Oxnard’s Rate of Killings by Police Tops Many Cities’

Oxnard police have fatally shot more people in the first eight months of 2001 than peace officers in many U.S. states and major American cities kill in an entire year, a Times analysis of recent figures shows.

Oxnard’s five police homicides this year equal the number reported since January by the Los Angeles Police Department, whose jurisdiction is 22 times larger than the 170,000-resident Ventura County city.

Among California’s major cities, spokesmen said homicides by police this year total zero for San Jose, two in San Francisco and six in San Diego. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has recorded eight.

Only 16 states reported more than five police homicides for 1999, the last year for which the FBI reported justified killings by officers. Ten had no fatal shootings by police and seven reported only one.

In contrast to Oxnard, New York City, the nation’s largest municipality, with 8 million residents, reported nine justified police homicides in 1999, according to the FBI.

“It’s absolutely extraordinary,” said Richard Holmes, head of the homicide unit for the Ventura County district attorney’s office. “Oxnard didn’t have any for three years, now they’ve had just a torrent.”

The recent shooting death of Robert Lee Jones, a distraught 23-year-old man, by Oxnard police while he was hiding in his bedroom closet prompted an uproar. The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People has called for a federal inquiry, and the state attorney general’s office has started an investigation. A sixth Oxnard crime suspect was shot by police, but survived.

Police have said four of the shooting victims were mentally ill or emotionally disturbed. And Police Chief Art Lopez acknowledged that his department needs more training in how to deal with mentally disturbed suspects. The City Council, expressing concern, is set to discuss the issue Tuesday.

One expert says the spate of fatal shootings by Oxnard police raises questions not only about that agency’s training and tactics, but also highlights problems police have had nationwide in subduing mentally ill crime suspects without killing them.

“That’s a lot of shootings for Oxnard,” said D.P. Van Blaricom, a former police chief in Washington and an expert in police tactics.

“It is part of the police’s job, unless you train officers differently, to go in with their usual take-charge attitude,” Van Blaricom said. “But for the mentally disturbed, you have to reverse that process. They become defensive. And if you continue to press the attack, you’ll end up with a shooting.”

Van Blaricom said beanbag shotguns and pepper spray--both nonlethal weapons used against Jones--are often not effective against a mentally disturbed suspect. He said many police agencies, including San Diego’s, are equipping officers with Taser stun guns that have a range of 22 feet.

But the most effective tactic, he said, is simply to back off and give the suspect time to calm down if no one else is in danger.

He said several large police departments, including those in San Jose and Portland, Ore., have copied a model developed in Memphis, Tenn., where officers receive 40 hours of special training on mental illness and how to avoid confrontations with mentally disturbed people.

“A lot of this depends on the culture of the organization,” Van Blaricom said. “Are they shooters as opposed to utilizing alternative tactics?”

Jones, who was suffering from depression, was killed Aug. 24 after his mother, worried that he might hurt himself, called police in hopes they would take him to a hospital for treatment.

Oxnard police have said officers had no choice but to use lethal force against Jones, because their lives were in danger when he moved toward them from his closet holding a 13-inch knife. A final determination of whether the shooting was legally justified won’t be made until the district attorney completes an investigation.

Attorney Alan Wisotsky, who represents Oxnard in police lawsuits, said the city is wrestling with whether changes need to be made because of this year’s shootings.

“I don’t think anyone quarrels with the fact that this was an incredibly unusual year for Oxnard police officer shootings,” he said. “The question we’re asking is: Why were they grouped the way they were?”

Wisotsky said shootings do not reflect a state of mind or a tendency toward violence by Oxnard police officers.

A Times analysis of all 31 fatal police shootings in Ventura County during the last decade shows that Oxnard’s officers--whose jurisdiction includes about 23% of county residents--were responsible for nearly half of the law enforcement homicides.

Oxnard Police Have Killed 14 Since 1992

Oxnard’s rate of officer killings per capita during that period is about the same as Ventura’s, but far higher than that of officers in the Simi Valley and Santa Paula police departments, or the county Sheriff’s Department.

Oxnard police have shot and killed 14 people since 1992. In Ventura, where the county mental health hospital is located, police have killed eight people, several mentally ill.

Wisotsky said this year’s shootings should not skew the overall perspective of Oxnard’s use of lethal force.

“If you look at these [shootings] individually,” he said, “they represent a cross-section of individuals and scenarios that unfolded rapidly. And each one was unique.”

The first fatal shooting was in January, when a police sharpshooter killed Richard Lopez, a teenage gunman who had been treated for mental illness, as the youth held a female student hostage at Hueneme High School. Police described the killing as a “suicide by cop.”

Eight days later, a gang-unit officer shot Charles Valdez, 22, when the ex-felon wanted for a parole violation led police on a two-block foot chase that ended when he drew a gun and pointed it at officers.

