Former LAPD deputy chief

Marshall L. “Andy” Anderson, who as a deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department broke ranks to criticize the fatal 1979 police shooting of Eulia Love, whose killing became a civil rights cause celebre, died Dec. 14 at his Brentwood home. He was 85.

His death after a long illness was confirmed by his wife, Patricia Anderson.

Andy Anderson was in charge of five South LA. police divisions in 1979 when two white officers under his command shot Love, an African American woman who had threatened them with a knife during a dispute over an unpaid $22 gas bill. Love died from multiple gunshots, at least one of which hit her after she fell to the ground, a subsequent investigation showed.

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates defended the officers, saying they had fired in self-defense and had not violated department policies.

But Anderson, in a report made public a few months after the shooting, said the officers had used “faulty judgment and poor tactics” in approaching Love with their guns drawn.

His assessment of the shooting was later validated by L.A.’s Police Commission, which had previously played little if any role in investigations of officer-involved shootings. After Love’s death, the commission began to review all police shootings to determine if the use of force was justified.

The commission found that 39-year-old Love had been shot unnecessarily, a conclusion Anderson had reached as one of three members of the department’s shooting review board. He was the only member to take issue with the officers’ conduct.

Noting that the officers had fired an “excessive” 12 shots in rapid succession, Anderson assailed the officers’ attempt to justify their actions by later claiming they had feared Love would harm her two children, who were home at the time.

The other two commanders on the review board said the officers had handled the situation appropriately and their response did not merit any kind of disciplinary action. Gates backed their position and closed the case.

The black community was outraged by the shooting and the department’s ruling that it had been “in policy.” Protesters marched on LAPD headquarters at Parker Center.

Under pressure from the community, the police commission conducted its own months-long investigation and found “serious errors” in judgment and tactics, including the officers’ decision to draw their guns on Love “before all reasonable alternatives had been exhausted.”

After the Love shooting, the commission expanded the public reporting of police shootings, including releasing the names of officers involved in such incidents. That practice ended in 2006 when the commission, acting on legal advice, voted to again withhold officers’ names. In 1979, then-Police Commissioner Samuel L. Williams praised Anderson for “the courage to state his opinion.”

Gates appeared to echo Williams’ view, calling Anderson “a damn good chief” after reporters asked if the commander’s candor had affected his career. But Anderson left the department the following year, after 28 years on the force.

“It was a difficult time,” his wife said in an interview this week. “He always had a strong sense of fairness ... and it just didn’t make sense to him the way that case went down.”

The son of an engineer, Anderson was born in Buffalo, N.Y., on March 21, 1928.

He attended night classes at North Hollywood High School and earned a football scholarship to Rutgers University but entered the Navy instead.

After completing his military service in 1946, he studied at USC but did not earn a degree. He later received a master’s in business from Pepperdine University.

He joined the LAPD in 1950 and worked in traffic, juvenile crime and vice. By 1967 he was a lieutenant and one of the department’s first community relations officers.

After leaving the department in 1980, he headed the city Housing Authority police and helped manage security at a number of venues during the 1984 Olympic Games in LA.

Besides his wife, Anderson is survived by four children, Donna Mays of Denver, Michael Anderson of Gig Harbor, Wash., Liane Jacob of Sherman Oaks and Victoria Reiser of Irvine; eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

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elaine.woo@latimes.com