Four up, three down

The second of four official reports on the shooting death of a Pasadena man last February cleared two police officers involved and was immediately dismissed as “three pages of recapitulation” by the head of the local branch of the NAACP.

That report, by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, closely matched many of the conclusions arrived at by the Pasadena Police Department in its own investigation of the Feb. 19 shooting death of 39-year-old Leroy Barnes, a paroled felon.

A third report on the shooting, this one by the watchdog LA County Office of Independent Review (OIR), was released Wednesday morning as the Pasadena Weekly was going to press.

It was not known when the fourth report, from the US Justice Department, would be made public.

Details of the OIR report, which several sources on Tuesday said also clears the two officers of wrongdoing and makes some procedural recommendations for the Police Department to follow, appear at pasadenaweekly.com.

Beyond all the reports’ particulars, however, is a lack of general concern about sometimes rocky relationships between law enforcement and residents of minority communities. A three-year-old report by a nonprofit law enforcement watchdog consulting group shows tensions between blacks and police have remained high in Pasadena over several years.

It also showed that minorities — especially African Americans, such as Barnes — often feel they are mistreated by police in everyday interaction.

“In the Northwest you have two police officers per car. Go to the [east] side of Lake Avenue and you just see one per car,” said Joe Brown, president of the NAACP Pasadena Branch. Brown said the DA’s report on the Barnes shooting, released last week, mirror the conclusions of the Police Department’s report without taking into account other key factors, such as testimony from people other than law enforcement officials.

“We also have a disproportionately high amount of marijuana arrests among African Americans,” Brown said in direct reference to a recent Pasadena Weekly report that found blacks are three times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana offenses, belying demographics and known usage rates, “and persons in the Northwest feel disenfranchised.”

According to the results of a 2006 survey conducted by the Police Assessment Resource Center (PARC), an agency for which Pasadena Police Chief Bernard Melekian was at one time a paid consultant, African Americans in Northwest Pasadena feel they are unjustly targeted by police.

The survey, “Assessing Police-Community Relations in Pasadena, California” — requested by Melekian after the 2004 police-involved deaths of LaMont Robinson and Maurice Clark, two Northwest Pasadena men who died in the same neighborhood as Barnes — revealed that among all ethnicities, African Americans held the most negative opinions about local police.

According to that report, African Americans averaged three police stops a year, Latinos averaged two stops and whites averaged only one. Fifty-two percent of the African Americans who responded to the survey said they thought that police employed racial profiling and 53 percent said they thought that police stopping people without good reason was a problem.

Councilman Chris Holden, who represents the area where the shooting occurred, called the DA’s report an important “first step” in the process of piecing together all the facts.

“I have not read it in its entirety, but I have been briefed on it,” Holden said Monday of the DA’s report. “I think it is an important first step, but we still have the remaining reports which are not yet completed and I think those parts will need to be looked at also before we have a complete picture.”

Councilwoman Jacque Robinson, who also represents portions of Northwest Pasadena, declined to comment until reading the OIR report.

The report by the Justice System Integrity Division of the DA’s Office, like the police investigation also clearing the two officers, does not identify the two men by name, largely because of a Superior Court injunction barring Melekian from revealing their identities. Both agencies concluded that the officers committed no wrongdoing in shooting Barnes 11 times — seven times in the back — following a traffic stop at about 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 19 near the corner of Pepper and Glen streets in Northwest Pasadena.

“It is not so much the legality about the shots being fired,” Brown told the Weekly. “What we want to know is why did they continue to fire upon him when he was already on the ground?”

The department has refused to release footage of the shooting, which was shot from a dashboard camera inside the police car.

Melekian said he was not surprised by the outcome of the DA’s probe. Although he was aware of the OIR report Tuesday, he declined to provide details until a press conference scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

“I never heard anyone from the community question the legality of the shooting,” said Melekian, who had met publicly with family and community members to discuss the shooting incident and its potential ramifications.

Like Brown, Melekian was also expecting more answers from the OIR, which was created by the Board of Supervisors to investigate complaints against the Sheriff’s Department, but investigates incidents involving other police departments upon request.

Melekian formally departs Pasadena Nov. 8 for Washington, DC, after serving 13 years as chief. Melekian, who soon after the shooting requested outside investigations by all three agencies, has taken a job as director of the Community Oriented Police Services (COPS) division of the Justice Department. The COPS divison is not involved in that agency’s investigation of the Barnes shooting.

Members of the DA’s investigative team looked only into the officers’ right to use lethal force, Melekian explained. They did not call into question the number of shots fired by officers, including several fired after Barnes fell to the ground.
The OIR report was expected to be broader, according to Melekian. “The DA’s report only covered the legality of the shooting.” The OIR report “will cover some other areas,” Melekian said without being specific.

The incident began after police officers witnessed Barnes and a group of about 15 young men talking to Amika Edwards, who was sitting in her car, which was parked on the wrong side of the road at Glen and Pepper streets. Upon seeing the officers, the young men ran away and Barnes got into the backseat of the car.

“As the officers approached the vehicle, Barnes ordered Edwards to drive away,” Deputy District Attorney Natalie Adomian wrote. “The officers attempted to remove Barnes from the vehicle, but Barnes struggled with the officers and removed a handgun from a backpack. The officers in fear for their lives responded with deadly force.”

Barnes’ family has retained attorney Edie M.O. Faal, who did not return calls seeking comment for this story.

Barnes had been convicted of seven felonies, including assault with a deadly weapon causing great bodily injury, sales of narcotics, felony resisting of a police officer, spousal abuse, discharging a firearm in public and attempted murder on a police officer, a charge which his family still disputes. He had been released on parole in April 2008, 10 months before his death.

According to youth activist Tim Rhambo, the shooting revealed the apathy that has gripped the black community in Northwest Pasadena. “This shined a light on everything,” said Rhambo. “It showed us that we are not out there anymore. We really need to be out there whenever anybody gets shot, even if it’s not by the police. There is no outrage in black neighborhoods anymore and most of the churches don’t do anything.”