Man Shot by Police Had Hid in Closet

A distraught 23-year-old Oxnard man killed by police nine days ago had retreated to a small bedroom closet before officers ended a standoff by opening the closet door and shooting the knife-wielding man as he rose toward them, officials confirmed Saturday.

“He started coming forward to the officers and he still had the knife,” Assistant Oxnard Police Chief Stan Myers said. “That’s when the shots were fired.”

Police confirmation that Robert Lee Jones, an unemployed artist, was pursued after apparently attempting to hide in his closet prompted criticism Saturday by his family and leaders of Oxnard’s African American community.

The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People has asked for a federal civil rights investigation, alleging that Jones was not only killed unnecessarily but that he was a victim of racial profiling when arrested twice by Oxnard police earlier this year. He was cleared on one charge and the second was pending.

“They murdered my son in a sanctuary, in a hiding place in his own home,” Ida Perkins said Saturday, choking back tears. “All they had to do was wait. He wasn’t a threat to anybody but himself. If they couldn’t help him, why couldn’t they just wait? Why didn’t they just walk away?”

Jones, who was suffering from depression, had seen a psychiatrist a week before he was killed, but had refused to take medication for his problems, his mother said.

He was shot Aug. 24 in his north Oxnard home after Perkins, worried that her son might hurt himself with a long kitchen knife, called police in hopes they would take him to a hospital for treatment.

Perkins, an insurance company sales representative, condemned police for not calling the Ventura County mental health crisis team to defuse the situation, instead of escalating it by confronting her son.

But Perkins revealed that she twice called the county’s Crisis Mobile Response team the morning her son was killed only to be told to call 911 for police assistance.

“I told the [crisis team], ‘My son is afraid of the police. They will only agitate him,’ ” Perkins said.

By policy, the crisis team will not respond to residents’ calls if a weapon is involved and the police have not secured the scene, said Dr. Michael Ferguson, head of the 35-member unit.

“If there’s a weapon, we encourage the calling party to call 911,” Ferguson said. “When police secure a setting and they give us a call, we could be out there in a second.”

Jones’ fatal shooting was the fifth by an Oxnard officer this year. A sixth Oxnard crime suspect was shot by police, but survived.

Perkins, her husband, Stephen Perkins, and Jones’ 19-year-old fiance, Bobbi Marshall, said police failed Jones when they did not call the mental health unit.

All described Jones as a gentle, kind-hearted artist who excelled in high school and college before studying at the Pratt Institute for fine arts in Brooklyn, N.Y., for 2 1/2 years.

He had moved in with his mother and stepfather in a new Spanish-styled middle-class Oxnard neighborhood last Christmas and was considering enrolling in a Pasadena arts college this fall, his mother said.

“This was a beautiful person,” she said.

But on Saturday, Jones’ relatives focused on a tragedy they said could have been avoided.

“I see a kid who was withdrawing from aggressors,” said family lawyer Gregory Ramirez. “They get him cornered and they keep coming at him. He was probably praying for his life, and they open that closet door and start shooting.”

Oxnard police spokesmen have said officers had no choice but to use lethal force against Jones, because their lives were in danger when he moved toward them holding a 13-inch knife.

But Assistant Chief Myers said his department has not determined if the shooting could have been avoided. A determination won’t be made until the investigation by the district attorney’s office and a special state attorney general’s inquiry are completed in several months, he said.

Myers said said the shooting appears to be justified, but “what it appears to be right now may not be accurate based on total information. Too many people are coming to too many conclusions [too soon].”

Police Urged Man to Put Down Knife

For example, Myers said he doesn’t know if Jones was trying to escape police when he retreated into his closet.

“It would be purely speculation,” he said. “Was he going for additional weaponry? Was he hiding? I don’t know. I know he had ample opportunity to drop the knife. That’s all the officers wanted.”

According to Myers, Jones was shot with beanbags, pepper spray and then a handgun only after officers repeatedly urged him to drop the knife.

When police entered Jones’ Bahia Drive home, they found him in a 12-by-10-foot bedroom. After talking to him for about 20 minutes from outside the bedroom, officers shot Jones twice with a beanbag shotgun and pepper spray, Myers said. Still clutching the knife, Jones backed into a small closet and closed the door.

