By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Contributing Columnist
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has a golden opportunity to tackle one of the deepest and longest standing problems that have seemingly been a trademark of the Los Angeles Police Department. That is the continued high number of deadly force use incidents by the department.
Within weeks, Bass will appoint a new LAPD chief. Right at the top of her list of requirements in making the selection should be that whomever she picks must publicly pledge to curb the number of police shootings. Many of them are dubious, questionable and could have been avoided.
The report on LAPD shootings in 2023 that landed on Mayor Bass’s desk was in one sense mildly surprising, but in another sense, it wasn’t. The mild surprise was that the number of LAPD shootings had jumped from the prior year.
The LAPD and the Los Angeles Police Commission have repeatedly assured us that a continuing priority of the department is to reduce the use of lethal force.
There have been countless reports, recommendations, rule changes, investigations, civilian checks and balances on the LAPD, as well as countless Black Live Matters protests that have spotlighted the age-old problem of deadly force by the LAPD. At times, this has had some effect in the department relying more on non-lethal force in dealing with civilian encounters.
However, from the uptick in shootings it seemed that much is still lacking within the department on this issue. Judging from the LAPD’s slaying of a Panorama City woman and a homeless man in downtown under dubious circumstances, this year may see no downward trend in the use of deadly force.
In fact, even in the years when the LAPD has shot fewer people the death toll from the shootings remains far too high. What makes the rise in dead force incidents and the two slayings mentioned even more troubling is that they and the other LAPD shootings come in the wake of the historic legislation the state Legislature passed more than four years ago in 2020.
That 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 one certainty is that these shootings are not isolated cases of deadly force use by the LAPD. 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. In almost all cases, officers who use lethal force are shielded from prosecution in the absence of ironclad proof of wrongdoing. No LAPD officer has been prosecuted for the use of deadly force on duty no matter how questionable in many years.
A prosecution must leap a mountainous bar. That requires the testimony of another officer, a smoking gun body or dashcam recording, or a preponderance of consistent testimony from civilian eyewitnesses that the killing was unjustified.
Even then the victim must have been unarmed, and in most cases not in the commission of a crime. But what if the victim is armed with a knife, stick, screwdriver or any other non-firearm weapon? And the victim is a woman and suffers from mental or emotional challenges?
The LAPD and other police departments have long grappled with these thorny questions. There is no one size that fits all answer. 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.
While the use of force levels will, even in the best-case situations, remain a judgment call, there must be clear policy guidelines that spell out the likely situations in which non-lethal force can and must be used. There are court rulings that give solid guidance on this.
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 by the LAPD can be curbed is a resounding yes. This makes it even more compelling for Mayor Bass to take a hard look at when, on whom, and in what circumstances non-lethal force should be used. This is not just a matter of life and death. It’s also a matter of good public and police policy. Mayor Bass can ensure that by requiring the person she appoints as chief publicly commit to that policy.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is “President Trump’s America” (Middle Passage Press). He also is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network Saturday at 9 a.m.
