A plastic fork, a phone, a car part: why does the LAPD keep shooting people holding harmless objects?
The first report from the Los Angeles police department about the killing of Jason Maccani on 3 February immediately drew scrutiny: an officer had fatally shot a man who had been “armed with a stick” and threatening people in a building on Skid Row, the department said.
LAPD’s update a day later raised new concerns: the 36-year-old Maccani hadn’t been holding any weapon, but rather a “white plastic fork”.
Body-camera footage released two weeks later raised even further questions about LAPD’s shifting narrative. The footage showed Maccani alone walking out of a unit into the building hallway, not threatening anyone, when seven officers approached with weapons drawn. The officer who fired the fatal shot opened fire within roughly 15 seconds of seeing him.
The killing of Maccani has sparked national consternation, but the circumstances are not unique. In recent years, LAPD has repeatedly shot individuals holding ordinary objects that police either mistook for weapons or claimed could be dangerous. That includes two shootings of people carryingcellphones; two cases where men had lighters; and shootings of people holding, alternatively, a bike part, a car part and a wooden board.
The shootings, which have cost taxpayers millions in settlements, lay bare continued flaws in how LAPD responds to calls for help, civil rights advocates and policing experts say.
Many of these incidents share characteristics. The people shot were often in mental distress. Officers were told 911 call information suggested they were armed. But footage of these incidents consistently shows officers failing to investigate whether the information was accurate, escalating encounters with people experiencing mental health episodes, and rushing to use lethal force without clearly communicating with the individuals or in some cases other officers.
In Maccani’s case, a 911 caller reported a “homeless dude” had entered his studio in a warehouse building in Skid Row, an area known for its large unhoused population. The intruder was “tweaking out”, “very dangerous” and had a “stick” or “pole”, the caller said, according to LAPD. A dispatcher radioed in the incident as an “assault with a deadly weapon”, saying the man was “armed with a large stick”, “under the influence” and “attacking an employee”.
Body-camera excerpts from two officers show seven officers crowding into a narrow hallway of the building and shouting at Maccani to come forward. Maccani initially appears calm and holding his hands up, following commands to walk backward toward police, the footage shows. He then turns and starts walking forward, at which point one officer fires a beanbag, a less-lethal foam projectile. The footage then captures a chaotic scuffle, with Macanni screaming as several officers grab him and one fires a bullet.
As officers handcuff Maccani face down, one can be heard asking: “Did anyone shoot?” When the shooter, identified by LAPD as officer Caleb Garcia-Alamilla, responds: “I did,” the first officer asks: “You shot lethal?” GarciaAlamilla responds that he shot Maccani in the arm, but the medical examiner later said he had been hit in the chest. Garcia-Alamilla washired less than a year ago and was on probationary status.
LAPD Capt Kelly Muniz claimed in a briefing that Maccani had “charged” at officers and grabbed their beanbag shotgun, but the video doesn’t clearly show that. The spokesperson also said officers had believed the fork was a “screwdriver” or “knife”. Muniz declined an interview request and did not respond to questions, but said in an email that LAPD “conducts a significant amount of training surrounding the use of force, particularly deadly force”.
“It’s a failure to de-escalate, a failure to recognize a mental health crisis and an unnecessary use of deadly force,” said Dale Galipo, an attorney representing Maccani’s family in a wrongful death claim against the city. He said it may have been a case of “contagious fire”, where the beanbag firing triggered another officer to fire his gun, which all happened in seconds: “It’s bad training and overreaction.”
Mike Maccani said that his brother, who had been living with his aunt and was not unhoused, sometimes struggled with mental illness, experiencing occasional episodes where he’d get over-excited or go on indecipherable tangents: “It only happened every few years, but he was never violent or agitated. He’d just be hyper. We were never scared. He was a goofball.”
He said he didn’t know why his brother was in that building, but added: “It’s not lost on me that this shooting took place on Skid Row, an area with high rates of homelessness, drug use and mental illness, where people are over-policed and victims of police brutality.”
“[LAPD’s] story keeps changing, and the details get more frustrating and sad, but it doesn’t change the end result,” he said. “That’s what hurts the most. Jason was experiencing a mental health crisis and he was killed in his moment of greatest need.”
‘Hypervigilance for danger’
There have been reform efforts across the US meant to reduce lethal force over the last decade, but overall police in America continue to kill more people every year. In the last two years,police in Denver shot someone holding a marker; an officer in Columbus, Ohio, shot someone holding a vape pen; and in Harford county, Maryland, officers killed someone holding a cane.
