Michael Codero was shot and killed by LAPD cops

Responding to reports of someone disturbing the peace, police shot and killed a man Monday afternoon in the Lake Balboa neighorhood of the San Fernando Valley.

The deadly confrontation occurred around 1 p.m. on Skagg Street between Andasol and Encino Avenues, where the LAPD said the man was behaving erratically.

Prior to firing, the responding officers used non-lethal force, deploying a stun gun and firing a bean bag round, in an attempt to “de-escalate” the situation, but that was not effective, said LAPD Lt. John Jenal.

The man had a history of public intoxication and previous encounters with police, according to neighbors and the man’s mother.  Maria Luisa Codero identified him as her 34 year old son Michael.

The man never carried a gun, they said, and Lt. Jenal said he had no information on whether a weapon was recovered.  It was not immediately revealed what prompted officers to use force.

“He was a peaceful drunk,” Cordero said in Spanish.  Neighbors said he was usually friendly, but at times became obnoxious and combative.

The call that brought officers came from a neighbor who reported the man was physically abusing a woman on the sidewalk, according to LAPD Capt. Paul Vernon.

The caller, who asked not to be identified, was in her car when she witnessed the man “harrass” a woman and  push her into a fence, she told NBC4.

“She looked at me–we made eye contact–she said ‘help me,” said the neighbor. She said she recognized the man, and as she drove up and told him to go home, the woman ran away. The caller said she drove off thinking the man was going back to the house where he had been staying.

That incident was reported near the intersection of Andasol Ave. and Elkwood St.  The encounter with police occurred a block and a half away.  An LAPD helicopter also responded

Before the confrontation, the man had been staying at the house of Kim Romo, she said.

“These cops know Michael,” Romo said.  “They know he doesn’t carry weapons.”

At one point, the man fell down in the street, and had to helped up, according to Michelle Johnson, who called him a friend.

The man went to the backyard of the home of a Romo relative, and it was when he came out the gate into the front yard that the confrontation occured with the officers, Romo said.

“He staggered over toward the (police) car and they shot him six times,” said Johnson.  She said she witnessed the encounter, but made no mention of seeing police using the stun gun or firing a bean bag round..

Aerial video showed what appeared to be the body of a person on the sidewalk covered by a white sheet.

No officers were injured during the incident.

LAPD’s Force Investigation Division brought in portable lighting and remained at the scene well into the night.

A man views a memorial for a man killed by police on skid row in Los Angeles, California, March 2, 2015.
Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

Saying officer-involved shootings have nearly doubled since last year, the president of the Los Angeles Police Commission called Tuesday for efforts to help reduce such shootings and other use-of-force by officers.

Matt Johnson said the increase from 23 officer-involved shootings last year to 45 so far this year is an “alarming development.”

“I believe we can work toward vastly reducing the number of use-of-force incidents through extensive training and modifying our tactics,” he said.

Fellow commissioners, along with Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck, threw their support behind Johnson’s proposals, which include looking back on the past 10 years of shootings and use-of-force by Los Angeles police officers, along with the changes in training and policies that have occurred during that time.

Johnson asked for a comparison of Los Angeles’ officer-involved shootings and other uses of force with those of other law-enforcement agencies around the country.

He also suggested taking a look at how the department might use more non-lethal weapons, such as stun guns and beanbag guns, during interactions with suspects carrying knives or other weapons that are not firearms, and with those who are mentally ill.

Also proposed was an annual reporting of use-of-force cases that would contain information to help the Police Commission review such cases and create policy. Johnson asked that a final draft of the reporting format be presented to the commission in 30 days.

Johnson also called on the Office of the Inspector General to monitor and report back on the effectiveness of police training programs and to create an audit plan for the department’s use of body cameras.

These steps “will be tools to guide us on how and where we can improve the department,” Johnson said.

“Once we have this information, it will be our collective responsibility — the department, this commission and the community — to use it to continue the reform efforts that began with the consent decree and to build the LAPD into the best trained, best equipped, most professional and most respected police organization in America,” he said.

Commissioner Kathleen Kim said she “fully” supports Johnson’s recommendations.

“In taking a critical look at use-of-force, it (Johnson’s proposal) not only aims to reduce uses of force for public safety, but also for officer safety, and I think that’s really critical to keep in mind,” she said.

She added she hopes “the role of race will also be looked at,” and that there will be a “fresh look and a critical evaluation of the legal standards and the policies in place” around officer shootings and use-of-force.

Beck said he has been guiding the department in the same direction outlined under Johnson’s proposal, and that it is “very heartening to see the commissioner and I share a vision of what needs to happen.”

He said it would be “a good thing to compare us nationally,” and also noted that while the number of police shootings has almost doubled, that number “is small compared to the number of contacts the police department makes.”

By Elizabeth Hsing-Huei Chou for DailyNews.com

Police in plainclothes shot a 15-year-old black boy in the back and hauled his Latino friend down to the precinct, without warning, while they were on their way to school, parents say in a $20 million federal complaint.

