LAPD's Excessive Use of Force Investigated

Videos released this week of a teacher who died after Los Angeles police discharged a Taser on him at least six times on a Venice street raises serious concerns about the officers’ tactics, law enforcement experts who reviewed the tapes said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrN6q49QWCU

The LAPD’s actions have sparked alarms from community activists as well as Mayor Karen Bass and is now the subject of an internal investigation.

Several policing experts who reviewed the video for the Los Angeles Times said the amount of force used by the officers seemed excessive given the man’s actions and that some of the tactics seemed haphazard.

“It is going to be hard to convince any judge that these officers were using reasonable force,” said Ed Obayashi, a Northern California deputy and a top state adviser on police tactics. “From the visual aspect, it looks like he is not fighting back; he is not threatening the officers. He is saying I am not resisting … and what could be considered resisting is an automatic reflex of the body to the pain application from the Taser.”

In the videos, Keenan Anderson becomes distraught and cries out for help as multiple officers hold him down.

“They’re trying to George Floyd me,” he screams, referencing the Minneapolis man killed by police as one officer briefly has his elbow on or around Anderson’s neck as he is held down on the blacktop.

Eventually, he is handcuffed and hobbled at his ankles before paramedics take him away. Four hour later, he died at the hospital. A cause of death has not been established.

The incident began Jan. 3 at 3:30 p.m. with a motorcycle officer arriving at what the LAPD characterized as a “felony hit-and-run” car crash at Venice and Lincoln boulevards. Police said Anderson was in the middle of the street, declaring, “Please help me.” LAPD Chief Michel Moore alleged this week that another driver reported that Anderson had attempted “to get into another car without his permission.”

Anderson then wanders in and out of cars, with the officer telling him to get on the sidewalk, according to the video. The officer yells, “Get up against the wall.”

Anderson then holds up his hands. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.” Anderson sits down on the sidewalk.

After a gap of several minutes, Anderson declares, “I want people to see me,” and “you’re putting a thing on me.”

That is when Anderson gets up and runs back into the roadway, according to the video. When Anderson stops, an officer says, “Turn over on your stomach.” As a swarm of officers move in, Anderson cries out to onlookers, “Please help me,” and says the officers are “trying to kill me.”

Officers then attempt to pin him down. One can be seen on the video placing his elbow on Anderson’s neck while he lays on his back. The officer standing above him shouts, “Turn over, or I’m going to tase you.”

The officer then fires the darts of the stun gun into Anderson’s back and pulls the trigger attempting to discharge the muscle-constricting electrical pulse. He discharges the Taser twice and then repeatedly applied the Taser in stun mode directly to Anderson’s back at least four times.

Moore said data from the Taser weapon showed “there were six separate activations over 42 seconds. The first two (were) in the probe mode. We believe the darts weren’t effective. Then four activations over 33 seconds” in the stun mode in which the pulse was applied directly to the skin.

Walter Katz, a former independent police auditor in California and Chicago, said it’s up to the coroner to determine the role of the Taser in Anderson’s death, but either way that doesn’t mean the officer’s action were appropriate.

Katz said the incident begins to go wrong when the officer with the Taser directs Anderson to turn over on his stomach and stop resisting.

“The first application of Taser is in such a way that if effective contracts the muscles so the person cannot move and makes them unable to comply with that order,” he said.

Then, Katz said, the officer used the Taser on Anderson’s body repeatedly without really giving the man the chance to reset. Katz said it should have been clear by that point that Anderson’s behavior suggested he wasn’t rational.

“To do more tasering to me was a poor decision,” he said. “This officer went down the path of this is the tool I am going to use.”

Under LAPD policy, “there is no pre-set limit on the number of times a Taser can be used in a particular situation; however, officers should generally avoid repeated or simultaneous activations to avoid potential injury,” Moore said.... (Read more)

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