Los Angeles Cops Going For Some Kind Of People-Of-Color Killing Record We Guess

There were three in the first week of the year.

Keenan Anderson, a cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, died of cardiac arrest last week ( Washington Post gift link) after being tased repeatedly by Los Angeles police following a traffic accident. Anderson, 31, was a 10th grade English teacher in Washington DC; he'd been in LA visiting family.

Anderson's death was one of three Los Angeles police killings of people of color in the first week of the year; all involved people who were in mental distress. In one case, Takar Smith, 45, was shot dead after his wife had specifically told police he was having a mental health crisis. She'd gone to a police station to report in person that he was violating a restraining order, but also to let them know he was in crisis; she also informed police about his mental state when they arrived on the scene.

As the Los Angeles Times points out, LA has "Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Teams" — or SMART teams, even if the "T" is redundant — that can be called to accompany police. A SMART team was available at the time police responded to the Smith call, but hadn't been called. Instead, police confronted Smith, who swung a chair at them and then picked up a knife, so the cops shot him. No doubt it'll be determined a justified use of deadly force, because after all he was threatening the officers.

In another incident, LA cops shot and killed Oscar Sanchez, 35, who was also behaving erratically, throwing an "unknown metal object" at a motorist and then running into a vacant house; instead of calling for a SMART team, police broke down the door and shot Sanchez, who was waving around an improvised knife.

Yesterday, police released a video of Anderson's January 3 arrest, narrated by an LAPD spokesperson and containing edited body camera footage; it initially shows Anderson, confused and not making a lot of sense, talking to a motorcycle cop who'd arrived following the car accident. Anderson said at several points that someone was trying to kill him, and while the cop told him to stay sitting on the sidewalk, he became increasingly upset and agitated before running off into traffic.

Here's the thing: Anderson didn't take off running until about seven minutes into the encounter. The motorcycle cop called for police backup, but despite Anderson's strange behavior, didn't call for a SMART team.

The cop followed a short distance on his motorcycle, and other police arrived just after the first officer caught up with Anderson and began ordering him to lie on the ground. (The Full Cop Voice shouting is a remarkable difference from the relatively calm tone the officer took at first.) The police tried to restrain Anderson, who was panicked and calling for help as they tried to cuff him. At one point, while an officer had an elbow jammed against his throat, Anderson shouted "They’re trying to George Floyd me!" Shortly after that, after warning Anderson several times, a cop holds the active Taser to Anderson's back for multiple jolts of current, the longest about 11 seconds.

Anderson was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Santa Monica, where he was pronounced dead some four and a half hours after the police tased him.

LAPD Chief Michel Moore said at a news conference Wednesday that

Anderson was in an “altered mental state” and claimed that a preliminary blood test from police showed that cannabis and cocaine were in his system.

Moore also told reporters that he had "expedited" release of the body cam footage in all three cases

so that they could be released Wednesday instead of the usual 45-day period. He noted it was important given the “substantial public interest” in a series of tragedies that “deeply concerned” him.

Again, in two of the incidents there was a guy threatening violence, but in all three, police seemed to understand that the people were behaving strangely before they used deadly force. Smith's wife even took extraordinary steps to let the cops know he was in a mental health crisis, for all the good that did.

Why wasn't a trained mental health team dispatched along with the police? Los Angeles, unlike too many places, even has the teams, but it would be good to use them, huh?

 In an interview with the Post, Cullors said the police certainly hadn't protected or served her cousin:

“The video footage was clear. He was scared, he was asking for help, he was begging for help. That’s not what he received on January 3rd,” she said. “It’s very critical for people to understand that when you are living and breathing, you deserve to receive care. My cousin needed care and he did not get care. He was stolen from us. He was killed.”

Cullors told the Post that she has been organizing to call for justice for her cousin, adding, "I do all of this because this is the work I do [...] but I’ve never had to do it for my own family."

So here we are again, with the usual comments (don't read them) in the Washington Post whitesplaining that instead of calling for police to treat Black people as human beings, Black Lives Matter should be teaching all Black people to never resist and always comply with cops' orders, don't do cocaine, and they'll be fine, just fine.

And the police are deeply concerned, so there's that.

[ WaPo (gift link) / LAT / CNN ]

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