LAPD shooting highlights department’s brutal tactics

On Aug. 12 around 1:40 p.m., officers from the Los Angeles Police Department Southwest Division shot and killed a woman in an alley while responding to a robbery. The suspect was found with a knife and envelope of money, and a cartridge from a taser was found discharged at the scene. The LAPD has not released much information about the suspect or the incident to protect the investigation, but the Los Angeles Times reports that the officers claim the suspect “began to advance toward one of the officers while still armed with the knife,” and a witness reports that she knows “for a fact that [the suspect] was not charging at them.”

Even as an isolated incident, these inconsistent facts would warrant an open and thorough investigation; within the context of recent racially charged shootings and America’s shocking tradition of police brutality and opacity, however, it is impossible not to pass judgment on the LAPD officers. This woman should not have been killed, and LAPD’s lack of transparency about the shooting further showcases the department’s lack of responsibility.

In a move toward what is surely self-protection, LAPD has refused to release details of the woman shot in Baldwin Hills. Reports so far do not state her name or race or other identifying characteristics of the incident. This thinly veiled political subversion in a climate in which another racially charged incident could elicit public outrage, however, is sure to backfire. LAPD wants the public to trust them, but the department’s refusal to release information about the incident increases the already pervasive skepticism regarding LAPD’s tactics.

Serving a city that saw one of the largest police brutality protests in U.S. history, LAPD needs to focus on forming community relationships and rebuilding the public’s trust. To ignore the sociopolitical context in which this month’s shooting occurred is to remain grossly ignorant of the department’s obligation to the people.

Even assuming the officers’ claims are true — which over and over in the past year and throughout American history have proven to be false — the suspect should not have died.

If multiple trained police officers with armor, tasers, handcuffs and other tools cannot take down one fleeing suspect armed with what the Los Angeles Times called a “large kitchen knife” without resorting to gunfire, the LAPD is embarrassingly incompetent. The other, far more likely possibility is that police in the United States are out of control.

Though the U.S. stands out among most Western countries in terms of size and population, it would make sense for countries with similar democratic and cultural structures to have similar methods of policing, which would correlate with similar rates of police shootings. According to the Guardian, however, England and Wales saw 55 fatal police shootings in the past 24 years, while the U.S. saw 59 fatal police shootings in just the first 24 days of 2015.  The LAPD alone has shot 25 and killed 13 in 2015. Though the U.S. population is five and a half times larger than England and Wales, the disparity is still incredible shocking.

Numbers like these do not indicate that the police are “just doing their jobs.” People in London are not better than people in Los Angeles, though the relative prevalence of guns in the                       U.S. certainly doesn’t help with gun-related crime rates. In any city, there is crime and there are police who deal with it; the problem is not with the American people, it is with how police view themselves and the people they are supposed to “protect and serve.”

Hearing about police shooting and killing a suspect in any crime, even a violent one in which the officer had no choice, should be shocking and saddening. Any killing is tragic for both the victim and the perpetrator. Hearing about police shooting and killing someone for reasons regarding race or police aggression should elicit absolute disgust. In the U.S., however, both have become so commonplace that police assaults are considered the norm.

Police should be members of their community, reluctant to unholster their guns unless their own lives are endangered, and it would be a mistake not to acknowledge that there are exemplary officers who deserve recognition. Police forces as an institution in the U.S., however, are racist, over-militarized and almost entirely separated from the communities they are paid to protect, viewing their citizens as potential enemies to be taken down rather than fellow humans to empathize with.

Los Angeles — and the nation as a whole — needs a complete rethinking of the role of the police. LAPD must remain transparent about all cases, especially those in which a suspect is killed.

The department also requires larger, structural change to lessen police aggression and intimidation tactics that unfairly target minorities and excessively terrorize citizens. Only then can the LAPD have the audacity to expect trust from the community.