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LAPD officers shoot and kill homeless man

March 2, 2015

Los Angeles police shot and killed a homeless man on Sunday afternoon while being filmed by an onlooker. [Los Angeles Times]

The man, whom witnesses called “Africa,” was pronounced dead at the hospital. Two officers were treated for minor injuries.

Around noon, officers responded to the report of a robbery. Warning: the content of the video is disturbing.

Post by Anthony Blackburn.

The officers involved said the man grabbed for one of the officer’s gun before two officers shot him.

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So all you saviors of the poor and down trodden (or you think you are) are you still ready to defend the………….so called victim here…………..that came out today was a bank robber, living here in the U.S. under a stolen French visa? Yea I know, cops didn’t know that. Yea but it sure explains why he was fighting (we call it RESISTING) arrest so hard and grabbed the cops gun. But I’m sure you will still blame the cops as usual. That is what really is disgusting.


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So, what was the great crime and crisis situation that required this swarming ?

Why was there no violence until the violent cops showed up ?

Then, the poor man was FLAILING in desperation, not reaching; so the wolf-pack police just murdered him.


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So many crazy people down in that area, drugs, gangs, viciousness.

The cops are being waaaay too nice to people like this who cause trouble and resist arrest.


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Um, yeah, shooting and killing a man is being waaaay too nice. Really? That is your argument?


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Guy grabbed the cops gun. In case your hearing is bad bob, turn up the volume and you hear the cop say………….HE HAS MY GUN!!!! WTF should they do bob? Tell him to calm down and they will buy him milk and cookies? THANK GOD we don’t have you protecting the citizens. It would be a waste of good money.


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HANDS UP DON’T GET SHOT!


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The current training of law enforcement regarding use of force makes them more likely to be assaulted than ever before in history. My training from the old days was to neutralize the subject in 4 seconds or less or you’d potentially suffer grevious pain or death…..plain an simple and if you let a fight get out of control you’d likely face a serious write up.


Four guys on one made sense to me given our current “be nice” strategy. One for each flailing limb. They failed and found the suspect to exhibit a force greater than them and while he gained the advantage he made that final move for the officers gun. That created a need for a force greater than he was exhibiting.


Had they begun the encounter with pressure point punches and some serious stick time this seems like a basic two man arrest.


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Had they begun the encounter with pressure point punches and some serious stick time this seems like a basic two man arrest.

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Exactly. Now that you can’t stick beat a guy into submission you have to wrestle him down which creates a lot more risk of the perp going for your gun. Can’t have it both ways.


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“Now that you can’t stick beat a guy into submission you have to wrestle him down which creates a lot more risk of the perp going for your gun.”


Again, it is the lack of effective training that makes today’s LEO reach for his weapon sooner than they most likely should; let me be clear on this point- once the suspect starts reaching for an officer’s firearm, they have gone over the line and, unfortunately, are turning the situation into a life and death situation. Once that happens, the police officer is fully justified in killing a suspect to save his own life.


My problem with situations like this is that the ineffective training the officers have in subduing suspects quickly and efficiently is what allows situations to devolve into the life and death struggles where someone is killed. Strength or not, high on drugs or not, a well trained officer can subdue any suspect if they are properly trained. The fact that there were four officers on this guy and none of them could control him well enough to keep him from reaching for a firearm is beyond sad.


Of all the tools at the disposal of the modern law enforcement officer, firearm, taser, nightstick, mace (pepper spray) and handcuffs, none of them will ever work well enough if the officer isn’t trained well enough to use them well. It seems most LEOs do get adequate firearms training, and on the use of pepper spray, and possibly on nightstick use; where I feel most officers fall very short on is the use of a weaponless takedown, subduing suspects without lethal force, and restraining them well enough and long enough to get the restraints on them. If they do get any effective training in this area, apparently they are not required to practice these techniques, and once you stop training and practicing, you lose your confidence in your ability to use those techniques, so the modern officer is far more likely to reach for a weapon much more quickly, and in far too many cases, especially lately, what should be the weapon of last resort seems to be the weapon of first choice.


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Strength or not, high on drugs or not, a well trained officer can subdue any suspect if they are properly trained.

