March 01--More than a third of the people shot by Los Angeles police last year had documented signs of mental illness, nearly triple the number from the year before, according to a lengthy review by LAPD officials.
The report, made public Tuesday morning, offered an in-depth look at how and when officers used force in recent years, breaking down police shootings and less-serious incidents in a variety of ways.
The analysis comes during a period of heightened national scrutiny of how police officers use force, particularly against African Americans. Some shootings by LAPD officers have generated criticism in recent months, including the fatal shooting of a homeless man on skid row and another living in Venice Beach.
Protesters packed the weekly meeting of the city's police commission on Tuesday to mark the one-year anniversary of the shooting death of Charly "Africa" Keunang, a mentally ill black man killed during a scuffle with police.
Although most of the 38 people shot by LAPD officers in 2015 were Latino, the report found, African Americans continued to account for a disproportionately high number given the city's demographics. Eight of the 38 people -- or 21% -- struck by LAPD gunfire in 2015 were black, the report said. African Americans make up about 9% of the city's population.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck told police commissioners Tuesday that the 300-page-plus report would offer a framework for the board, the department and the public to talk about how Los Angeles police use force.
"We're more than willing to look ourselves in the mirror and say, 'What's occurring and how can we do better?'" Beck told reporters after Tuesday's meeting. "That's exactly what this report does."
The commission praised the department for the analysis, saying it offered valuable data that could help reduce the number of times LAPD officers use varying degrees of force. One commissioner, Robert Saltzman, said the report was among the most important he had seen during his nine-year tenure as a police commissioner.
Commission President Matt Johnson said the report offered an "extraordinary level of detail and transparency" into shootings by LAPD officers. "This report will be an important tool," he said, to find "trends and patterns that can be addressed in training and tactics."
But it's not the only forthcoming report looking at how LAPD officers use force. Johnson noted that the inspector general would publish his own report next week -- a 10-year review of use of force -- that will include recommendations for strengthening department policies to minimize officers' "reliance on serious uses of force."
LAPD officials described their five-year review as the most comprehensive look the department has taken into how officers use force. Officials said that the department has already made changes reflecting some of the trends identified in the report, such as making less-lethal options like Tasers and bean-bags more readily available for officers.
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The report touched on some trends that have generated discussion both inside and outside the LAPD in recent months: a growing number of incidents involving people thought to be mentally ill or homeless; increased use of Tasers or bean-bag shotguns; an uptick in replica weapons discovered during encounters that ended in police gunfire.
Nineteen of the 38 people shot by police in 2015 carried a gun, the report found. Of the 21 people who died after police shootings, the report said, toxicology results showed eight were under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Eleven officers were injured during police shootings, more than double the year prior.
The report also found that in-custody deaths rose sharply in 2015, up to a dozen from four in 2014. There were 21 such deaths from 2011 to 2014, the report said.
Toxicology results showed half of the 12 people who died in custody in 2015 were under the influence of drugs, the LAPD report said. Officers used force against two of those people, the report said, and in a third case that is awaiting further information from the coroner's office. One death was the result of a jailhouse suicide, the report said.
Yet incidents where LAPD officers use force remain relatively rare: Of the 1.5 million contacts with the public in 2015, the report said, less than 2,000 resulted in some type of force used by police.
"There's things that I'm sure we're going to discover in this report; others will raise questions that we'll not have answers to that will cause us to dig deeper and to look further," Assistant Chief Michel Moore told The Times. "At the end of the day, the instances in which we use force ... is extremely rare. But at the same time, each incident is one too many if it can be avoided."
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