people armed with knives, swords and other edged weapons<\/a>, up from six to 11 such incidents when compared to the same time last year.<\/p>\nA Times database of LAPD shootings found that roughly 1 in 4 shootings involved a person with an edged weapon. In February, LAPD officers killed of a transgender woman holding a knife at a Pacoima motel room after she called 911 to report that she had been kidnapped, one of several incidents that drew criticism.<\/p>\n
Shootings of people who are holding replica guns are also up year-over-year, from four to nine. Under state law, such weapons are not considered deadly, and a person carrying them is considered unarmed; but department officials argued that they are \u201cvisually indistinguishable from real firearms in rapidly escalating situations.\u201d<\/p>\n
When individuals shoot at officers, the officers are confronted with life-or-death, leaving officers no alternative but to engage,\u201d the LAPD release said. \u201cWhile we are proud to report that all categories of crime are trending down, violent assaults on our officers have increased tremendously.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement Friday, the mayor expressed how \u201cdeeply concerned\u201d she was by the increase in shootings and said she met with McDonnell that morning. She pledged to work with the chief and the Police Commission to identify any measures to reduce these incidents.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am particularly concerned about how individuals\u2019 mental health may be factoring into these incidents,\u201d the statement by Bass said. \u201cToo many times, our society lets people\u2019s mental health deteriorate so significantly that they can either become the victims or the perpetrators of crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mayor\u2019s statement came on the heels of two separate LAPD shootings on Thursday afternoon and early Friday, which left one person dead and another wounded. According to reports, the first occurred about 3:44 p.m. at an apartment complex in Hollywood, where officers had responded to a report of a \u201csuicidal subject.\u201d <\/p>\n
On arrival, police said they encountered a man with a knife and officers tried to subdue him with a foam round; they opened fire when he charged at them, killing him. In the second case, officers pulled over a reportedly stolen vehicle in the area of Ninth Street and Gladys Avenue, and shot one of the suspects under circumstances that remain unclear. The man is expected to survive.<\/p>\n
Both incidents remain under investigation.<\/p>\n
The Times found that the 63 officers who fired their weapons so far this year had on average 8.5 years of department experience; the most junior was a probationary officer with roughly a year on the job, while the most senior was a 28-year veteran. The shootings also broke along racial lines, with Latinos comprising more than half of the officers who fired their weapons and the people who were shot and killed.<\/p>\n
The majority of incidents involved a single shooter.<\/p>\n
On the same day the commission asked for the updated shooting numbers, the civilian panel also signed off on the extension of a pilot program that gave LAPD officers up to 72 hours after firing their weapons to submit to an interview \u2014 under the assumption that the adrenaline of being in a shooting fogged their ability to recall details. Critics have argued that the extra time would allow for officers to get their stories straight and justify their use of deadly force.<\/p>\n
Previously, most officers were interviewed shortly after a shooting occurred.<\/p>\n
Activists who attend commission meetings every week say that the dramatic rise in deadly force incidents is proof that nothing has changed in a city that has seen the most police shootings in the U.S. in years past. They contend that LAPD officers continue to shoot people needlessly when other options exist, and that the commission has consistently cleared them of wrongdoing in recent years \u2014 sending dangerous message to the rank-and-file officers that even serious uses of force will be tolerated. And although community programs seeking non-police responses to mental health calls have shown promise, advocates say that they continue to be hobbled by a lack of funding. <\/p>\n
Officials said that the department has in recent years made numerous changes to curb police shootings, including adopting so-called de-escalation training focused on slowing down volatile situations, particularly those involving people who may be mentally ill.<\/p>\n
LAPD officers used to shoot people with far greater frequency, with officers opening fire more than 100 times during some years in the early 1990s. Officials have touted the declines in police shootings since then as evidence that de-escalation and other tactics are working.<\/p>\n
The department is also making less-lethal devices \u2014 such as Tasers, beanbag shotguns and foam round launchers \u2014 more readily available to officers, while limiting the number of cops who have their guns drawn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shootings by Los Angeles police officers have increased dramatically this year, prompting Mayor Karen Bass to issue a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[55814,6246,4456,48,52,51,5015,55815,47,50,49,55813,212,2322,592,2637,135,2131,4746,5585,72],"class_list":["post-102691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-deadly-force","tag-department","tag-incident","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lapd","tag-lapd-official","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mental-health-intervention","tag-number","tag-officer","tag-people","tag-sheriff","tag-shooting","tag-suspect","tag-use","tag-weapon","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}