Family wants LAPD officers charged

A suicidal man was shot and killed last year. Beck faults the officers’ planning but defends use of force.

Panicked by the sight of her husband clutching a knife inside their Lincoln Heights apartment last year, Monica Ramirez called 911 and begged for help.

Luis Martinez had grown depressed in recent months, more so after he suffered a broken hip that rendered him nearly immobile. But he managed to get a kitchen knife on the afternoon of April 21, stabbing himself several times while seated in a wheelchair.

Los Angeles police officers arrived at the couple’s apartment, but none of them had brought an electronic stun weapon up the four f lights of stairs in case they needed to subdue the suicidal man.

One ran to grab a device from a patrol car. But before the officer could return, Martinez was dead.

Police said at the time that officers opened f ire when Martinez armed himself with a hunting knife and began approaching the officers, but the fatal shooting has recently generated criticism.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and the department’s civilian overseers faulted the officers for failing to develop a tactical plan during the incident and for not bringing a Taser into the apartment.

Beck recommended that the city’s Police Commission find that the tactics used by four of the officers “substantially and unjustifiably deviated from approved department tactical training,” ac-

cording to a report he sent the commission. Last week, commissioners agreed, though both they and Beck found the shooting to be within LAPD policy.

An attorney representing Martinez’s family said Wednesday that it had previously filed a wrongful- death lawsuit against the city and the officers who opened fire.

“You created the danger,” attorney Arnoldo Casillas said during a news conference, where he called for criminal charges against the officers. “You failed. You failed miserably.”

Casillas disputed the police account, saying Martinez’s hip injury was so serious that he would have been physically unable to stand from his wheelchair and lurch toward the officers, as they alleged. He also said Martinez was unarmed at the time, but did not offer evidence to support the claim.

Flanked by Martinez’s wife and other relatives, many of whom held pictures of Martinez and wore shirts emblazoned with his face, the attorney pointed to an autopsy report saying that Martinez was shot four times. Three of those shots were fired into his back.

The shooting has not been presented to prosecutors, a district attorney’s spokeswoman said Wednesday.

An attorney representing the officers said they were justified in opening fire after Martinez moved toward them with the knife.

“They’re going there to render assistance to him and try to stop him from hurting himself, and he turns his wrath on them,” attorney Gary Fullerton said. “They didn’t have a choice but to defend themselves.”

Officers arrived at Martinez’s Manitou Avenue apartment and found his wife standing outside, according to a written summary of the shooting and the commission’s f indings. She told the officers that her husband was depressed and had cut himself with a knife, but no longer had the weapon.

Inside, as officers approached him, Martinez reached under his thigh and produced an 81⁄ 2- inch knife, the report said.

Two officers told Martinez to drop the knife in both English and Spanish, the report said. Instead, Martinez slowly pushed himself from the wheelchair and began walking toward the officers, the report said.

He then began pacing the room as officers watched from the doorway. One ran to get a Taser.

Martinez stabbed himself in the chest before pulling out the knife and walking toward an officer, who backed into a hallway outside the apartment, the report said. The officer told Martinez to stop, the report said, but the 35- year- old continued to move toward him. The officer opened fire.

Martinez fell to the ground, the report said, then lunged at the officer, swinging the knife. Officers f ired more rounds.

The commission’s report said a f irefighter who responded to the incident told investigators that before the gunshots he heard voices from the area of the apartment saying, “Put the knife down. Put the knife down.”

Martinez’s wife said she did not see the knife and, when told to leave the apartment, said to the officers that her husband wasn’t armed, the report said. From outside the door, she heard officers say, “Put down the knife,” the commission’s report said.

Beck determined that the decision to leave Tasers in their patrol cars meant that the officers were without a “less lethal” weapon to subdue Martinez. Nevertheless, Beck and the commission concluded that the officers’ use of lethal force complied with the department’s training and policies.

The chief found that officers with similar training and experience would “reasonably believe Martinez’s actions presented an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury,” according to his recommendations to the commission.

The names of the officers who responded were not included in the commission’s report and were redacted from Beck’s summary, but the LAPD previously identi- fied those who opened fire as Ricardo Huerta, Rudolph Rivera and Aldo Quintero. Two other officers who responded were not identified.

Casillas, the lawyer representing Martinez’s family, accused the LAPD of strug- gling to properly respond to incidents involving people with mental illness.

A report released by the LAPD last week showed the department shot 14 people who suffered from mental illness last year, nearly three times as many as they did in 2014

Martinez had not been formally diagnosed, but his family said he was depressed, Casillas said.

“There was no crime here; he was hurting him- self,” he said. “He should have gotten help.”