Report: More than a third of people shot by LA police last year were mentally ill

More than a third of the people shot by Los Angeles police last year had documented signs of mental illness, nearly triple the number from the year before, according to a lengthy review by LAPD officials.

The report, made public Tuesday morning, offered an in-depth look at how and when officers used force in recent years, breaking down police shootings and less-serious incidents in a variety of ways.

The analysis comes during a period of heightened national scrutiny of how police officers use force, particularly against African Americans. Some shootings by LAPD officers have generated criticism in recent months, including the fatal shooting of a homeless man on skid row and another living in Venice Beach.

Although most of the 38 people shot by LAPD officers in 2015 were Latino, the report found, African Americans continued to account for a disproportionately high number given the city’s demographics. Eight of the 38 people -- or 21% -- struck by LAPD gunfire in 2015 were black, the report said. African Americans make up about 9% of the city’s population.

Police commissioners were scheduled to discuss the report at their weekly meeting Tuesday. The board is expected to review another report on LAPD use of force -- a 10-year analysis compiled by their inspector general -- in the coming weeks.

LAPD officials described their five-year review as the most comprehensive look the department has taken into how officers use force.

Assistant Chief Michel Moore told The Times that the department not only sought to inform the public about such incidents, but also hoped to identify and respond to emerging trends.

“There’s things that I’m sure we’re going to discover in this report; others will raise questions that we’ll not have answers to that will cause us to dig deeper and to look further,” he said. “At the end of the day, the instances in which we use force ... is extremely rare. But at the same time, each incident is one too many if it can be avoided.”

The report touched on some trends that have generated discussion both inside and outside the LAPD in recent months: a growing number of incidents involving people thought to be mentally ill or homeless; increased use of Tasers or bean-bag shotguns; an uptick in replica weapons discovered during encounters that ended in police gunfire.

Nineteen of the 38 people shot by police in 2015 carried a gun, the report found. Of the 21 people who died after police shootings, the report said, toxicology results showed eight were under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Eleven officers were injured during police shootings, more than double the year prior.

The report also found that in-custody deaths rose sharply in 2015, up to a dozen from four in 2014. There were 21 such deaths from 2011 to 2014, the report said.

Toxicology results showed half of the 12 people who died in custody in 2015 were under the influence of drugs, the LAPD report said. Officers used force against two of those people, the report said, and in a third case that is awaiting further information from the coroner’s office. One death was the result of a jailhouse suicide, the report said.

Yet incidents where LAPD officers use force remain relatively rare: Of the 1.5 million contacts with the public in 2015, the report said, less than 2,000 resulted in some type of force used by police.