LAPD police chief silent on fate of officers faulted in Ezell Ford death

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/10/los-angeles-police-officers-ezell-ford

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The fate of two Los Angeles police officers who shot dead an unarmed, mentally ill black man remains unclear, despite a civilian review body faulting their actions.

Police chief Charlie Beck was silent on Wednesday about whether the officers will be punished, a day after the police commission found that one of the officers comprehensively violated department policy and that the other officer was unjustified in drawing his weapon.

Beck alone is authorised to sanction the officers yet he has made clear he believes they did nothing wrong, prompting speculation they will escape with little or no punishment for killing Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old detained and shot three times near his home in south Los Angeles last August.

Beck and an independent inspector general found the shooting – which fanned tensions over police violence – to be consistent with department policy because Ford apparently reached for a gun.

On Tuesday however, the five-member police commission ruled that Sharlton Wampler, a 13-year veteran of the force, and his partner Antonio Villegas, acted improperly when they drew their guns. It also ruled that Wampler acted improperly in approaching Ford and using his gun.

Ford’s mother, Tritobia Ford, who made an impassioned plea for justice to the commission, welcomed the ruling for declaring that what happened to her son was “wrong”. But she expressed concern that the police chief would give only a “slap on the wrist” to the officers.

At a news conference, Mayor Eric Garcetti said Los Angeles’s police oversight system had worked well and expressed confidence Beck “will enact appropriate discipline based on what the commission has rendered”. However the mayor did not say what punishment the officers should face, saying that was up to the chief.

Beck left his intentions unclear in a brief statement: “I respect the process and the decision made in this matter.”

Merrick Bobb, of the Police Assessment Resource Center, a nonprofit which advocates police accountability and innovation, said the division of power between the civilian-run commission and the chief had left the outcome unclear. “There seem to be contradictions and ironies there.”

Bobb said he would advise the chief to discipline the officer deemed to have comprehensively violated department policy. “Whether he will, I don’t know.”

In a column in the Los Angeles Times, Steve Lopez said it was a “strange twist to a bizarre process” that Beck must decide how to discipline officers he has already exonerated.

“Typical of the secretive way the city handles these matters, we don’t know when Beck will make those decisions, nor will we necessarily get an explanation as to his deliberations.”

There is also a spotlight on the city’s attorney general, Jackie Lacey, who is conducting a separate investigation into the shooting. Steve Soboroff, the police commission’s president, said the panel would send her its findings.

Ford told reporters that justice for her son required action from the DA. “We need to hear from you. The investigation is over. You need to step up.”

Ford was killed two days after Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the case has been emotional from the outset. Those emotions threatened to boil over after the Los Angeles Times reported last Friday that both the police department and an independent police watchdog were planning to find the killing “in policy”. Had that finding been upheld it would have meant that the officers, both members of an anti-gang unit, were exonerated and free to return to patrolling the streets.

Both Beck, the police chief, and Mayor Garcetti have made it a priority to avoid the divisive, hostile and frequently violent style of policing that once made the LAPD notorious. They have struggled, however, with a police culture that still provokes more civilian deaths than any other city in the United States.

Ford was one of 18 people killed by the LAPD last year. A Guardian investigation found the LAPD to be the most lethal police force in the US in 2015.