The teens and two friends had been on their way to school on Feb. 10, 2015, when they stopped in an alley near 10th and West Florence avenues, according to the complaint filed Wednesday.

It was about 7:45 a.m., and the teens were playing rap music while changing into their Alliance Renee & Meyer Luskin College-Ready Academy uniforms when detectives in plainclothes appeared.

“Without warning or identifying themselves,” the Los Angeles police officers “opened fired,” shooting them with at least three rounds of bullets, the complaint states.

Suing through his mother, Jamar Nicholson, 15, says he was hit once in the back with a 9mm bullet.

Jason Huerta, 17, who sued through his father, says the police “violently kicked and stomped … [on his] back and neck.”

Police arrested all the boys “as though they had committed a crime,” the complaint states.

Nicholson says his gunshot wound was bleeding profusely but that the officers left him sitting on the curb in handcuffs without getting him medical attention.

Once at the hospital, Nicholson was kept handcuffed to the gurney, according to the complaint.

Huerta meanwhile was hauled down to the 77th Precinct and kept for several hours without food and water.

Both boys say police interrogated them without reading them their Miranda rights.

Police also barred the boys from calling their parents, and they didn’t make the calls either.

Geraldine Nicholson says her son’s school called her to report the boy’s absence, but that police had deliberately lied to the school when they asked about the shooting.

Police told the school Jerome “was not involved in the shooting,” according to the complaint.

Nicholson’s attorney, John W. Harris, said in a news conference that the teens had not threatened anyone, but that police “shot first and asked questions later,” according to an article by the Los Angeles Times.

The LAPD told the Times that one of the teens was holding what officers thought was a gun when they fired on the group. They said the weapon turned out to be a toy gun with a bright orange tip at the end of the barrel to indicate it is a toy.

Nicholson and Huerta say “race was a substantial factor in the shooting.”

They note that Nicholson is black and Huerta is Mexican-American.

In addition to the city of Los Angeles, Nicholson and Huerta’s parents names as defendants police chief Charles Beck, commander Andrew Smith and officer Miguel Gutierrez, who fired the shot that struck Nicholson.

They seek punitive damages for discrimination, unreasonable search and seizure, false arrest and imprisonment, excessive force, assault and battery, and other charges.

The Los Angeles Police Department declined to comment.

Norma “Angie” Guzman

New video footage emerged Saturday of the moments after Los Angeles Police Department officers shot and killed a mentally-ill woman Sept. 27 in South Los Angeles.

The cell phone video shows police surrounding Norma “Angie” Guzman, 37, just after the shooting.

Sergio, who asked not to show his face on camera, was nearby and didn’t see the confrontation between Guzman and the officers

“I heard four very loud shots,” Sergio said. “I turned around, and I see this lady spread all over the sidewalk; a very bloody scene.”

Police responded to a call reporting Guzman allegedly threatening a man with a knife, which she refused to drop, police said.

Protesters gathered Saturday to march from San Pedro Street — the scene of the crime — to LAPD’s Newton Division Office to demand major departmental changes.

“We feel that other methods could have been used to stop her rather than putting four bullets into her,” David Sanchez, a protester, said.

Guzman’s family said she was prone to outbursts, during which she would shout and behave irrationally.

“She might have had a few problems, but that’s no reason to shoot her down, dead,” Sanchez said.

Rufino Munoz, Guzman’s friend of 15 years, said she wasn’t a violent person.

Protesters said they believe the police overreacted, but Munoz said he understood their decision to shoot.

“They have a family to go to,” Munoz said. “They have children to see tonight.”

LAPD has not commented on the incident, and said the investigation was ongoing.

It is unclear yet what led to the shooting, but police sources claim the Los Angeles woman was armed with a knife. Eyewitnesses, however, say the woman, who was homeless, did not have a knife.

The LA Police Department (LAPD) says officers responded to a call of an armed woman at 22nd and San Pedro streets around 9:30 a.m. on Sunday.

Paramedics were sent to the area at 9:42 a.m. and rushed the woman to a nearby hospital, where she died.

One of the two LAPD officers involved in the incident is a training officer while the other is a probationary officer.

Both are being placed on administrative leave as is standard protocol after any officer-involved shooting.

On Wednesday, a police officer in the US state of Maryland fatally shot an unarmed 19-year-old African American man as he allegedly tried to purchase narcotic medicine with a fake prescription.

Also, a video shot the same day showed US police officers fatally shooting a paralyzed black man in wheelchair in the State of Delaware.

The latest killings come amid growing sentiments against police violence against unarmed African-Americans in the past year.

Protests and riots have occurred across the US against police brutality and racial injustice since last summer.

Nearly 900 people have been killed by police since the beginning of 2015, according to data collected by an activist group known as Killed by Police.

