LAPD Policy is to Shoot at Vehicles that Black Men are Driving - Chief Promises to Change

A day after saying that a new policy to limit police shootings into moving vehicles would take up to 45 more days to complete, Police Chief William J. Bratton abruptly promised, amid growing protests Tuesday, to release the policy next week. Bratton had first called for a policy change a year ago. His decision to move faster came as he, Mayor James K. Hahn and other city officials struggled to respond to protests over the fatal shooting of Devin Brown. The 13-year-old African American boy was shot repeatedly by a Los Angeles Police Department officer around 4 a.m. Sunday after he led police on a short pursuit that ended, authorities say, when he tried to back into a police cruiser. At an emotion-filled meeting of the Police Commission, a march and vigil near the scene of the shooting in South Los Angeles and a forum at a neighboring church, community activists, pastors and others decried the shooting as the latest example of what they called a pattern of LAPD abuse of black Angelenos. "People are tired of our children being gunned down like dogs. They could have pointed a flashlight on him," said the Rev. Ozell Clifford Brazil, associate minister of Bethel AME Church, host of Tuesday night's forum. Devin was killed less than a week after prosecutors decided not to file criminal charges against an LAPD officer who was captured on videotape last June as he hit a black man, Stanley Miller, with a heavy aluminum flashlight. That decision also was condemned by African American leaders, and the back-to-back incidents heightened tensions.[more]

• Police Kill Driver, 13, at End of Chase [more]
• Broad Review of LAPD Use of Force Urged [more]
  
• Plan to Raise LA Sales Tax to pay for more Cops Fails [more] These folks are NOT protecting anybody. They are simply guarding the cage.
  
• Snoop Dogg, The Game and comedien Steve Harvey are reportedly contributing funds toward the child's funeral arrangements. [more]
  

• LAPD kills 13-year-old boy by Congresswoman Maxine Waters [more] Message to the Honorable Congresswoman: Wake-Up. Police Brutality is not just a Black problem and it is also NOT just an LA problem. Black & Brown people are catching Beat -  Downs all over the country. As a Congressional leader perhaps you could do something on a National Level. BW