Day of Dialogue Planned to Discuss Police Shooting

City officials announced Saturday that they would hold a day of public dialogue later this month on the police shooting of 13-year-old Devin Brown in an effort to respond to widely expressed concerns.

At a news conference in Exposition Park, Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn and Police Chief William J. Bratton endorsed the move to address community frustration by holding the meetings.

“People want answers,” Hahn said.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles Police Department Inspector General Andre Birotte Jr. promised at a meeting in Leimert Park that his office would be looking at the case “with a very critical eye.”

Wary of the shooting’s effect on the historically tense relationship between the LAPD and South Los Angeles, Bratton said the meetings would help residents find a “positive way of focusing emotion,” while also offering his embattled department a way to “push back on some of the rumors” about the shooting.

Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles), who is organizing the day of public discussions, said they would be attended by police and other city officials, who would be on hand to answer questions.

In addition, Bratton promised that police officials would provide as many details of the ongoing investigation as they could.

The meetings will be held at firehouses across the city on the morning of Feb. 26. Which stations will be used has not been determined.

Hahn said that after recent discussions with community leaders and South Los Angeles residents, he did not fear that the shooting would provoke a riot similar to that of 1992, after a jury acquitted officers in the Rodney G. King beating. But the mayor did voice concern that the shooting would add to “cumulative frustration,” increasing the chances of violence in the future.

“If these issues are not dealt with or resolved,” he said, “six months from now or a year from now, some innocuous incident becomes a flash point for something that is based on a bunch of things that have happened in the past.”

In Leimert Park, about three dozen people crowded into a back room of the Lucy Florence Coffeehouse to hear Birotte describe the role his office will take in the investigation.

The event, sponsored by the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, drew a range of activists and other citizens. Most said they hoped that the shooting would bring about much-needed changes within the department, including the new policy that Bratton has promised regarding police shootings into moving vehicles. They also said they would like the LAPD to investigate less-lethal methods of criminal deterrence.

Birotte declined to provide specifics about the Brown shooting because of his office’s continuing investigation.

Instead, he outlined the role of the inspector general, a position that the Christopher Commission recommended creating -- after the King beating -- to examine allegations of officer wrongdoing.

In any police use of force, Birotte said, his office conducts an independent review of the department’s investigation and reports its findings to the Los Angeles Police Commission.

“If wishes were fishes, we could delve into the mind” of officers involved in shootings, Birotte said.

But police must look at all the available evidence to make their analyses, he said.

In the Devin Brown shooting, he said, he expected that investigators would look at such factors as skid marks and broken glass to gain more insight into the details of the incident, including the speed and direction of the car that police say Devin was backing toward them.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the National Alliance for Positive Action and the host of the Leimert Park event, said sometimes it takes a tragedy to bring about policy changes.

But he expressed hope that Birotte’s office would be instrumental in ensuring a complete overhaul of the LAPD’s use-of-force policy.

“We all know there’s a lot of anger,” Hutchinson said. “We all know there’s a lot of rage. We all know there’s a lot of concern and passion. And well there should be. But we need to be able to separate our friends and our enemies.”