Probe of Police Demanded in Fatal Shooting

Community activists Sunday demanded investigations by the Los Angeles Police Commission and the U.S. Justice Department into whether excessive force was used by LAPD officers in the shooting death of a homeless woman Friday on La Brea Avenue.

The victim, who remained unidentified, was shot after police said she threatened officers with a screwdriver when they approached her to ask if the shopping cart she was pushing had been stolen.

Standing in front of a makeshift memorial of flowers, candles and incense at the site where the woman was killed, a few activists called for a probe of the shooting independent of the one being conducted by the LAPD. “It’s very, very important that the police not investigate themselves,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a talk show host.

An independent investigation also should examine the LAPD’s training procedures and guidelines for use of deadly force in non-felony stops of citizens, Hutchinson said. “Nobody should have lost their life” in the incident because only a shopping cart was involved, he said. “No major crime was committed.”

And he said a new panel, patterned after the Christopher Commission, which examined police conduct after the Rodney King beating, should be appointed by the mayor and City Council to investigate allegations that the LAPD and other police agencies engage in racial profiling of citizens.

He was joined in the appeal by Najee Ali, director of Project Islamic Hope, which plans a demonstration in front of the LAPD’s Parker Center headquarters Thursday. “We are outraged that a homeless woman, the weakest person in society, would be shot down and murdered in cold blood by the Los Angeles Police Department,” he said.

“Something is wrong in America when a shopping cart has more value than someone’s life,” said Melvin Farmer, an activist with a coalition opposed to California’s tough three-strikes sentencing law.

An LAPD spokesman said the department had no comment. And the county coroner’s office declined to release the victim’s name until relatives are notified.

In a report obtained by The Times this month the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has recommended to the president and Congress that a special prosecutor be created to pursue allegations that local law enforcement officers have engaged in abuse of citizens in Los Angeles.

The commission voiced concern that the district attorney’s office has failed to prosecute police misconduct cases.