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<h1 class="reader-title">Hundreds dead, no one charged: the
uphill battle against Los Angeles police killings<br>
</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Sam Levin - August 24, 2018<br>
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<p>Catherine Walker closed her eyes, pressed her hands
over her ears, and tried to escape.</p>
<p>It’s been four months since <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/los-angeles"
data-link-name="auto-linked-tag"
data-component="auto-linked-tag">Los Angeles</a>
police killed her son, Grechario Mack, whose death
barely made headlines, who did not become a viral
hashtag. On a recent afternoon, the 59-year-old mother
wore pins with her son’s face and said she was ready to
speak. But when the moment came, she could hardly talk.</p>
<p>As relatives recounted the killing around her, she
tried to shut out the words describing Mack’s last
moments. Eventually, she collapsed in her chair in
anguish.</p>
<p>“I couldn’t save my baby,” she cried as someone held
her. “When they took my son’s life, they took a part of
me.”</p>
<span></span>
<p>Police shot Mack, a 30-year-old father of two, in the
middle of a mall on the afternoon of 10 April, as he was
holding a kitchen knife and having a mental health
crisis. Less than 24 hours later, officers arrived at a
park and killed Kenneth Ross Jr, another black resident
who struggled with mental illness and was said to be
fleeing when police shot him with a military-style
rifle.</p>
<p>The two families, brought together by Black Lives
Matter the day of Ross’s death, are now channeling their
grief into a fight for justice – taking on one of the
country’s deadliest police systems, where law
enforcement killings of black mentally ill residents are
so normalized, families struggle to be heard. They face
an uphill battle in the most secretive state in the US
for police misconduct, in a region where officers who
shoot are never prosecuted.</p>
<p>“Mentally, I can’t even do nothing right now,” said
Fouzia Almarou, Ross’s mother. “But I’m gonna stay
strong … I want to make sure my son is remembered.”</p>
<h2>‘Police don’t have to care’</h2>
<span></span>
<p>Police in America <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries"
data-link-name="in body link">kill more people in days</a>
than other countries do in years, and Los Angeles law
enforcement has repeatedly <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-map-us-police-killings"
data-link-name="in body link">led the US with its body
count</a>, according to The Counted, a Guardian US
project that <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/31/the-counted-police-killings-2015-young-black-men"
data-link-name="in body link">tracked deaths</a> at
the hands of <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/31/ties-that-bind-conflicts-of-interest-police-killings"
data-link-name="in body link">law enforcement</a>.</p>
<p>From 2010 to 2014, police in LA county shot 375 people,
about one person every five days. Black residents make
up 9% of the population, but represented <a
href="https://www.npr.org/2015/11/10/455502419/in-los-angeles-piecing-together-the-numbers-on-police-shootings"
data-link-name="in body link">24% of deaths</a>.</p>
<p>Across the US, the odds are stacked against families
who look to courts for justice. <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/08/the-counted-police-killings-2016-young-black-men"
data-link-name="in body link">Charges are extremely
rare</a> and convictions even <a
href="http://graphics.latimes.com/officer-involved/"
data-link-name="in body link">rarer</a>, with the law
widely protecting officers who claim they feared for
their lives. In LA, the odds of prosecution are
effectively zero.</p>
<p>Since 2000, there have been no charges for the more
than 1,500 <a
href="https://www.scpr.org/news/2018/01/10/79649/la-county-had-78-police-shootings-in-2017/"
data-link-name="in body link">shootings by police</a>
in the county. Since the district attorney Jackie Lacey
