Officer in Shooting Won’t Face Reprimand

A Los Angeles police officer who fired nine shots into an 18-year-old Pacoima man wielding a broomstick a year ago must undergo tactical training but faces no disciplinary action, the city’s Board of Police Commissioners has decided.

The commission took action behind closed doors Tuesday on the fatal shooting of Efrain Lopez, upholding Police Chief Willie L. Williams’ findings and recommendations. Williams found that Officer Neil Goldberg, assigned to the Foothill Division station in Pacoima, acted within department guidelines for drawing his weapon and using deadly force.

Williams told police commissioners in his report that the investigation of the Nov. 9, 1992, shooting showed Lopez was under the influence of phencyclidine, also known as PCP or “angel dust,” and was swinging the one-pound, 40-inch broomstick wildly. He ignored several commands to drop it, then swung it at the officers, according to the report.

John C. Taylor, the attorney representing Lopez’s mother--Santos Gallardo--in a federal civil rights lawsuit against the department, called the report a “disappointing, unchallenged acceptance of the police officer’s version of what happened.”

“It’s zero consolation to Mrs. Gallardo that had this officer received more training, her son would be alive today,” Taylor said. The finding that Goldberg and his partner need training, he added, “pays lip service to the logically obvious conclusion that this person should not have been shot by the police officers.”

Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said her organization was “reluctant to challenge” the Police Commission as well as a decision last week by the district attorney’s decision not to file criminal charges because Lopez was “very high” and “acting outrageously.”

However, she said the incident indicates that police still “need to have better ways to deal with people who are drunk or under the influence of drugs other than shooting them.”

Williams had one criticism of the 31-year-old Goldberg’s actions: He discarded his baton when confronted by the broomstick-wielding suspect, which Williams said, “effectively limited his options to either hand-to-hand combat or possible use of his gun.”

But, the chief found, “the suspect’s violent and aggressive behavior” precipitated the shooting.

Goldberg “feared serious bodily injury or death,” and fired the nine rounds into the advancing suspect “in a controlled sequence,” the chief’s report concluded.

The shooting prompted strong community reaction at the time. At least 200 people marched on the Foothill Police Station several days after Lopez was killed.