Shooting Protest Focuses on Officers’ Shaved Heads

Police officers who have cut their hair to protest the plan to fire four officers involved in the fatal shooting of Tyisha Miller in December were ridiculed Monday by speakers at the weekly demonstration protesting her death.

Among the critics was U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who told more than 100 rally participants: “Police officers who have shaved their heads must be made to understand they are symbols of skinheads . . . and they are racist.”

She said officers who have gotten haircuts “represent what the Ku Klux Klan represents with sheets.”

Sgt. Ron White, a member of the Riverside Police Officers Assn. board of directors, said such characterizations “are totally ridiculous. We’ve done this as a show of solidarity, and we take great exception to the suggestion that cutting our hair short is demonstrative of us being white supremacists.”

During her remarks, Waters also encouraged blacks to take greater responsibility for their own lives, saying that families are weary of attending funerals and visiting men in prisons.

“When we get our act together, the police will get their act together,” Waters said.

Miller, 19, was killed after the four officers, responding to a medical 911 call, found her passed out in a locked vehicle with a gun in her lap. They said that when they broke a window to grab the gun, she moved for it, prompting them to open fire.

The Riverside County district attorney’s office cleared the officers of criminal wrongdoing and said it found no indication that the shooting was racially motivated. The Police Department said it has given the officers notice of termination, which the officers’ attorney said will be appealed.