After days of delay, Inglewood police officials on Friday identified the eight officers involved in last weekend's fatal shooting of a homeless man who had a toy gun in his waistband.
All of the officers have been placed on administrative leave pending the results of an internal investigation into the shooting, police officials said. They will also be required to undergo "supplemental training" before being allowed back into field assignments.
Those identified were: Officers Max Koffman, a 17-year police veteran; Loren Robinson, a 10 1/2-year veteran; John Baca, an eight-year veteran; Caroline Amezcua, a five-year veteran; Christopher Anderson, a one-year veteran; Ryan Green, a one-year veteran; Zerai Massey, a 5 1/2-year veteran; and Sgt. Matt Hart, a 20-year veteran.
The officers fired as many as 47 rounds at Eddie Felix Franco on Sunday after he appeared to go for a gun in his waistband, police said. The object turned out to be a realistic-looking toy gun, police said.
Franco's death was the fourth fatal shooting by Inglewood police in as many months. Three of the four killed were unarmed, police said.
Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks drew criticism this week for failing to publicly address the shooting or to release details quickly. When she spoke out Thursday, four days after the shooting, she said she withheld the officers' names so that investigators could make certain they knew which officers at the scene had fired their weapons.
Among the department's recent critics, Donald Nicholson, vice chairman of the city's citizen police oversight commission, said that releasing the officers' names was "a step in the right direction."
"Change starts from the bottom up and not the top down," Nicholson said. "I think our city government, our city administrators are reacting to the community asking for information."
Police said that none of the officers involved in Franco's shooting participated in the three other shootings, the first of which occurred in May.
Two of the officers, however, were involved in other fatal shootings in recent years, according to law enforcement records reviewed by The Times.
In May 2007, Massey shot and killed an unarmed man, Richard Tyson, records show.
According to a memo by the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, Massey and another officer had seen Tyson riding a bicycle on the sidewalk and ordered him to stop.
