Fatal Shooting on L.A.’s Skid Row
It’s caught on video, ensuring that it will be big news:
I am not going to comment on this specific case — other than to note that, on the video, police are heard yelling “Drop it!” and “Drop the gun!” several times before the shooting.
I have two very generic and general comments, about Skid Row, and about video of police/civilian interactions.
First: having done cases from Skid Row, I can tell you that the population walking around in that area on any given day has a large and vocal contingent that is strongly anti-police. If you walk through the area with police officers, as I have, you should not be surprised to hear people yelling “Five-O” and similar phrases, to warn others that police are coming.
Second: more video may exist. Ed Morrissey:
Interestingly, the LA Times reports that at least one of the officers wore a body camera during the incident. The use of body cameras came under considerable debate after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, with some suggesting that it will take a lot of the guesswork out of unpacking these kinds of incidents. We’ll see what the body cam(s) depict eventually, as well as some surveillance cameras that were in the area and might have more context than the one Facebook video.
Video cameras may shed more light on the incident — or they may not. Back in 2006 I blogged an incident of a fatal police shooting of an unarmed man. I noted that what looked like an execution in this video:
Looked somewhat different in this one:
That’s a cell phone he’s brandishing in that second video.
you have to be careful when you shoot homeless people on skid row cause that’s one way you can get the tuberculosis
happyfeet (a037ad) — 3/2/2015 @ 7:59 amAs you note, Skid Row is bad news. Of course, the media will make this into another hysteical anti-police cause. If the decedent is black, Rev. Al will surely lead some protests down there (if he himself has armed bodyguards).
It’s a wonder to me why anyone becomes a cop these days.
Patricia (5fc097) — 3/2/2015 @ 8:16 amI live on the edges of Harlem and regularly walk through it.
I had to walk across Skid Row to get from the MTA subway system to the greyhound station, in Jnauary. It was substantially more unpleasant and uncomfortable than anything I encounter in NYC. :{
aphrael (34edde) — 3/2/2015 @ 8:38 amaphrael, my theory is that it’s weather-related. In Northern cities, skid row has to kinda sorta clean out every winter. From LA to Vancouver, it’s a 365-day thing, and it starts to gain more permanence. East Hastings street in Vancouver looks like one of those 80’s apocalyptic movies.
carlitos (c24ed5) — 3/2/2015 @ 8:56 amhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPViOJLbYa8
this happened in chicagoland today this guy’s lucky he didn’t get shot
happyfeet (a037ad) — 3/2/2015 @ 8:56 amI had to walk across Skid Row to get from the MTA subway system to the greyhound station, in Jnauary.
Funny, aphrael, I made the same journey just two weeks ago, from the MTA station down 7th Street to the Greyhound bus station (I thought it would be fun to ride Greyhound to the Bay Area; it was, but the trip to the LA Greyhound station was the worst part). I consider myself a pretty hardened and streetwise guy, but even I felt uncomfortable walking through that area at about 10:00 pm. Lots of guys openly drinking and smoking weed on the street, and a few haggard druggie prostitutes out soliciting customers. As I passed by they definitely figured I was some sort of cop, so I got a whole lot of menacing looks but at the same time most of them hid their bottles and joints as I passed.
Through the years there have been lots of suggestions for how to eliminate skid row, but none of them ever seem to make much headway towards solving the problem. I guess I have cynically chalked it up to an ongoing feature of life in urban America.
JVW (854318) — 3/2/2015 @ 9:40 amAfter reading the accounts of NYC locals’s versions of what happened during incidents there – and what did, in fact, actually occur – I take these play-by-play accounts so eloquently expressed by transients with a grain of salt. The body-cams should help.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 3/2/2015 @ 10:27 amThe first thing that jumps out at me in the new video is how the guy filming immediately comments on there being 9 officers vs one man. I think that sentiment is fairly common. A belief that force should always be proportional.
Dejectedhead (75dfa4) — 3/2/2015 @ 11:06 amJVW, no progress is made down there because the pro bono lawyers file suit against any attempt to restrict the “rights” of the street people. Taxpayer funded, of course.
I was driving there late one night and saw the freeway up ahead, with about 5 red lights between me and it. Sidewalks covered with homeless. I blew through every light–I’m sure the cops would have forgiven me, had they been down there.
