Other shootings received less public attention.
A little more than a year ago, the panel reviewed the killing of an unarmed man shot by an officer at the end of a car chase in Burbank. Although the officer told investigators he feared Sergio Navas was going to ambush him, commissioners agreed with Beck that the 35-year-old could not reasonably have been viewed to pose an imminent threat. The officer, they said, violated the department’s rules on deadly force.
Among the three shootings that split the commission and Beck last year was the killing of James Joseph Byrd, a 45-year-old man shot after throwing a beer bottle through the back window of a police car stopped at a Van Nuys traffic light.
Beck determined the officers were justified in initially firing at Byrd, noting that they told investigators they saw Byrd holding something — one officer said he thought it was a gun. The chief said it was reasonable for the officers to believe Byrd posed an imminent threat, though he faulted them for a second burst of gunfire.
The Police Commission disagreed, concluding that the officers broke LAPD rules each time they pulled their triggers. The evidence — particularly the fact that no gun or other object was found at the scene — did not support the idea that Byrd posed an imminent threat, the board concluded.
In another shooting, Beck believed both officers who killed Norma Guzman, who was carrying an 8-inch knife, followed the LAPD’s deadly force policy. But the commission again looked at the entirety of the circumstances — as it did in Ford’s shooting — and said one officer put himself in a “vulnerable position” because he did not move away from Guzman and did not discuss using a less-lethal device with his partner beforehand. In a 4-1 vote, the panel faulted the officer’s use of deadly force.
Police union leaders were outraged. The officers, they argued, had the right to defend themselves against someone armed with a knife.
Anger over the commission’s ruling on a shooting — from either side — can linger for months. At the board’s weekly meetings, activists routinely chant the names of people killed by police and point to cases they say show commissioners are too soft on police.
After the board decided last summer that an officer was justified in using deadly force against Redel Jones — a black woman shot in a South L.A. alley when police say she moved toward an officer while holding a knife — scores of protesters marched to City Hall. Dozens camped outside the building for weeks.
Greg Akili, a community organizer and former legislative staffer from South Los Angeles who has been active in the Black Lives Matter movement, credited some commissioners with raising issues related to police reform but said he didn’t believe the board was willing to “rock the boat” to bring about substantial change.
Akili said he was concerned by what he described as a low standard for justifying shootings by police, such as an officer thinking someone was going for his or her gun.
“That bar has to be raised,” he said.