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Baloney. You’ve been watching too much video of people play submitting. That’s like watching the karate experts disarm people and block punches etc. in demonstrations. That’s phony stuff. Put them in a real situation, the closest simulated being a cage fight against just a street brawler MMA fighter and those experts never last one round. That’s reality. And those are professional karate and experts. Expecting cops to be expert in karate and/or Judo or any submission discipline is never going to happen. They are just ordinary working people not professional athletes. In real life, even the best trained officers can lose in an attempted take down.


And since when is it an officer’s duty to out-wrestle and crazed perp? And here they did try to taze him and it didn’t work.


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If I had a dangerous job outside machining the labor union rule was a partner. so two guys watched a boringbar go round and round instead of one man who may get caught in the machine.


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“Baloney” Apparently all you “know” of actual hand-to-hand techniques are what you’ve seen on various Youtube videos; that’s fine, many of them are staged, many of them are by people who have no expertise and are totally ineffective.


I have trained in a marital art, Aikido, and I can tell you from first hand experience that it works. While I have not had an encounter where someone is honestly trying to kill me, I have subdued individuals on three separate occasions. The training definitely works; however, the effectiveness is linked to repeated practice. The old saying about “use it or lose it” applies to hand to hand techniques.


My ongoing contention is that most law enforcement officers do not receive adequate weaponless training, and almost all of them do not keep their practice level up to snuff. When you do not stay trained at a high performance level, you lose the confidence that the training will work, and when that happens most LEOs will rely instead on their various weapons. And when there is no practice done with anything other than the firearm, the firearm becomes the first weapon of choice, not the “last resort” they are supposed to be.


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I have trained in a marital art, Aikido, and I can tell you from first hand experience that it works

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Ya, me too and so have a million other guys. And bottom line, rather than hoping a submission technique worked I’d much rather hit the guy with my stick from a distance with verbal commands to comply, then taze him and if he came at me or for my gun–shoot him. Especially if the guy outweighed my by 30lbs or looked super strong or crazy.


Let the word get out all across America. You fight a cop, you’re likely going to get shot. And nobody cares. There’s plenty of law abiding citizens ready to fill your space in the world.


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“Ya, me too …” um, I call bs on your statement. If you have ever had real training, where one practices being attacked over and over again, you would realize that the training does work. How big your attacker is has absolutely no bearing on how well the training works; in fact, since Aikido uses your opponents force against them, a bigger person has to attack you in a downward manner- so when you evade their attack and redirect their energy against them, their larger size is actually helping you defeat their attack. Again, if you had ever really had Aikido training, you would know that. Same thing goes for an attacker high on drugs; the fact that they seemingly feel no pain does not matter since you are using their own energy against them, and the pins and submissions are designed around how the human body works. You turn an arm a certain way, a wrist a certain way, it does not matter if the person cannot feel pain, you will be able to control them. Same thing for a “crazy” person; it just plain works, IF you have had adequate training AND you keep in practice.


Yes, let’s let the word get out; you are confronted by an officer of the law, you follow his instructions. You fight him and try to take his firearm, you are giving him permission to take your life.

If you are an officer of the law, don’t rely on your firearm alone; you are supposed to be a professional, shouldn’t you see to it that you are as competent as possible in doing your job in a way that does not result in any needless deaths of the very citizens you are supposed to be serving and protecting?


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How big your attacker is has absolutely no bearing on how well the training works; in fact, since Aikido uses your opponents force against them, a bigger person has to attack you in a downward manner- so when you evade their attack and redirect their energy against them, their larger size is actually helping you defeat their attack

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Really? Why do you think that in every fighting sport in the world they have weight classes about every 8-10lbs? Just 10lbs of weight difference make it virtually impossible for a lighter competitor to compete against a heavier competitor. Make it 20 or 30 or 50lbs and it’s not even a challenge for the bigger competitor.


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Excellent comment.


There should be a separate training series of excercises that all cops have to pass, for non-confrontational verbal encounters, and close combat w/out resort to deadly force.


There are so many more effective ways to diffuse or mitigate without threats and intimidation, like swarming.

Good cops know how to use these tactics. Bad cops are just cowards.


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It’s SIMPLE follow instructions and you wont get shot.

it’s funny how its always a color thing, Black man, video, killed….

if it’s dirty cops get rid of them….and just don;t fire them take any and all benefit package away.


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No, I don’t think it’s “funny” how its always a color thing.


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