Patricia (5fc097) — 3/2/2015 @ 11:12 amHeh, Patricia. It happened to somebody I know in Chicago’s skid row, West Madison Avenue. He got off the expressway because it was too slow and then was afraid to stop at red lights. The cop told him straight out, “I’m giving you a ticket so you’ll remember not to come this way again”.
nk (dbc370) — 3/2/2015 @ 11:17 amOne of the officers on scene — the one standing over the guy after he is shot — is black, isn’t he?
Oh, and I blame George W. Bush.
JVW (854318) — 3/2/2015 @ 12:32 pm@8– What people do not realize is that if these encounters were limited to one-on-one between criminal and cop, there would be a lot more deaths resulting, mostly the criminal’s as the cop is the guy with the gun. The fact that a bad-actor is outnumbered 3-, 4-, even 5-to-1 means that they will go to the pokey with only a few scrapes and bruises.
Gramps, the original (9e1415) — 3/2/2015 @ 1:21 pm“The fact that a bad-actor is outnumbered 3-, 4-, even 5-to-1 means that they will go to the pokey with only a few scrapes and bruises.”
– Gramps, the original
Or die, as we have seen – but not always!
Leviticus (f9a067) — 3/2/2015 @ 1:27 pmI took Greyhound to San Diego, and then a few days later I took Greyhound from San Diego to the Bay Area with a layover in the LA Greyhound station.
The LA Greyhound station was *awful*.
aphrael (34edde) — 3/2/2015 @ 1:54 pmLeviticus,
We don’t know if the deceased had a gun or was trying to get an officer’s gun but, for the sake of argument, let’s assume the deceased had full or partial control of an officer’s gun. What are the officers supposed to do in that situation? Do the officers have to let him shoot first? You seem to feel this way from past discussions.
DRJ (e80d46) — 3/2/2015 @ 2:14 pmThe LA Greyhound station was *awful*.
Yep. No two ways about it. Even the Oakland Greyhound station was better.
JVW (854318) — 3/2/2015 @ 2:34 pm@15 – Leviticus has never “walked that walk..”
gramps, the original (9e1415) — 3/2/2015 @ 3:51 pmDRJ,
I was just offering the obvious counterpoint to Gramps’ remark that being outnumbered by cops means that a “bad-actor… will go to the pokey with only a few scrapes and bruises.” That is clearly not always the case: sometimes being outnumbered by cops means that the “bad actor” dies. Is anyone disputing that?
I have no comment on this particular case – I’m addressing the “overwhelming force” sentiment generally.
Leviticus (f9a067) — 3/2/2015 @ 3:59 pmYou have to give that Chicago cop credit for a good comeback, nk. 🙂
Patricia (5fc097) — 3/2/2015 @ 4:02 pmI used to take my first year medical students to Skid Row every year. We would go to the shelters and to the Downtown Drop-in Center. We would meet with the directors. The consensus of the directors is that 60% of the residents are psychotic and 60% are drug and alcohol addicts. They also added that half of each group is both.
The “situational” homeless are about 10% and it is usually a matter of a few days. Children are quickly moved to shelters unless crazy parents hide them in cars etc.
It’s an interesting place medically. The directors also said those people could eat six meals a day if they wanted to. There was (I haven’t done this in 5 years) a motorhome clinic that provided immunizations and primary care to the residents. It would stop at various places and had a schedule so residents could keep appointments and they often did.
The Downtown Drop-in Center is a very interesting place. When I took students there, it had about 8 to 12 male beds and 4 female beds plus a shower for each. They could only use the beds for 8 hours and then they had to leave and sign up again on a roster. There were many people sleeping in sleeping bags outside in the atrium.
Very interesting world. For years we had a guide who would take us to some of the camps under bridges, etc. He had been a crack addict living on the street for ten years and finally got sober and worked for the city housing bureau. He would tell us the stories and knew everybody on the street. He would show us his sidewalk where he had lived for years. It is in front of a Florence Griffith Joyner mural and he said he used to smoke crack and watch her run there.
He gave a talk one night at the Midnight Mission for “Cocaine Anonymous” and he was a spellbinding speaker. We were the only white faces in the place. The Mission locks its door from 7 PM to 7 AM. The guys can leave but they cannot return until 7 AM. Another world.
I told the students they had to see where their County Hospital patients lived and why it was futile to prescribe a drug that required refrigeration to someone who lived in a box or to prescribe medicine to be taken very six hours to someone who had no clock.
Mike K (90dfdc) — 3/2/2015 @ 4:41 pmVery interesting post Dr. Mike K. Thank you.
elissa (da4b29) — 3/2/2015 @ 5:01 pmThe homeless man should have been where he belonged – confined in a care home/ hospital for the mentally ill. But we don’t do that anymore.
