Police killed Jason Maccani as he held a fork, one of many cases of confused Los Angeles officers rushing to use lethal force

Police killed Jason Maccani as he held a fork, one of many cases of confused Los Angeles officers rushing to use lethal force

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.

  • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
    131·
    9 months ago

    This exactly. Thank you for bringing attention to this. This is the real problem, and Grossman should be drummed out of the industry. His methods promote crimes against humanity.

    Copying my comment from a previous post:

    Fun fact: ‘police officer’ isn’t even in the top 10 most dangerous professions in the US. It’s solidly beat by things like garbage collector, delivery driver, maintenance worker, and pilot. None of those professions typically carry weapons on the job.

    Lots of police officers were former bullies with an inferiority complex. Some are wusses who only feel powerful because they’re carrying a deadly weapon.

    Another fun fact: police in several other western countries don’t carry deadly weapons and yet are able to do their jobs just fine.

    American police are trained to think everything and everyone is against them, through programs like David Grossman’s Killology course. Weird how a program designed to teach recruits to kill without empathy would result in people killing without empathy.

    Elsewhere, police are learning de-escalation tactics, but police in the US are learning escalation.

    I appreciate you bringing this up, as it means this issue is getting more exposure. Anyone reading, please share this information so we can begin to dismantle this destructive and anti-humanitarian system.