understand that there are a couple of things that are inherently dangerous. Traffic stops and domestic violence calls. And so, it's important for officers to be well trained, and then to practice, because we play like we practice. And so, if you have an idea about how you want to handle a situation when things go sideways you rely on that training. And you don't have to think about what am I going to do. But there's some fundamental things that we should always do. And we should always let others know where we're located. That we're conducting a traffic stop. You should never just stop a car without communicating that to your dispatch.</s>WHITFIELD: All right. Cheryl Dorsey, thank you so much. Appreciate it from</s>L.A. DORSEY: Thank you, Fredricka.</s>WHITFIELD: All right. Still ahead, two dozen wildfires in California forcing thousands to evacuate their homes. The largest of those fires nearly doubling in size. Will the weather capital?