LOS ANGELES_ As hundreds of demonstrators descended on downtown Los Angeles, the city's Police Commission on Tuesday faulted two LAPD officers for their tactics leading up to the killing of a black woman in South L.A. last year, but found that the fatal shooting did not violate the department's deadly force policy.
The fatal shooting of Redel Jones, who was black, was one of several by Los Angeles police officers last year that prompted criticism from activists, including those affiliated with the local Black Lives Matter movement. In the year after Jones' death, her name has been chanted at meetings, written on signs carried at protests and spread on Twitter as a hashtag.
Commission meetings have been contentious in recent months, with police routinely removing activists from the room where the panel meets at LAPD headquarters each week. But Tuesday's meeting drew a larger than normal crowd, with hundreds of people gathering outside the building chanting "Black Lives Matter."
Many in the crowd said they decided to attend the event after the fatal shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La., and Philando Castile in St. Paul, Minn. Both men were black. Their deaths, which drew fierce reactions from the black community after gruesome cellphone footage of their shootings surfaced, came days before a sniper opened fire at a Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas, killing five police officers.
Jones' husband, Marcus Vaughn, delivered a passionate speech to the Police Commission, describing his wife as a kind woman who "always thought of others more than herself." She was, he said, "one of the best people that I knew."
After they met, Vaughn said, Jones was the one who found shelters or hotels for the couple to stay in when they needed one. She was resourceful and intelligent, he said.
"She taught me everything that I know," he said. "Redel was always the one who found a way so that we would make a way for each other."
Initially, Vaughn did not want to attend the meeting, fearing it "would be like opening an old wound," but decided to take a bus to Los Angeles from Oakland last night after his 13-year-old son begged him to go and speak on behalf of his mother.
Vaughn said he wants the LAPD to change its policies from "top to bottom" and wants the officers involved in his wife's killing to be fired, prosecuted and jailed. He doesn't believe the LAPD account that Jones had a knife.
"That's not the type of person she was," he said
The Los Angeles County district attorney's office has not yet been presented with the investigation into the shooting, according to a spokeswoman for the office.
The widowed husband pounded the lectern as he spoke, describing his children's tears and wife's accomplishments. She taught herself how to fix computers and was taking classes in holistic health care shortly before she was killed.
"You all stole her from me," he told the board.
Jones, 30, was killed after police say she moved toward an officer while holding a knife. The Los Angeles Police Department has said Jones matched the description of a woman who robbed a nearby pharmacy about 20 minutes earlier, prompting officers to pursue her into the alley.
But a woman who said she saw the August 2015 shooting from her car questioned why police opened fire, telling the Los Angeles Times that Jones was running away from the officers and never turned toward them.
In the days since the shootings of Sterling and Castile, protesters have marched in cities coast to coast, shutting down freeways in Oakland and Inglewood and packing New York's Times Square. One march in Los Angeles led to an impromptu meeting between the mayor and police chief and rappers Snoop Dogg and the Game.
Hundreds stood outside the LAPD's headquarters Tuesday morning, holding signs that read "end the police state" and "Cops need us. We don't need them," while repeatedly chanting "black lives matter" and Jones' name.
"If you can't say black lives matter, then I don't believe you when you say all lives matter," shouted one man as he clutched a bullhorn speaker at the center of the crowd.
Many in the crowd said they had not attended previous commission meetings, but were drawn to the scene by the recent violence.
"I get pulled over like every week. It makes me feel like it's got to end," said Dale Troy, 24, of Burbank, who was attending his first commission meeting. "I feel like what happened to Philando could easily happen to me."
Kenneth Ellis, a 32-year-old artist and videographer, said that he was compelled to come to the meeting _ which he learned about on Facebook _ to "stand for justice and unity" not just for people shot by police, but for the officers killed in Dallas.
"We don't want any violence," he said inside the meeting room.
The Police Commission's president opened the meeting by reading the names of Sterling, Castile and the officers killed in Texas.
"Say his name!" the crowd began to chant, stopping as the officers' names were read.
"They're all gone," the panel's president, Matt Johnson, said. "None for any good reason."
Johnson acknowledged there was "a lot of emotion" in the room. He confirmed the panel would review the fatal LAPD shooting of Jones.
Outside the meeting, Richelle Brooks held up a sign that read "LAPD 187," referring to the penal code for murder in California, with the word guilty spray-painted across in red.
"It's a culmination of all of it," said Brooks, 29, of Compton, who had not attended a commission meeting before. "People are fed up with the militarization of the police, the injustice, the killing of unarmed black men."
Los Angeles police officers have shot 10 people in on-duty shootings this year, nine fatally.
The events leading up to Jones' death unfolded the afternoon of Aug. 12, when an employee at a Baldwin Hills pharmacy called police, saying a woman had just robbed the store. Footage from the pharmacy's security camera _ which was reviewed by the Los Angeles Times _ captured the robbery as well as the glint of a knife visible before the woman walked out of the store with a cash-filled envelope.
When officers responded, police have said, the employee described the suspect and said she had a knife. Those officers broadcast that description to others nearby, the LAPD said.
About 20 minutes later, police spotted a woman _ later identified as Jones _ who matched the suspect description near an alley off Santo Tomas Drive, less than a mile from the pharmacy.
The officers chased Jones down the alley when they saw her pull out a large knife, according to an internal LAPD report reviewed by The Times. Police told Jones to drop the weapon, the report said, but she continued to run.
Jones "suddenly stopped and turned toward the officers," the report said, and one used a Taser to try and stop her. The stun gun didn't have an effect. Instead, the report said, Jones moved toward one of the officers, still holding the knife. An officer then opened fire.
But the woman who witnessed the shooting gave a different account, saying Jones was running from police when the shots rang out. Courtyana Franklin, 21, said she watched the events unfold from the side mirror of her car, which was parked in the alley.
"I do know for a fact that she was not charging them," Franklin told The Times after the shooting. "I just saw her running. And when they fired the three shots, I saw her body fly on the ground."
Jones died at the scene. Investigators found money and a "robbery demand note" in her clothing, the LAPD said.
The officer who shot Jones was identified by the LAPD as Brett Ramirez, who joined the department three years before the shooting.
Jones' family has sued the city and the officers, saying the shooting was "excessive and unreasonable." Jones, the lawsuit states, "was not armed with a gun and did not pose an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury to anyone at the time of the shooting."
Others, including Ramirez's attorney and the president of the union that represents rank-and-file LAPD officers, said people holding knives still present a serious risk to police and the public.
"People with knives are extremely dangerous," attorney Gary Fullerton said. "They can get to you really quick."
Jones was one of 36 people shot by on-duty LAPD officers last year. Twenty-one were killed.
Michael Novick, a 69-year-old city resident who said he is a regular at commission hearings, said the large crowd was likely a result of both the recent shootings in other states and bubbling frustration with the Police Commission. He said that he believes the commission fails to properly hold officers accountable for using force.
"People are waking up to the fact that this is state-sponsored systemic violence," said Novick, who was wearing a shirt that read "White People 4 Black Lives."
Novick said hundreds of people attended a meeting of local Black Lives Matter activists and allied groups several days ago in order to draw more attention to Tuesday's meeting and hopefully attract people who don't normally attend.
Sujey Lee Colon, 32, was one of those people. A Puerto Rican American, she said she wasn't aware of the meetings until recently, and wouldn't have been able to attend anyway because she works, but now plans to try and attend future hearings and rallies.
"This is their own world and the fact that we can't be part of their world is distressing," Colon said, pointing to the LAPD's headquarters.