On Monday, the LAPD will mobilize its own major body camera system; 7,000 body cameras will be deployed. “The first batch of cameras — 860 devices purchased with about $1.5 million in private donations — will be given to officers within the next month, the LAPD’s chief information officer told the Police Commission on Tuesday,” the Los Angeles Times reported. It will be the largest body camera program in the nation, but many are concerned with a lack of transparency.

The department’s police commission voted in April to let officers review footage before writing their reports detailing what happened during an altercation with a citizen, and the department does not plan on letting the public view any footage unless there is a criminal or civil investigation taking place, the Los Angeles Times reports. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck has explained that police oversight entities—the district attorney, city attorney, and the Police Commission and inspector general—will get to review the footage.

“I think people misunderstand transparency as having everybody and all the public have access to everything,” Beck said according to the Los Angeles Times. “And it isn’t so much that as having the ability for oversight by multiple entities outside of the Police Department. I think that’s the meaning of transparency. I don’t think that transparency means we post every interaction on YouTube.”

He also stated that part of the reason the footage would not be accessible to the public is due to protecting the privacy of people whose homes and/or incidents the police visit or respond to. “People invite us into their homes on their worst possible day, and I don’t think they invite us with the intention of having that interaction made public,” Beck stated.

However, one of the reasons so many people have called for putting body cameras on the police is to hold officers accountable for their actions, if members of the public believe there was wrongdoing. Letting the department keep the footage to itself and letting officers conceivably write their incident reports based on what can be seen in the footage doesn’t appear to curtail the overall problem, critics argue.

The Southern California branch of the ACLU has been a consistent critic of the LAPD’s policy, and it spoke out again last week. “We give police more authority than nearly any other public servant—the power to stop us and our neighbors, detain us, search us, even to kill in our name,” Peter Bibring, director of police practices for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said in a statement. “The public has a right to know how police use that authority, and especially have a right to know what happened when police abuse that authority. This secrecy around peace officer records undermines transparency, obstructs efforts to hold law enforcement accountable for its actions, and breeds distrust between police and the communities they serve.”

A poll detailed in the recent statement, which was conducted for the ACLU, found four in five voters in California want the police to wear body cameras, and nearly 80 percent believe “where police have engaged in misconduct, the public should have access to the findings and conclusions of investigations into that misconduct.” As for situations where there is only alleged misconduct by a police officer, 64 percent supported giving the public access to investigation reports.

While the decision to instigate a body camera program appears to be a significant steptoward police accountability, it seems somewhat hollow without significant policies regarding transparency. For more information, here’s when you can record the police.

Written by Thor Benson for att.com

The military surveillance devices known as “Dirtboxes” have been in secret operation for more than a decade, tracking citizens’ locations and intercepting their calls, breaking the encryption on hundreds of calls at once.

DRT boxes (named for Digital Receiver Technology Inc, a Boeing subsidiary), are called “Stingrays on steroids” — Stingrays are the powerful, secretive fake cell towers used to track whole populations’ movements around cities. Dirtboxes are often mounted on low-flying aircraft and used for mass-scale urban surveillance.

Dirtboxes are used by the US military and NSA overseas, including in France. Because of the secrecy surrounding Dirtboxes, they are acquired through no-bid contracts, and many of the cases in which they are used collapse in court because police departments are unwilling to reveal their phone surveillance capabilities in public forums.

Chicago bought their Dirtboxes with cash seized in dubious civil forfeiture cases; LAPD’s funding came from a DHS national security grant.

The main difference between the Harris and Digital Receiver Technology devices, Martinez said, is the ability of the most sophisticated Digital Receiver Technology devices to simultaneously break the encryption of communications from hundreds of cellphones at once. A 2011 purchase order for this equipment by the Washington Headquarters Services, a branch of the Pentagon, states the devices can retrieve the encryption session keys for a cellphone “in less than a second with success rates of 50 to 75% (in real world conditions).”

In Chicago, cell-site simulators have been used to eavesdrop on the activities of demonstrators during a 2012 NATO summit and Black Lives Matter demonstrations last year.

“What’s happened here is the U.S. goes to war against a foreign country under dubious circumstances, private companies develop these surveillance technologies with the help of the CIA and NSA, and they import them back home and use them on Americans,” Martinez said.

Chicago and Los Angeles have used ‘dirt box’ surveillance for a decade [Ali Winston/Reveal News]

A funeral service was held Saturday for a homeless man who was shot and killed by police officers on Los Angeles’ Skid Row more than two months ago.

Family members of Cameroonian national Charly Leundeu Keunang arrived from the East Coast to Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles’ West Adams District to remember the man many knew as “Africa.”

Keunang, 43, was killed March 1 by LAPD officers who were responding to a robbery report on Skid Row. During the confrontation, captured on surveillance cameras, police body cameras and witness video, Keunang struggled with one of the officers over the officer’s gun during a struggle, according to police.

“We have labored for the last few months to try to bring dignity and a real human story to the life of a man who tragically lost his life,” said Gregory Johns of West Angeles Church of God and Christ at the funeral.