|
 Two police officers, responding late on Tuesday to emergency calls
of a person "harassing customers" in an area near the neighborhood's
boardwalk, attempted to detain a man who was shot during the
altercation, the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement.
The Los Angeles Times newspaper, citing friends, said the victim was
a homeless man in his 20s nicknamed "Dizzle".
"Any time an unarmed person is shot by a Los Angeles police officer,
it takes extraordinary circumstances to justify that, and I have not
seen those extraordinary circumstances," Beck told a news conference
on Wednesday.
Beck added that the investigation was ongoing.
The incident follows the slaying of another homeless man by Los
Angeles police in March after police said he grabbed for an
officer's holstered gun during a scuffle as police sought to arrest
him on suspicion of robbery.
It also joins a series of incidents that have put law enforcement
agencies across the United States under scrutiny over the use of
lethal force, especially against minorities, the poor and the
mentally ill.
In Tuesday night's incident, the suspect was pronounced dead at
hospital. One of the officers was treated for an injured knee.
[to top of second column] |
The Los Angeles Times newspaper reported the shooting was among
three incidents over about eight hours in which police fired their
weapons.
The officers had not been wearing body cameras and there was no
dashboard camera that captured the incident, the newspaper reported.
But the incident was recorded by a security camera on a nearby
building, the paper said.
Beck said police would host a town hall-style meeting in Venice on
Thursday, the Times said.
(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Alex
Richardson)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