Several experts said that is in part because of how police are trained. “The law enforcement identity creates a way of seeing things – where cellphones look like guns, cars look like weapons, poverty looks like criminality,” said James Nolan, a West Virginia University sociology professor and former police officer. “It’s a hypervigilance for danger and it puts both the police and community in danger.”
“Training is centered on all the possible threats – that anything can be used as a weapon, anything can kill you, and it can happen so quickly that officers who don’t assert control are vulnerable,” said Christopher Bou Saeed, an LA civil rights lawyer.
More tragedies could be prevented if there were a focus on alternative responses to people in crisis, said Bou Saeed, and if there were meaningful consequences for excessive force.
Los Angeles has paid hefty settlements, like a recent $2.35m award to a man who was shot while holding a cellphone. Bou Saeed noted a US judge’s 2022 ruling finding an LAPD officer directly liable after shooting a man who had posed no “imminent harm”, but held a piece of wood. “Holding a wooden board and refusing to drop it is insufficient by any objective measure to justify the force deployed,” the judge wrote. (Despite the personal liability ruling, the city could still foot the bill for any future settlement.)
Particularly agonizing to victims of these shootings and their families are LAPD’s misleading narratives and aggressive efforts to justify the use of force in the aftermath. In July 2022, two LAPD officers approached Jermaine Petit on a Leimert Park sidewalk with guns drawn, following a 911 call for a “transient” with a “gun”.
Footage from the incident shows Petit walking away from officers. As they give chase, one can be heard telling the other: “It’s not a gun, bro.” Seconds later, a third LAPD officer driving by in his cruiser shoots Petit from inside the vehicle. One of the officers who initially responded to the call also fires.
Petit was shot multiple times and suffered injuries from falling, but survived. LAPD later acknowledged he had been unarmed and was holding a small metal car part called an actuator.
Still, Petit was prosecuted for “brandishing a replica gun”, a charge that’s still pending. The officer who opened fire from his car was found to have violated policy, but it’s unclear whether he faced any discipline. LAPD did not respond to requests for comment.
Petit is a US air force veteran with severe PTSD and schizophrenia, his mother, Charlotte Blackwell, said in an interview. Since the shooting, LAPD has continued to claim Petit “pointed” the object at police, even though video shows him running away. “That video hurt my heart. How could they do that to him and then say it was his fault? … It was like a firing squad.”
“I expected the police to demonize Jermaine,” added Petit’s cousin, André Horton. “The department has its purpose – to keep a certain sect of people in line.” But Horton said it was still hard to understand why LAPD vilified Petit so aggressively immediately after shooting him: “I had this feeling of helplessness and frustration that teetered on anger.”
Petit’s mental illness has worsened since the shooting, Blackwell said, and he is currently missing. She fears he won’t survive his next encounter with police.
‘A free spirit’
As media from across the US have covered the final moments of his brother’s life, Mike Maccani says he wants to celebrate how Jason lived: “I’m the oldest, but I really looked up to Jay.”
They grew up in Ventura county, north of LA, where Jason excelled at football: “He was an all-star athlete, and he could talk to anyone and become friends with anyone. It was a gift.” Jason graduated from UCLA with a mechanical engineering degree, afterward joking that “the only thing he learned in six years was he didn’t want to work with engineers”.
He worked as a yoga and spin instructor and more recently drove for Uber – enjoying jobs that gave him flexibility and independence, his brother said. He also provided regular care for his grandparents in their final months, helping with daily tasks and reading to them as they started to lose their memory.
“He was a free spirit who liked to live life to the fullest,” said Mike, recounting fond memories of his brother and his girlfriend joining Mike at LA’s gay bars. “He’d talk to anyone who’d listen.” During the pandemic, the two would chat about social justice: “Jay had a lot of compassion for the unhoused and this system that lets people in the richest country in the world live homeless or go hungry.”
Jason was close to all three of his siblings, and the four had planned a “sibling day” hangout for 4 February. When Jason didn’t show up, the three others took photos and joked about Photoshopping him in Jason. Soon after, Mike got the call from the medical examiner that Jason had been killed.
Mike said Jason’s killing highlights the need for unarmed responses to people in crisis, and that officers incapable of exercising restraint should not be on the force.
“I hope people understand that this can happen to anyone,” he added. “He had a bachelor’s degree, a loving supportive family, he had resources, and this police brutality still happened to him. Now our family joins so many others who have needlessly lost loved ones to police violence.”