Los Angeles police will convene a community meeting on Thursday evening to discuss the shooting of an unarmed man by an officer after a late-night altercation outside a bar near the beach, in a situation the police chief said was “very concerning”.
LAPD chief Charlie Beck said on Wednesday that after viewing surveillance footage of the incident from nearby businesses he had yet to see evidence of the kind of extraordinary circumstances expected when a police officer feels compelled to kill an unarmed citizen.
The man was shot dead on Tuesday night outside a strip of bars and restaurants in Venice, a block from the boardwalk of Venice Beach on the outskirts of LA.
The identity of the man has not been released by officials but friends and staff at a shelter to help homeless youth named him to local media as Brendon Glenn, 29, who himself was homeless and slept in the area.
Police reportedly intervened in a disturbance on Tuesday night when Glenn was arguing with a bouncer who would not allow him into a bar. The man began to leave in the direction of the boardwalk but then “went after” the bouncer and, as two police officers tried to detain him, a struggle ensued and one of the officers shot him dead, according to local TV station KTLA.
Within 24 hours, Beck called a press conference and queried the killing.
“Any time an unarmed person is shot by a Los Angeles police officer, it takes extraordinary circumstances to justify that and I have not seen those extraordinary circumstances at this point,” he said, while cautioning that the department’s investigation into the incident is barely under way.
Beck said that both the victim and the officer who shot him were black.
A series of deaths of black men by white police officers from Ferguson, Missouri, last summer to Baltimore, Maryland, late last month has set off riots and demonstrations and a national debate about race relations.
Beck said of the incident in Venice: “Even if race is a small part of this, which I don’t think it is, they’re certainly outweighed by the mental health issues, the homeless issues, the alcohol issues. All of those things have nothing to do with a person’s race.”
Several dozen friends of Glenn held a vigil on the street on Wednesday night and arranged a makeshift memorial of candles and a picture of the man, close to where he died.
Beck announced that a town hall meeting would be held in Venice on Thursday night to discuss the incident.
Friends said Glenn was quick to watch out for fellow homeless people sleeping rough.
“He was a really big hugger. Every morning he would just go around everybody and make sure everyone was okay and he would be, like, ‘Hey, I love you’,” Shane Brigham told KTLA.
Another friend called Glenn’s killing “cold blood murder”.
The surveillance footage from security cameras on local businesses has not yet been released.
However, local TV news showed some video footage of police pushing back bystanders who rushed to the scene after Glenn was shot and other footage reportedly showing him some days before in an altercation with a man on the boardwalk.
The police union roundly condemned Beck’s remarks, calling them premature and warning that they may render the official investigation void.
“It is completely irresponsible for anyone, much less the chief of police, to render a judgment on an incident that is in the early stages of investigation,” Craig Lally, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League officers’ union, said in a written statement.
