Tensions flared at the Police Commission meeting Tuesday as local Black Lives Matter activists lashed out at commissioners, who took a brief recess and later cut short a public comment period due to outbursts from the audience and public speakers.
It was the second consecutive weekly meeting to be temporarily halted by Police Commission President Steve Soboroff, who last week deemed loud comments against the police shooting of Ezell Ford as disruptive and stopped the meeting for about 15 minutes.
Activists have disputed the Los Angeles Police Department’s account of last Wednesday’s officer-involved shooting death of a woman in South Los Angeles when commissioners again halted their meeting.
Activists shouted “cowards’’ at the commissioners as they walked out of the board room, and some activists stayed in the room, saying they would hold their own impromptu meeting.
When the Police Commission reconvened, several activists accused the commissioners—whose job is to represent the public in overseeing the LAPD—of being “hostile’’ to members of the public and siding with department officials. Some speakers targeted individual commissioners, including Soboroff and Sandra Figueroa-Villa, saying they were not doing enough to represent the needs of residents.
Several activists told the commission that their heated manner was in reaction to what they felt was a disrespectful attitude from commissioners, who they accused of averting their eyes or fiddling with cell phones when members of Black Lives Matter spoke.
“You can’t even have the respect to look me in my eyes when I’m talking!,’’ Michael Williams, a member of the Pasadena chapter of Black Lives Matter, told the commission.
Williams tried to speak for another two minutes, taking time that he said he lost when the commission left the room earlier in the meeting.
“No, you’re not,” Soboroff told him.
Taking issue with Williams continuing to speak, Soboroff cut the public comment period short to go into closed session, saying “the meeting is over as he walked into a side room to discuss police use-of-force cases in private.
Black Lives Matter activists again remained in the board room, saying several people who filled out comment cards had not yet gotten the opportunity to speak. About 20 activists took turns listening and speaking amongst themselves, with some addressing the 30 or so police officers flanking them.
The activists eventually exited the board room after closing their informal meeting with a quote by Assata Olugbala Shakur, a black activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. They chanted: “”It is our duty to fight for freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and protect one another. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
At that point, the Police Commission meeting had not yet been adjourned. The commission would later return to the board room to report on actions taken in closed session and formally close the meeting.
During the public comment period, activists questioned police accounts of the death last Wednesday of a woman shot after officers were dispatched to the 3700 block of Santa Rosalia Drive on a robbery report.
Around 2 that afternoon, officers saw a woman matching the description of the suspect in an alley west of Marlton Avenue and tried to detain her, “at which time an officer-involved shooting occurred,’’ LAPD Officer Nuria Vanegas said last week.
Officers said a Taser was deployed before the shooting, and the woman was pronounced dead at the scene, where a knife was recovered.
Activists said
Tuesday that some witnesses have not come forward with accounts to dispute those of the police, because they fear and distrust both the Police Commission’s independent watchdog and LAPD investigators.
Some witnesses who have told reporters that the woman was running away when she was shot have subsequently experienced harassment from the police, activists told the commission.
Cal State Los Angeles Pan-African Studies professor Melina Abdullah and other Black Lives Matter activists also called for city leaders to put a Watts-area activist, Aqeela Sherrills, on the Police Commission, in a seat that will soon be vacated by Paula Madison.
Mayor Eric Garcetti recently nominated Matthew Johnson, an entertainment attorney who currently sits on the Airport Commission, to replace Madison.
Abdullah said Johnson is a “”big donor’’ of Garcetti’s. “Most of the police commissioners were appointed because they gave big bucks to Eric Garcetti for his mayoral race,’’ Abdullah told City News Service.
“We want a real police commissioner who is going to be an advocate for the people … (and) who has dedicated his life to public safety questions.”
Sherrills is a “long time” Watts resident; he’s from Jordan Downs’’ and he “brokered the 1992 peace treaty” between gangs in Watts, Abdullah said.
Sherrills has “done a lot of work on gang intervention’’ and advocates for “indigenous, homegrown intervention workers,” who Abdullah said are “much, much more effective than uniformed officers.”
Garcetti’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
