Rocked by four fatal officer-involved shootings in as many months, the Inglewood Police Department has declined to answer numerous questions about the incidents -- a reticence that may have intensified the criticism the department faces.
"The people in the community are asking what is going on with the Inglewood Police Department," said Donald Nicholson, vice chairman of the city's police oversight commission and a 30-year resident. "I don't have an answer for them. There's nothing from the City Council, nothing from the mayor, nothing from police."
"There's something gravely amiss," Nicholson said, referring to the most recent case in which seven police officers on Sunday afternoon fired at least 40 times at Eddie Felix Franco, 56, a homeless man who police say possessed a fake gun. "Forty to 50 [shots] at a homeless man with his dog up against a wall? To me, as a rational individual, I just don't understand it."
On Tuesday, Inglewood Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks and other department officials did not answer questions about the case. Since then all inquiries about the shooting have gone unanswered.
Lloyd Waters, vice president of the Inglewood Police Assn., said the case was still under investigation and that sorting out what happened would take time.
"Maybe people want answers the day of the shooting or the day after," he said. "But we don't have the answers yet. We are still doing the investigation."
But University of South Carolina professor Geoffrey P. Alpert, an expert on police use of force, said an increasing number of law enforcement agencies had come to believe that the best way to improve accountability was to make "police work more transparent."
"The modern, progressive police departments and police chiefs are responding more quickly, with more details, to community and media concerns and questions," Alpert said. "Departments that do not respond well to these demands are clearly in need of civilian oversight and evaluation of policies, procedures and accountability systems."
Among the issues:
* The names of the officers involved in Sunday's shooting and the sequence of events leading to Franco's death have not been released. The names of officers involved in shootings are a matter of public record under California law, according to state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown.
