Long Beach Shooting Spurs Homeless Debate

In less than a week, Long Beach police have killed two people in unusually public settings -- bringing to 22 the number of officer-involved shootings in the city in the last year and a half.

With at least a dozen adults and children looking on and hundreds more nearby, an officer in the Police Department’s Marine Division fatally shot a homeless man wielding a bicycle chain in front of the Aquarium of the Pacific on May 7. Then four days later, officers fatally wounded a gun-toting man at the end of car chase -- a shooting that some TV stations broadcast live.

While the shooting in the strip mall parking lot attracted national attention, the death of the homeless man, the culmination of an incident that began when he was asked to stop digging through the trash, renewed local lament about police interactions with homeless or mentally ill people turning violent.

Long Beach fired one officer last year after he fatally shot an unarmed homeless man at the back of a driveway, and a jury awarded damages to the family of a schizophrenic woman shot on a downtown corner.

Some city leaders said the police shootings show the need for more services for the mentally ill, drug addicts and the homeless, who are estimated at more than 6,000 in a city of 491,000 -- a city the U.S. Census says has the country’s seventh-highest percentage of people living below the poverty level.

Although Long Beach’s officer-involved shootings do not appear to be disproportionate to other urban cities of similar size, some of the shootings trouble community leaders.

“How can the police say that homeless men being shot after digging through the garbage be what they call a ‘good shoot’?” said Pastor Leon Wood, who runs a storefront congregation near downtown. Wood said he doesn’t know enough to pass judgment in the aquarium shooting but asked: “Couldn’t they try backing up, waiting for mental health people, spraying them with water?”

Homelessness in Long Beach remains a major issue, particularly in a downtown that had languished for decades but is now being revived with new high-rise condos, converted lofts and high-end restaurants -- pushing out the poor. Some of the recent confrontations with police, including the one at the aquarium, have involved homeless people scavenging recycling bins. Earlier this month, officials cleared out a large homeless encampment under the Long Beach Freeway to make way for a new road project.

“We have a terrible problem with homelessness in our city,” said City Council member Bonnie Lowenthal, whose district includes the downtown frequented by many street dwellers for whom there is no room at the city’s 1,900 shelter beds, “and we have to solve it.”

Added Pat Kennedy, executive director of the Greater Long Beach Interfaith Community Organization, which is the largest working on homeless housing:

“That this man at the aquarium would react so violently speaks to the desperation of the situation.... He clearly felt his livelihood was threatened, and if I had to survive on what I dug out of the trash, I’d be on edge, too.”

The incident unfolded on a Saturday afternoon, when an officer noticed a man digging through a trash can in front of the aquarium and asked him to stop it.

The man, who was identified as David Hunnewell, 44, ignored the officer and kept digging. It was about 4 p.m., and the aquarium had about 1,000 of its 5,000 visitors that day still on the grounds, aquarium officials said.

According to Cmdr. Jay Johnson, who oversees the homicide detail that investigates officer-involved shootings, the officer put his hand on Hunnewell’s arm and said, “Did you hear me? You need to stop that; it’s against the law.”

Hunnewell, thought to be a transient staying along the waterfront, marched toward his bicycle and clutched a looped handle of his two-pound bike chain. He charged the officer as witnesses stood nearby, Johnson said.

The officer told him to drop the chain, but Hunnewell advanced on him a total of 50 feet, Johnson said. The officer first pulled out his baton but dropped it and reached for his gun. From 10 feet away, the officer fired two shots at Hunnewell, who died later at a hospital.

The shooting is under investigation.

To those who have questioned the threat of a homeless man armed only with a bike chain, Long Beach Police Officers Assn. President Steve James said that the velocity of the chain and padlock had the potential to kill the officer.

“The police did not make him homeless, and he was not shot for digging through trash but his own actions after that,” said James.

The relationship between police and the homeless and mentally ill has been an issue in three shootings over the last few years.

Officers shot and killed Marcella Byrd, 57, in 2002 after she raised a knife on a downtown Long Beach street corner.

She was schizophrenic but unmedicated, had been accused of leaving a market with a cartful of unpaid groceries, and officers followed her for a few blocks.

That she was mentally ill and might have been disarmed without gunfire made for a charged debate. The officers were found to have acted under department policy, but the outcry led the department to double the number of teams of mental health professionals that are deployed in psychiatric situations and put more officers through crisis intervention training.

A civil jury awarded damages to Byrd’s family but not the millions they sought, in part because the jury assigned a degree of responsibility for the shooting to the victim, who refused to take her medication.

Last July, Officer David Garcia fatally shot the unarmed and homeless Keyante Reed at the end of a driveway.

After an investigation, the police department fired Garcia, who is appealing. The dead man’s family has filed a wrongful death claim against the city and alleged that the shooting might not have occurred had the patrolman had a partner.

On Aug. 20, another homeless man was shot by an officer but survived. That dispute also started over trash-digging, Johnson said.

With the city facing significant budget problems, finding a solution may be difficult. One proposal, made by Lowenthal, would be to direct a portion of the bed tax paid by residents of weekly rent motels to the city’s Housing Authority to help the homeless.