was elected in 2012, roughly 400 people have been killed
by on-duty officers or died in custody, according to
Black Lives Matter LA. Lacey even declined to file
charges when the chief of the LA police department
(LAPD) <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-police/los-angeles-prosecutors-decline-to-charge-police-officer-in-deadly-2015-shooting-idUSKCN1GK38A"
data-link-name="in body link">called for the
prosecution</a> of one of his own officers.</p>
<p>“It really greenlights this type of behavior,” said
Melina Abdullah, a BLM organizer in LA. “Police don’t
have to care about anybody’s life, especially if they’re
black or brown or poor.”</p>
<p>Abdullah and other activists are part of the <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/01/police-violence-black-lives-matter-justice-teams-network"
data-link-name="in body link">Justice Teams Network</a>,
which provides “rapid response” after killings. They go
to the scenes, interview witnesses, offer the family
assistance with press and funerals, and work to counter
the police narratives.</p>
<p>On a recent afternoon, Abdullah took the Guardian to
sites of police killings in south LA. One stop was a
quiet alley where three years earlier, LAPD officers had
killed Redel Jones, a 30-year-old woman who had a
kitchen knife and was fleeing police.</p>
<p>Jones, who had struggled on and off with homelessness,
loved web design, dancing, cartoon shows, electronic
music and rap and had a “brain that was always moving”,
said Marcus Vaughn, Jones’s husband, recounting their
dream of traveling in a mobile home together.</p>
<p><a
href="https://abc7.com/news/armed-woman-shot-by-police-in-crenshaw-district/925223/"
data-link-name="in body link">Headlines</a>, however,
reduced her to a “suspect” wanted for a robbery. And two
years later, Lacey, the prosecutor, reduced her case to
a statistic, clearing the policeman with her standard
finding of “lawful self-defense”. The district
attorney’s office declined an interview request.</p>
<p>“They did not care about Redel. Her death was one less
black person. How are you just gonna kill a woman like
she just meant nothing?” said Vaughn, adding that Jones
was less than five feet tall and had bipolar disorder
and depression, but was not violent. “If she was a short
little white woman, they would’ve treated her with so
much tenderness.”</p>
<span></span>
<p>Abdullah said she felt an obligation to organize after
each killing and a sense of relief when a day passed
without a death. Standing near the site of Jones’s
killing, she was pained to see a makeshift altar had
disappeared and vowed to rebuild it.</p>
<p>Jones didn’t get justice, Abdullah said, but she is
hoping her next cases could be different.</p>
<h2>‘Your aim was to murder my child’</h2>
<p>When Quintus Moore saw a TV report saying LAPD officers
had shot someone inside the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw mall,
he said he felt sad a man had died for no good reason.
Later, it dawned on him that he hadn’t heard from his
son since the day before.</p>
<p>After a series of frantic messages to each other, a
visit to the mall and a call with the morgue, the family
discovered that their worst fears were true: Grechario
Mack was the victim.</p>
<p>It was supposed to be a celebratory month for Mack. He
had been released from prison on 5 April, five days
before the killing, and the family had gathered for a
“welcome home” party. Mack had had mental health
struggles and past run-ins with the law, and, according
to his parents, he was on new medication that was
negatively affecting him.</p>
<p>Moore said his son had seemed agitated the morning of
his death, and that he might have been paranoid or
anxious and holding the knife to feel safe. <br>
</p>
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<p>The LAPD’s report said Mack appeared to be having a
“mental health crisis” and was “aggressively waving a
long knife”. Police alleged he ignored commands and “ran
in the direction” of patrons, leading to the shooting.
