Families of Victims Shot by Police Call for Inquiry

Families of police shooting victims, displaying poster-size photographs of their slain relatives, angrily called Tuesday for an independent prosecutor to investigate the use of “excessive force” by law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles County.

The small gathering of protesters, who also pressed for a citizens committee to review alleged police abuse, accused Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner and his office of failing to aggressively prosecute law officers who wrongfully kill or injure citizens.

To dramatize their views, about a dozen protesters joined other members of the newly formed Coalition for Police Accountability at a sidewalk news conference outside the downtown Criminal Courts Building, where Reiner’s offices are located.

Among those present was the brother of Lawrence Watts, a 31-year-old carpenter from Lancaster, who was shot and killed May 18 by sheriff’s deputies in the parking lot of an Antelope Valley medical center.

Fatal Incident

The Sheriff’s Department claimed Watts had eluded deputies after a traffic stop, crashed his car against a wall and then tried to attack them with a “sharply pointed” hand rake.

Although the deputies were cleared in the shooting, Paul Watts said Tuesday that his brother’s death was unjustified and needed further investigation.

“They could have disarmed him easily. I think shooting and killing somebody for a minor offense like that is uncalled for,” he said.

Meanwhile, relatives of Marcus Donel, who was killed by a sheriff’s deputy May 30, also showed up to denounce authorities for allegedly protecting officers.

Donel, a black, was shot in a driveway behind his Hawthorne home after he was mistaken for a Latino man wanted in a nearby robbery. The Sheriff’s Department claimed Donel had shouted obscenities, failed to comply with deputies’ orders and appeared to be “reaching for a gun.”

But Donel’s sister, Tanya, disagreed and said the deputy who shot her brother and was cleared by the department should be prosecuted.

“What makes him so different that he can go out and shoot somebody and say, ‘Well, because I have a gun and badge, it’s OK whether it was the suspect or not.’ It’s just not right,” she said.

While the Donel and Watts cases are still under investigation, coalition members claimed that Reiner has failed to file charges in at least 15 other cases since 1985 in which black or Latino men were killed by deputies or police officers.

“We need prosecution outside the hands of his office. Nobody has the faith in him to accomplish the task. We’re just whistling in the wind, if we think he’ll prosecute,” said Geri Silva of the Equal Rights Congress.

Reiner was unavailable for comment Tuesday. But Assistant Dist. Atty. Curt Livesay defended the prosecutor’s office as independent of police agencies and said it treats police cases the same as other cases.

“If we can prove it, we file it,” he said. “Those are the standards we apply.”

Livesay added, “We’ve attempted our best here to address the problem of police shootings by investigating them and making some very tough decisions over the years. We stand on those decisions.”

Livesay oversees the district attorney’s special investigations division, which reviews all police shootings in the county to determine whether criminal charges should be filed. And he said his section has 10 lawyers and half a dozen investigators to specifically review police cases.

But the coalition--which also includes representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Latino Community Justice Center and the Police Misconduct Lawyer Referral Service--argues that the district attorney’s office has investigated more than 1,000 “use of force” cases since 1980 and moved to prosecute officers less than 2% of the time.

“We find an overwhelming reluctance on the part of the district attorney’s office to prosecute when there is clear evidence of misconduct,” said police activist Don Jackson, a former Hawthorne policeman who contended the district attorney’s office and police department have an “in-the-bed relationship” that compromises any investigations.

Asked about the 2% figure, Livesay said he was unsure exactly how many excessive force cases have actually been prosecuted by his office.

But he said he had no objection to the calls for a special prosecutor, which would require approval by the Legislature. “It makes no difference to me,” he said of such a post. “I might apply for that job.”