Police Slaying of Woman Violated Policy, Panel Says

A sharply divided Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday rejected the recommendation of Chief Bernard C. Parks and found that the fatal police shooting of a frail homeless woman last year violated department policy.

Three of the five commissioners sided with their civilian watchdog, Inspector General Jeffrey C. Eglash, who concluded that 55-year-old Margaret Mitchell did not pose a deadly threat to two bicycle patrol officers who stopped her to determine whether she was pushing a stolen shopping cart.

One of the officers, Edward Larrigan, shot the 5-foot-1, 102-pound, mentally ill woman when she allegedly lunged at him with a 12-inch screwdriver, police have said.

Board President Gerald L. Chaleff, along with Commissioners T. Warren Jackson and Dean Hansell, said in a written statement that they recognized that Larrigan honestly believed that he was in imminent danger.

“However, the preponderance of evidence does not support that degree of threat based on the totality of the circumstances, including Ms. Mitchell’s stature and age,” the statement read. “We also believe that the officer had not exhausted all reasonable alternatives at the time he fired.”

Commissioners Herbert F. Boeckmann and Raquelle De La Rocha, who found that Larrigan acted within policy, also issued a written statement supporting their view.

“In the final analysis, we find that the officers’ perceptions of immediate threat were not unreasonable and that Officer Larrigan’s use of deadly force was within department policy,” that statement said.

The commission found that Larrigan’s partner, Kathy Clark, who did not fire her weapon, should receive additional training based on her role in the incident.

Since the May 21, 1999, shooting, community and police activists have been closely monitoring the commission’s handling of the case to see whether the board would find the incident in or out of policy. The civilian panel was in the politically difficult position of having to decide whether to side with its strong-willed police chief or its independent inspector general, who were at odds on the issue.

The commission’s ruling, clearly a blow to Parks, comes at a time when the department is dealing with the ever-expanding Rampart corruption scandal, in which more than 70 LAPD officers are under investigation for either committing crimes or knowing about them and helping to cover them up. The commission’s siding with Eglash could signal an enhanced role for the civilian watchdog as the Rampart probe continues to unfold.

Parks, while finding that Larrigan’s tactics in the Mitchell shooting were improper, recommended that his use of force be found “in policy.”

Eglash, however, concluded in a confidential report to the commission that civilian witnesses at the scene did not see Mitchell lunge at Larrigan, as the department says she did, sources said. Eglash also determined that the tactics employed by Larrigan were so poor that they contributed to the shooting, those sources said.

Months of Deliberations

The commission spent months deliberating over the incident and even considered changing the way the department evaluates shootings. On Tuesday, after more than five hours in closed session, the panel reached its split decision. Four commissioners declined comment after the vote. Boeckmann could not be reached for comment.

Cmdr. David J. Kalish, the department’s spokesman, said the chief was unavailable for comment. Kalish did not criticize the board’s findings.

“It’s the role of the Police Commission to make a final determination on the use of force and that’s what it did,” Kalish said. “The case will now be referred back to the department for the administration of discipline.”

Kalish said Larrigan faces a wide range of possible punishment, from a written reprimand to termination.

Attorney Leo Terrell, who represents Mitchell’s family, said he was pleased with the outcome.

“The three members who voted for the shooting to be out of policy did the right thing,” said Terrell, who is suing the city on behalf of the family. “The commissioners who voted against that finding should be ashamed of themselves.”

Terrell called on Parks to resign, adding that the chief “owes the city of Los Angeles and the Mitchell family an apology for the way he’s misrepresented the shooting.”

According to police accounts, Mitchell was pushing a shopping cart along a sidewalk near the intersection of 4th Street and La Brea Avenue when she was spotted by Larrigan and Clark.

The two officers, on bike patrol, decided to stop Mitchell to see if the shopping cart she was pushing was stolen, according to police. At first, neither officer recognized Mitchell. But eventually Clark told Larrigan that she thought she recognized her as a transient known for her “explosive, violent behavior,” according to a statement by Parks.

When the officers ordered Mitchell to stop, she ignored them and began walking rapidly away, reaching into her cart and grasping the plastic handle of what turned out to be a screwdriver, according to Parks’ statement.

She stopped at the southwest corner of La Brea and 4th and turned to face the officers, screaming obscenities, the statement said.

The two officers got off their bikes. When Larrigan attempted to calm Mitchell, she pushed the shopping cart toward him, Parks’ statement said. The officer blocked it with his foot. It is at this point, officials agree, that Larrigan missed an opportunity to disarm Mitchell.

Seconds later, Parks said, Mitchell pulled the 12-inch screwdriver from a pile of clothes in the cart. She held it in a menacing manner, threatening to kill the officers if they got any closer.

“Instinctively and simultaneously,” Parks said, both officers drew their pistols. Larrigan ordered Mitchell to drop the screwdriver. She refused, and began waving the weapon from side to side.

At this point, according to Parks’ statement, Larrigan and Clark prepared to subdue Mitchell with nonlethal pepper spray. At that very moment, a civilian bystander intervened and attempted to talk Mitchell into dropping the screwdriver, the chief said. Larrigan, fearing that the man was in danger, led him away. This distraction, the chief said, prevented Larrigan from using his pepper spray.

Meanwhile, Mitchell resumed her rapid walk, taking her shopping cart with her, Parks said. The officers, guns still drawn, followed on foot. Larrigan and Clark again ordered her to drop the screwdriver, and she again refused, Parks said.

As Larrigan radioed for backup, Mitchell again raised her screwdriver, and this time lunged at the officer, Parks said. “Fearing for his life and believing Mitchell was about to stab him in the neck,” Larrigan got into a semi-crouch position and fired one shot. Mitchell, struck in the chest, died less than an hour later at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Parks said the trajectory of the bullet--slightly upward and front to back--and the fact that Mitchell was close enough to Larrigan to have gunshot residue on the hand with which she was holding the screwdriver when she allegedly lunged at him, corroborate the officers’ version of events. “The evidence clearly supports . . . the officers’ account of the incident,” Parks said.

The shooting touched off a firestorm of controversy, with police critics demanding to know why officers had not used nonlethal means to subdue the tiny woman who friends and relatives described as having been bright, happy and articulate earlier in life. She graduated from college and worked as a bank teller before she began a slow descent into mental illness about five years ago. In recent years, her home was a bus kiosk outside a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant near where she was shot.

Two weeks after Mitchell’s death, there was renewed outrage when The Times published a story detailing the statements of two witnesses who flatly contradicted the police version of events, saying that Mitchell never lunged at Larrigan. Police officials had earlier claimed that those same witnesses had corroborated the officers’ story.

A Times investigation published after the shooting found that the LAPD frequently mishandled incidents involving mentally ill or unstable people and that the department’s investigations of their shootings often were deeply flawed.

The Mitchell case has been an unusually hands-on investigation for the LAPD’s civilian oversight board, with commissioners conducting numerous interviews and even taking a field trip to the scene of the shooting.

The commissioners who found the shooting out of policy said that Larrigan’s actions may have led to the tragic outcome of the case.

“The board strongly believes that Officer Larrigan’s tactics were significantly deficient and may well have contributed to the officers finding themselves in a position where they believed deadly force was necessary,” a statement for the majority said. “These deficient tactics included not gaining control of the shopping cart containing the screwdriver, not utilizing nonlethal options, and failing to keep a safe distance between himself and Ms. Mitchell.”

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FOCUSING ON PHOTOGRAPHER

A judge will decide if a Times photographer must testify about North Hollywood shootout. B1