Three officers entered the room, and a sergeant pushed open the closet door with the muzzle of his beanbag shotgun, Myers said.

“There was an additional beanbag round fired, and additional gas sprayed and that’s when Mr. Jones came up,” Myers said. “He came out toward [the officers] and that’s when the shots were fired.”

Officer George Tamayo, an eight-year veteran, fired both handgun rounds, one grazing the closet entry and exiting the house through a wall and the second striking Jones in the chest, Myers said.

Police Chief Art Lopez acknowledged last week that Oxnard officers need more training in dealing with mentally ill people. Four of the department’s six shootings this year involved people with mental problems, he said.

Ferguson, of the crisis team, said a curriculum is being created now to train officers from all local police agencies, including Oxnard’s.

Without addressing the Jones shooting specifically, Ferguson said, “the mental health approach is to use more talking to de-escalate a situation, whereas the typical police training is more confrontational. . . . There are times when not being confrontational is better.”

Some Oxnard community leaders said they think police were too confrontational in the Jones shooting. As part of the Police Department’s community advisory committee, several were briefed last week on the case.

“It sounded like a shooting that could have been avoided,” said the Rev. C. Jessel Strong of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Oxnard. “I don’t see why this situation couldn’t have been negotiated away. . . . I clearly believe that this is a young man that should still be alive.”

Jones’ family believes police reacted so aggressively because they knew Jones. He was arrested in March while walking to a park near his home, but was cleared by a jury in June of interfering with an officer.

“The officers asked me to take my hands out of my pockets, which I did,” Jones wrote in May in a signed statement for the NAACP. “At this time, one of the police officers jumped on me, throwing me on the ground. The other officer then put his knee into my back, while I was handcuffed. . . . I remember the police officers checking me for a pulse and asking me if I was conscience. I also received a knot in the back of my head.”

Jones said the officers asked him if he was in a gang. “I did not reply because I was scared,” he wrote. “Then they asked me for my name and address. I did not reply again because I was scared.”

Jones was arrested by Oxnard police a second time July 31 after officers pulled him over for allegedly not wearing a seat belt, then charged him with possession of a handgun in his car.

Perkins, who had filed a racial profiling complaint after her son’s first arrest, said Jones told her he was set up by the officers.

Jones fell into a deep depression after the second arrest, and finally saw a psychiatrist for the first and only time on Aug. 17, a week before he was killed.

“He was not mentally ill,” she said. “He was depressed because of this racial profiling.”

Racial Profiling Probe Sought

The NAACP and Jones’ family have asked for state and federal investigations into the broader issue of racial profiling by local police agencies, including Oxnard’s.

About a month before Jones was killed, a coalition of community groups met with lawyers from the state attorney general’s office to complain about racial profiling, and cited Jones’ case as an example of harassment by Oxnard police.

Lopez has denied that racial profiling is a problem in his department. He said he knows only of the two complaints filed on behalf of Jones.

But Perkins said she thinks her son would be alive today if not for his arrests.

Police did allow Perkins to return from a neighbor’s house to try to talk with her son shortly before the shooting.

But when she returned she said she saw two officers poised in shooting position in the hallway outside her son’s bedroom, “their fingers on the trigger.”

A woman officer assured the mother that the weapons were not going to be used, and that her son was going to the hospital.

“I yelled, ‘Son, I’m so sorry!’ And I told him to put down the knife,” Perkins recalled. “I said, ‘You didn’t do anything wrong! You’re not under arrest! You’re not going to jail!’ ”

An officer then asked the mother to step outside, and she immediately heard shots.

It took officers more than an hour to answer Perkins’ questions about whether her son was dead, she said.

One officer led her to believe her son was headed to the hospital for treatment, and asked questions about Jones’ mental health and criminal history.

“They were there asking me questions, and they knew he was dead,” Perkins said. “They were already preparing to assassinate his character.”

Later in the day, police issued a statement saying Jones had a criminal record and a history of weapons-related violations.

Three days later, a police spokesman acknowledged that Jones had never been convicted of a crime in Oxnard.

Perkins said Saturday that she will forever regret her call to police. “I trusted them,” she said, “but I will never trust the police again.”