THE HUTCHINSON REPORT:
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Contributing Columnist
Los Angeles Wave
Mayor Karen Bass called the report “disturbing.” It was more, much more, than that. It was appalling.
The Los Angeles Police Department continues to be the runaway leader among the nation’s police departments in the use of deadly force. Other reports show that of all the nation’s police departments the LAPD is the one that year in and year out leads all departments in the number of officer-involved shootings. This is not a statistical quirk or aberration in the excessive number of department shootings. It is a consistent pattern.
A pattern that repeatedly is the subject of much hand wringing, and soul searching, at times within the department. But more vexing within the Los Angeles Police Commission, the Inspector General’s office, and Mayor Bass. All are tasked with monitoring the policies and practices of the LAPD. And no department action has been more closely scrutinized than officer-involved shootings. Still, they continue to occur with consistently high frequency.
The recent report on LAPD shootings is graphic proof. There are still too many deaths of civilians at the hands of LAPD officers that at the very least could be called dubious.
They include the usual, a suspect armed with a sharp weapon, a suspect died after being tasered, a suspect who was charging at officers. The shootings and aggressive action may well have been unavoidable, but again they may have been avoided. At the very least they raise the usual questions about the LAPD’s continued reliance on deadly force in encounters.
There have been countless reports, recommendations, rule changes, investigations, civilian checks and balances on the LAPD and its policy about when to use and not use deadly force. It often seems as if none of those things ever happened or meant little to nothing. Even when the LAPD shot fewer people, the death toll from the shootings remained high as the most recent report indicates.
The killings continue to ram home the perennially troubling issue of what, when and how LAPD officers should use non-lethal force. What makes these slayings even more dubious is that they came in the wake of legislation the state Legislature passed that took effect Jan. 1, 2020.
That legislation mandated strict training, accountability and discipline procedures for the use of force by officers. Since the law was passed, however, the number of shootings has not dropped. The LAPD shooting sprees are a prime example.
The one certainty in these killings is that they are not isolated cases of deadly force. So, the question is why? The stock answer is that whenever a suspect poses a direct threat to an officer, or an officer responds to a potentially life-threatening incident, he or she can use whatever force is necessary up to and including deadly force.
In more cases than not, this is a strictly subjective, judgment call. And, in almost all cases, officers who use lethal force are shielded from prosecution in the absence of iron-clad proof of wrongdoing. No LAPD officer has been prosecuted for the use of deadly force on duty no matter how questionable in many years.
Police departments have an array of non-lethal weapons that include bean bags, tasers, stun guns, rubber and wooden bullets, pepper spray, and of course, shouts, commands, and attempts to talk down a suspect. But, in the event of any sudden movement toward an officer, all bets are off. The outcome is almost always predictable, namely the use of deadly force. Yet, there are many cases where officers have subdued a suspect who has directly confronted an officer with a knife or other potentially lethal weapon without firing a shot and without incurring injury to themselves or the suspect.
A sweeping National Institute of Justice study in 2011 on the use of non-lethal force found that injuries to officers and suspects markedly decreased with the use of non-lethal devices from tasers to pepper spray. It also recommended that good policies and training requirements that officers evaluate the age, size, sex, apparent physical capabilities, and health concerns of a suspect in determining what level and type of force to be used.
The answer to the question of whether the use of deadly force in many of these slayings is necessary should be beyond any doubt. It is a resounding no.
That makes it even more compelling for LAPD Chief McDonnell, the Police Commission and Mayor Bass to take an even harder look at when, on whom and in what circumstances non-lethal force should be used. In fact, they should declare a total moratorium on the use of deadly force with the only exception being when there is a genuine life-threatening danger to an officer.
That is not just a matter of life and death. It is a matter of good public and police policy. It’s also the message to Chief McDonnell: Your LAPD is shooting too many people.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the host of the weekly The Hutchinson Report on KTYM Radio Wednesdays at 6 p.m. His political affairs commentaries can be found weekly on thehutchinsonreport.net.