SarahW (267b14) — 3/2/2015 @ 6:44 pmOk, Leviticus, but can you answer my questions anyway? Hypothetically, of course.
DRJ (e80d46) — 3/2/2015 @ 7:15 pm@18.
Levitcus: My apologies for the lack of precision in my initial comment. Let’s say that *in most cases* the bad actor will suffer only scrapes and bruises. There is a term of art, if you will, that goes something like “when it turns to shit..” When that happens, people get seriously hurt, even die. That’s a fact.
The seriously outnumbered fighter will most likely survive. You will not see this reported in your local newspaper or on the 6 o’clock news, because it is a non-story. It happens many times a day, every day of the year… If you rely on the news you would be acting on skewed data and become the person Mark Twain described as misinformed.
Gramps, the original (9e1415) — 3/2/2015 @ 8:01 pm“For the sake of argument, let’s assume the deceased had full or partial control of an officer’s gun. What are the officers supposed to do in that situation? Do the officers have to let him shoot first? You seem to feel this way from past discussions.”
– DRJ
For the sake of argument, assuming the deceased obtained full or partial control of an officer’s gun, I believe that the officers would be justified in shooting the deceased with an intent to kill him.
Now, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the deceased had no weapon. Are the officers justified in shooting him?
Leviticus (f9a067) — 3/3/2015 @ 7:40 amThe evidence indicates that he had got hold of the rookie’s gun and they were wrestling for it. There was a misfed (stovepipe) round in the ejection port, with a round in the chamber. The slide had been partially pulled back, not enough to eject the round in the chamber, a new round had been stripped from the magazine, and as the slide went forward the first round was reseated and the second round got jammed in the ejection port.
nk (dbc370) — 3/3/2015 @ 8:00 amThe guys yelling “Five-O” aren’t anti-police in the sense we ordinarily think of it (trustafarian protesters). They’re lookouts for illegal operations (usually drug dealers).
NickM (f8e14b) — 3/3/2015 @ 1:01 pmhttp://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/homeless-man-killed-lapd-identified-french-bank-robber-article-1.2136067
elissa (732606) — 3/3/2015 @ 6:22 pmMerde! Couillon!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11448767/LA-homeless-man-shot-dead-by-police-had-stolen-Frenchmans-identity-to-follow-Hollywood-dream.html
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 3/4/2015 @ 1:05 pmyup: another poor innocent victim of police brutality turns out to be a violent criminal…
#Unexpectedly
redc1c4 (34e91b) — 3/4/2015 @ 1:18 pmjust think: if we deported illegal aliens, this scumbag would still be alive.
or, at least not have been killed by the LAPD.
redc1c4 (34e91b) — 3/4/2015 @ 1:19 pm“For the sake of argument, let’s assume the deceased had full or partial control of an officer’s gun. What are the officers supposed to do in that situation? Do the officers have to let him shoot first? You seem to feel this way from past discussions.”
– DRJ
For the sake of argument, assuming the deceased obtained full or partial control of an officer’s gun, I believe that the officers would be justified in shooting the deceased with an intent to kill him.
Now, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the deceased had no weapon. Are the officers justified in shooting him?
Leviticus (f9a067) — 3/3/2015 @ 7:40 am
Leviticus- Your answer is illustrative of your way of thinking about cops. Good thing you’re not in the academy or a current cop, you’d fail. Cops don’t shoot to kill, they shoot to stop.
labcatcher (61737c) — 3/4/2015 @ 2:37 pmof course that, by training, means they are supposed to aim center mass (supposed to, because cops are in general poor pistol marksmen) until the target is negated, which, given human anatomy, is very often fatal. so while you absolutely correct in a semantic POV, one can understand why sillyvillians might be confused on the issue.
redc1c4 (6d1848) — 3/4/2015 @ 3:19 pmSome of them yelling Five-O might be the Brian Williamses of the homeless set, just yelling for the street credit and being able to have something to say that won’t be met with a chorus of Shut the hell up Smoky.
papertiger (c2d6da) — 3/4/2015 @ 5:18 pmthat connard!… another sitiation where the cop connard shot teh innocent connard.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 3/4/2015 @ 5:36 pmDude came all the way from France to rob, pillage, and plunder. I wonder if Obama gave him an amnesty waiver?
papertiger (c2d6da) — 3/4/2015 @ 6:17 pm