Two officers fired at him, according to one report.</p>
<p>Abdullah, the BLM organizer, rushed to the mall,
located in a black neighborhood and just a few blocks
from Redel Jones’s killing. She said mall employees told
her that Mack had been talking to himself and seemed
unwell, but was not attacking anyone.</p>
<p>One employee of a nearby store, who declined to give
her name, told the Guardian she walked within 10ft of
Mack, who did not scare her: “He was just standing there
… It wasn’t such a big knife.”</p>
<span></span>
<p>Blurry <a
href="https://twitter.com/jeffnguyen/status/983909776852533249"
data-link-name="in body link">videos</a> from
witnesses <a
href="https://twitter.com/MarcusSmithKTLA/status/983886171674632193"
data-link-name="in body link">captured</a> heavily
armed officers surrounding Mack and firing a handful of
loud shots. Screams echoed throughout the mall as
shoppers ducked for cover and ran. When investigators
arrived, he was surrounded by shattered glass.</p>
<p>The county’s autopsy said Mack suffered at least five
gunshot wounds, including one in his back just below his
head.</p>
<p>“It’s like they got some kind of mandate to kill our
black young men,” said Moore, who wears his son’s ashes
in a pendant around his neck.</p>
<p>Mack’s mother compared the killing to a lynching: “They
only went from the noose to the gun … Who gives them the
right to be the executioner and the judge?”</p>
<p>Abdullah helped Mack’s family organize a vigil. There,
she met Fouzia Almarou, who had more bad news: police
had just shot and killed her son, Kenneth Ross, in a
park 10 miles south of the mall, one day after Mack’s
killing.</p>
<p>Police have provided few details about the killing in
the LA suburb of Gardena. Lt Steve Prendergast told the
Guardian that officers were responding to calls of shots
fired and ended up chasing Ross, 25, whom they
considered a suspect and was “running away from the
scene”.</p>
<p>Prendergast said there was a “gun found at the scene”,
but he couldn’t say whether Ross owned it or had pointed
it. One police report said Ross briefly hid in a
bathroom and that police shot him with an AR-15 rifle
after he exited. That report said the gun had been in
his pocket.</p>
<p>The county’s official autopsy said he was shot multiple
times, including in the back.</p>
<p>Almarou said her son, who leaves behind seven younger
siblings and a four-year-old son, had bipolar disorder
and schizophreniabut was well known to local residents
as harmless.</p>
<p>“Why did they shoot him in the back?” she said. “Your
aim was to murder my child.”</p>
<p>At the vigil, Almarou ended up finding somecomfort from
Mack’s family, who later donated money to Ross’s
funeral.</p>
<h2>‘We can’t treat mental illness with murder’</h2>
<span></span>
<p>California is <a
href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-me-california-police-discipline-secret-20180815-story.html"
data-link-name="in body link">considered the strictest
state in the US</a> for police confidentiality, with
policies that have kept misconduct records <a
href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-police-misconduct-secrecy-federal-20180810-htmlstory.html"
data-link-name="in body link">hidden</a> and, critics
say, created a culture that condones excessive force.</p>
<p>“It allows the most abusive officers to continue to
operate,” said George Galvis, executive director of
Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice, which
co-sponsored <a
href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-lb-803-46437-la-pol-ca-police-records-bill-advances-20180816-htmlstory.html"
data-link-name="in body link">legislation</a> to
increase transparency. Another <a
href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/08/california-police-killed-162-people-ab931-bill-lethal-force-1/"
data-link-name="in body link">bill</a> would stipulate
that police could only use deadly force when
“necessary”, instead of the current “reasonable”
standard. The move, he said, would encourage police to
treat people of color the way they often respond to
white suspects – de-escalate the situation and work to
keep them alive.</p>
<p>LAPD has <a
href="http://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-lapd-use-of-force-20180605-story.html"
data-link-name="in body link">adopted policies</a>
meant to encourage police to defuse tense situations,
but critics say the reforms aren’t working and aren’t
enough.</p>
<p>“We can’t treat mental illness with murder,” said
Tabatha Jones Jolivet, another BLM organizer.</p>
<p>Amid calls for prosecution and legislation, it can be
hard for families to keep the spotlight on their loved
ones’ lives when their story becomes their death.</p>
<p>Mack, known as Chario, was an honor roll student who
graduated high school early, his mother said. He loved
to fish and was fiercely protective of family. His
nine-year-old daughter wrote a tribute saying she would
miss piggyback rides and museum trips, adding: “I know
that you’re always in my heart.”</p>
<p>Arianna Moore, Mack’s sister, said her brother
motivated her to be courageous: “He would tell me, ‘You
could do anything you put your mind to.’”</p>
<span></span>
<p>Vaughn, Redel Jones’s husband, said he and their
children sometimes struggled to remember what her voice
sounded like. His nine-year-old daughter often wakes in
the middle of the night shaking after a nightmare
watching her mother die. She fears the police.</p>
<p>Ross, an avid skateboarder, was so generous, his mother
recalled, that as a child he gave his allowance money to
homeless people: “His heart was amazing.”</p>
<p>Ross’s mother said she was a survivor of domestic
violence and that her son took care of her.</p>
<p>When times were tough, she said, her son offered the
same message of comfort: “You’ll always have me to take
care of you.”</p>
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