Chief Reportedly Finds Shooting Followed Policy

Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks has found that the officer who fatally shot a mentally ill homeless woman in May used faulty tactics, but did not violate department policy when he drew his weapon and fired, according to sources familiar with the chief’s findings.

If they are accepted by the Police Commission, Parks’ findings mean that Officer Edward Larrigan could face discipline over the incident. But despite the allegedly bad tactics, Parks views the overall shooting as “in policy,” sources said.

Some police commissioners, sources said, have concerns of their own about the chief’s report on the shooting of Margaret Mitchell, a slight, 54-year-old mentally ill woman who was killed when she allegedly lunged at officers with a screwdriver.

The shooting touched off a firestorm of controversy, with critics asking why the officers had not used nonlethal means such as pepper spray to subdue the 5-foot, 1-inch, 102-pound woman. For a week after the shooting there were daily protests, with some community activists seeking to link the Mitchell shooting with recent alleged acts of police brutality in Riverside County and New York.

The five-member civilian Police Commission, which oversees the LAPD and all officer-involved shootings, is scrutinizing the chief’s report like no other in recent memory. At least three commissioners, including two this week, have taken the unusual step of visiting the spot on La Brea Avenue where Mitchell was shot as part of their review of the shooting.

And in an equally extraordinary move, commission staff members have independently been listening to the department’s taped interviews of witnesses to determine whether LAPD investigators accurately summarized their statements.

It is expected that the commission will examine the chief’s report for a couple of weeks before taking the matter up in closed session.

LAPD officials said the department has conducted a comprehensive investigation of the shooting. That investigation has been reviewed by an internal use-of-force board, which forwarded its findings to Parks. According to sources, the board was divided over the shooting and produced a majority and minority report. One source said Parks has sided with the minority opinion, which apparently viewed Larrigan’s tactics more critically. The chief’s report expresses administrative disapproval of the tactics, the most severe finding available. Sources did not describe how the tactics were faulty.

The chief’s report goes into great detail about the shooting and how the officers responded, according to sources familiar with the contents. The commission, sources added, is expected to grapple with the chief’s position that bad tactics do not themselves result in an out-of-policy shooting.

The actions of Officer Kathy Clark, Larrigan’s partner who drew her weapon but did not fire, were found by the chief to be in policy, sources said. If Parks’ report is adopted, Clark would receive training to improve her tactics, sources said.

The confrontation that led to Mitchell’s shooting began May 21, as the mentally ill woman pushed a shopping cart down a sidewalk near 4th Street and La Brea Avenue near Hancock Park. Suspecting that the shopping cart might be stolen, bicycle patrol Officers Larrigan, 27, and Clark, 29, attempted to stop Mitchell and question her.

According to police, Mitchell immediately became hostile, allegedly threatening to kill the two officers. Mitchell kept walking as an argument ensued. At some point, a motorist intervened, unsuccessfully urging Mitchell to put down the screwdriver she had drawn.

When the officers again sought to stop Mitchell, she attempted to slash them with the screwdriver, the police said. Larrigan, attempting to jump out of the way, lost his balance. Feeling threatened by Mitchell, he shot her once in the chest. She died about half an hour later at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Described by her family as having been a bright, happy, articulate woman earlier in her life, Mitchell held a college degree and worked as a bank teller before she began a slow descent into mental illness about five years ago. In recent years, she lived in a bus kiosk outside a Jack in the Box restaurant near where she was shot.

Two weeks after her death, there was renewed outrage when The Times published a story detailing the statements of two witnesses. Although police officials had characterized the two as having corroborated the officers’ version of events, their statements to The Times flatly contradicted the police account of what happened.

James Moody, who stood about 12 feet from Mitchell when she was shot and was the closest civilian witness, said the woman never lunged at the two officers with the screwdriver she was carrying.

“It was the officer’s fault,” Moody, a 68-year-old retired truck driver, said in an interview in June. “She wasn’t close enough to stick that man with a screwdriver. She wasn’t close enough, period.”

A second witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity, watched the shooting unfold from the La Brea Avenue car dealership where he works. “It wasn’t like what [the officer] said. She did not attack him. She did not drive the screwdriver at him.”

Moody and the man at the car dealership said they gave detailed statements to the police in which they told investigators that Mitchell was running away from Larrigan when she was shot.