The third fatal shooting occurred in May, when police responded to a report that Rutilio Castillo was peering into apartment windows. The 23-year-old was killed after walking toward an officer with a knife. Months earlier, police placed Castillo in a 72-hour mental health hold after he came to the police station to report that someone was trying to kill him, and refused to leave, according to a district attorney’s report.

The district attorney has ruled the first three police homicides justified.

In July, police shot and wounded Eric Gonzalez after relatives called police, saying he was intoxicated and causing a disturbance. The 19-year-old was shot after he allegedly swung a knife at an officer, cutting his shirt and grazing his neck.

Five days later, a police stakeout ended with the fatal shooting of Larry Brown, 27. The man had wrested a handgun away from a teller at a doughnut shop that had been robbed five times, and exchanged fire with police. Brown, convicted of robbery in 1995, was arrested five times last year on drug charges.

Last month, an Oxnard officer killed Jones, an unemployed artist who had studied at the Pratt Institute for fine arts in New York City. But unlike the other shootings, this one created a firestorm of criticism.

Jones’ mother, Ida Perkins, condemned police for not calling the Ventura County mental health crisis team to defuse the situation, instead of escalating it by confronting her son. “I trusted them,” she said, “but I will never trust the police again.”

Wisotsky said police would have been criticized if they had backed off and Jones had killed himself or emerged with a gun after he retreated to his closet.

“The fact is he was a potential harm to himself and others,” Wisotsky said. “It doesn’t make any matter what choice police make, in the eyes of the public, it’s the wrong choice.”

Dealing With the Mentally Ill

Justified or not, the Oxnard police shootings have pressed the question of how Ventura County police officers can better deal with distraught or mentally ill suspects.

As things are, local officers are trained at an academy run by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, where they receive nine hours of classes on how to defuse confrontations with the mentally ill. The curriculum of numerous other classes also emphasizes talking down suspects whenever possible, said Sheriff’s Capt. Kenton Rainey, who directs the academy.

Rainey said there are three basic ways that police agencies across the country deal with mentally disturbed people. First is the model followed in Ventura County, in which officers respond to a scene, attempt to control it and call in members of a mental health crisis unit if they have time and it is needed.

Many police agencies in large cities--including Los Angeles--now team licensed mental health workers with police officers so they can respond to so-called 5150 calls, disturbances in which suspects have mental problems.

Third is the so-called “Memphis model,” in which officers receive 40 hours of instruction on mental illness, antidepressant and antipsychotic medications and generally how officers can put themselves into the shoes of people who are mentally disturbed. The officers are often not assigned a beat, and can respond to calm situations.

Since the San Jose department started following the Memphis model in 1999, officer-involved homicides have dropped each year--from six, to three to none this year, officials said. In addition, every San Jose police cruiser is equipped with a beanbag shotgun, and supervisors carry Taser stun weapons.

“Based on what I have seen,” Rainey said, “each time the Memphis model has been implemented by these larger cities, the departments have been pleased with the results.”

The system could be problematic in Ventura County, he said, because of cost and the county’s coverage by six police agencies. The sharing of specially trained officers would create problems if two departments needed the same special team at the same time, he said.

Even without such training or special teams, Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks said his department has not had a fatal shooting since 1998. That is partly because of the emphasis on the use of nonlethal weapons and not pressing the issue with suicidal residents.

“In situations of potential suicide by cop, where the suspect is barricaded, we’ve stopped initiating contact,” he said. “Very often they just sleep it off or get over it.”

Brooks said he is nonetheless considering the use of part of a new $1.8-million state grant to team a deputy and a mental health worker to respond to confrontations with the mentally ill.

Often, however, regardless of training, a violent confrontation cannot be avoided, Rainey said.

“It is tragic that this young man [Jones] is dead,” Rainey said. “Could they have done more? Of course, we can all do more. But that doesn’t mean that somebody else isn’t going to get shot in the next situation if that person is bent on trying to harm the officers.”

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Homicides by Police Officers in Ventura County, 1992-2001*

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Total Rate /100,000 residents Oxnard Police Dept. 14** 8.24 Ventura Police Dept. 8 7.93 Ventura Co. Sheriff’s Dept. 5 1.53 Los Angeles Police Dept. 2 -- Simi Valley Police Dept. 1 0.9 Port Hueneme Police Dept. 1** 4.76 Los Angeles Co. Sheriff’s Dept. 1 -- Santa Paula Police Dept. 0 -- County Total 31 4.12

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*Ventura County’s total includes three fatal shootings by officers from Los Angeles city and county agencies.

**One fatal shooting in 1993 is counted for both the Port Hueneme and Oxnard departments, since both responded and fired shots at victim.

Source: Ventura County District Attorney’s Office