Police Shootings

How many police bullets actually hit Kendrec McDade, 19 years old and unarmed, on that dark Pasadena street? Do police have to yell "halt" or "stop" before pulling the trigger? Is it standard procedure to shoot from a patrol car? Must they shoot to kill? Why not use beanbags or rubber bullets? Where was the police camera? Though the crowd's manner was muted, the questions, passed forward on index cards, came unrelentingly to Pasadena Police Chief Phillip Sanchez as he stood in the sanctuary at New Revelation Missionary Baptist Church on Saturday morning.

The investigation into a controversial police killing of a college student last weekend took a dramatic twist Wednesday when Pasadena authorities arrested a 911 caller, alleging his fabrication led to the shooting. An officer shot 19-year-old Kendrec McDade on a narrow street in the city's Northwest district about 11 p.m. Saturday. Police were dispatched to the scene after a man, identified as Oscar Carrillo, called 911. He said two armed men had stolen his laptop computer and backpack as he was buying tacos at a stand on Orange Grove Boulevard.

Pasadena Police Chief Philip Sanchez asked a county law enforcement watchdog agency Tuesday to investigate the shooting of an unarmed man by two of his officers. Kendrec McDade, 20, was shot as the officers pursued two men suspected of ransacking a car and pointing a weapon at the car owner about 11 p.m. Saturday, authorities said. Sanchez said he asked Michael Gennaco, head of the Los Angeles County Office of Independent Review, to help conduct an investigation into the fatal shooting.

Last week, I added my name to a letter to Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. asking for a federal investigation into disturbing reports of assaults on inmates by L.A. County sheriff's deputies in jails. I have no idea what a neutral and objective investigation will reveal, but for the sake of the public, the Sheriff's Department and Sheriff Lee Baca himself, a thorough investigation is crucial. Managing a large network of custodial facilities like L.A. County's jail system is a gargantuan task, and it is complicated by the fact that many inmates have not only committed crimes but also have serious drug, alcohol and/or mental health issues.

Two and a half years after Oscar Grant III was shot to death by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer on an Oakland train station platform, the agency agreed Tuesday to pay the unarmed man's mother $1.3 million to settle her civil case against it and the officers involved. Wanda Johnson, Grant's mother, had sued BART and the officers for $50 million, charging wrongful death and violation of civil rights. Her son, 22, had been traveling home on New Year's Day 2009 after a celebration in San Francisco when a fight broke out in his rail car. The African American supermarket butcher was lying face down on the Fruitvale station platform when he was fatally shot by Officer Johannes Mehserle, 29. The white officer said he thought he had pulled out his Taser, not his .40-caliber pistol.

A federal jury Wednesday awarded $1.7 million to the parents of an autistic man killed by a Los Angeles police officer. Joseph Cruz, who was later fired from the LAPD for dishonesty in an unrelated case, killed Mohammad Usman Chaudhry early on a March morning in 2008. Cruz and his partner had encountered the 21-year-old man laying in the bushes alongside a Hollywood apartment building. Cruz has insisted that Chaudhry tried to attack him with a knife and that he fired his gun in self-defense.

Israeli officials said Tuesday they were dropping a criminal probe of an Israeli border policeman who shot to death a Palestinian motorist after the man sideswiped a foot patrol of soldiers and then tried to escape when they opened fire. Justice Ministry officials described the incident as a "lethal and rapid chain of events that ended tragically with a man's death," but said in a statement that there was insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges. Witnesses said the driver, Ziad Jilani, 41, had been shot at least once and was lying in the road when the Israeli officer walked up next to him and fired at his head with an M16 rifle, killing him instantly.

The Long Beach police union on Thursday obtained a temporary court order barring the city from releasing the names of officers involved in shootings. It marks at least the third time in the last two years in which a Southern California police union has contended in court that officers' names should not be released because of safety and privacy concerns. The Long Beach Police Officers Assn. filed the request for the order after a Times reporter asked the city under the California Public Records Act for names of officers involved in shootings since 2005.

The Orange County district attorney's office Thursday began publishing detailed findings from its reviews of officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths of inmates. The office had previously provided only brief legal conclusions to police agencies about whether charges would be filed against the involved officers, without making the information public. The new policy mirrors that of Los Angeles County, where a district attorney's spokeswoman said "closing letters" detailing the office's conclusions have been publicly provided ever since prosecutors began investigating police shootings in the 1970s.

It was just before 11 a.m. when Isabel Marroquin Tambriz once more began to cry. Her wails were so piercing they rose above the brass band. They traveled down the dirt paths of the village, which grew ever more crowded with mourners. "Walijoq caewaj!" she yelled over and over in Quiche. Wake up, my love. Wake up, my love. In a casket outside her cinder-block home lay the body of her husband, Manuel Jaminez Xum. He was dressed in a pinstripe three-piece suit, finer than anything he'd worn when he was alive.