"Almost half the people shot at by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies after reaching toward their waistbands turned out to be unarmed, according to a study released Thursday.
"Waistband shootings" are particularly controversial because the justification for the shootings can conceivably be fabricated after the fact, according to the county monitor's report, which was commissioned by the county Board of Supervisors and which analyzed six years of shooting data.
The monitor was careful to point out that the report wasn't indicating that deputies were being dishonest, simply that those shootings left the department vulnerable to criticism.
Merrick Bobb, who was hired as a special counsel to county supervisors after a 1992 report exposed serious problems in the department, also found an increase in shootings in which deputies didn't see an actual gun before firing. In those cases, the suspects may have had a weapon but never brandished it.
Those shootings jumped from nine in 2009 to 15 last year, according to the report. Last year also saw the highest proportion of people shot by deputies who turned out to be unarmed altogether."
"In one case, deputies came across a narcotics suspect sitting in his car outside his house. When the 35-year-old man saw the deputies, he appeared to reach under his seat. One of the deputies thought he saw a gun, covered by a piece of cloth. The man then sat up, holding the object to his chest, prompting the deputy to shoot him. The man was killed but no drugs or weapons were found, only a pair of jeans. The county eventually paid $750,000 to the victim's family.
The analysis also found that 61% of suspects who were shot at by deputies were Latino, 29% black and 10% white. Even compared to Sheriff's Department arrest rates, Latinos and blacks are overrepresented, the study concluded.
In shootings in which deputies shot at a suspect before seeing an actual gun, all but two of the suspects were black or Latino."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-unarmed-shootings-20110923,0,2452551.story
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