Questions for the LAPD

It will take a thorough investigation to know whether Los Angeles Police Department Officer Karen Thiffault, a 12-year LAPD veteran, was justified in shooting a naked teenager she said was acting irrationally and lunging for her gun.

But no matter what the finding, the death of 16-year-old Felix Valenzuela last month brings to 38 the number of people exhibiting unstable behavior because of drugs or mental illness shot by the LAPD since 1994. The number who died is now 26, which includes Margaret Laverne Mitchell, the homeless woman killed last May by an officer who feared she would harm him with a screwdriver.

Isn’t there a better way to deal with people exhibiting such behavior? Isn’t the need to find a better way--and train officers accordingly--obvious by now?

Valenzuela was standing in the middle of a nearly deserted San Fernando Valley intersection, naked and bloodied (apparently from climbing a razor wire fence), when Thiffault, her rookie partner and two firefighters responded to a predawn call.

According to a written account released by police, Thiffault, suspecting Valenzuela was on PCP, tried to talk to him and calm him, but he charged her.

The questions that must be asked are these: Seeing that Valenzuela was acting irrationally and suspecting that he was under the influence of drugs, did the officers maintain a safe distance from him? Did they have nonlethal weapons readied if needed to subdue this clearly unarmed man? If not, did they call for backup officers who would have such weapons? And, most important, were they trained to consider such options?

No one wants to see police officers’ lives placed in needless jeopardy. But a thorough examination of, and training in, ways to handle these dangerous situations could help officers learn to defuse them, protecting both themselves and the lives of homeless women and 16-year-old boys.