By SYLVESTER RIVERS

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The local police shooting of a 29-year-old male has sparked renewed efforts and strategies by community members to change what they say is abuse and misconduct among Los Angeles Police Department officers.

The Coalition For Justice Against Police Murder — which includes about 10 to 15 people who have had family members shot and killed by officers — are helping unify organizations to help confront the alleged misconduct and push for policy and procedural reforms for deadly force.

Atun Re Baker reached out to organizers to help publicize the problem of controversial police killings after his nephew, Dontaze Storey, 29, was shot by LAPD officers last November on the northwest corner of 3rd Street and New Hampshire Avenue.

Committee spokesperson Kokayi Kwa Jitahidi said the plan being developed goes beyond pressuring the department.

One component of the committee’s plan is the demand for an elected civilian control board that will have the power to hire and fire and set policy for the police, Jitahidi said.

“The police department answers to other higher people: those that can put pressure on the police; those being the mayor and the City Council, who have the ability to hire and fire,” he said, referring to the committee’s plans to also pressure elected officials to change policies.

LAPD did not have any comment on the coalition’s efforts or characterizations of the department’s policies, said Richard French, a spokesperson. 

According to the department’s policy manual, its rules for the use of deadly force states an officer can shoot “to protect himself or others against the immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury or to apprehend a fleeing felon who has committed a violent crime and whose escape presents a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury to others.”

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s office did not comment about the committee’s efforts after receiving two calls for comment from the L.A. Watts Times.

  LAPD’s policy for deadly force also states, “Deadly force shall only be exercised when all reasonable alternatives have been exhausted or appear impracticable.”

A probe into Storey’s death is being conducted by the LAPD’s Force Investigation Division, which is unable to provide additional information surrounding the shooting because of its ongoing investigation, French also said in an e-mail.

According to an LAPD press release, police officers Oliver Malabuya and Daniel Bunch went to the Rite Aid Pharmacy on the 300 block of South Vermont Avenue in response to a radio call about a male with a gun.

The department’s statement adds that officers tried to detain Storey, but he ran from officers and they drove after him. It contends that Storey turned in the officers’ “direction with an unknown object in his hand believed to be a handgun. The officers fired at Storey and wounded him.”

According to Baker, the uncle of Storey, his nephew was first shot in the back of the leg while running toward his pregnant fiancé. Baker said after a small altercation in the store with someone who was “disrespecting” his fiancé, they both exited the store.

“He told her to walk home; they live two blocks away,” Baker explained while giving Storey’s fiancé at the time, Estaze Yankey, account of the story. “She started to walk back and saw a helicopter, and when she saw the helicopter shine a light in the parking lot, called him on the phone and told him to get to her real quick.

So he started to run toward her and got a block away from the store, caught up to her, and some policeman in a car jumped out and shot him in the back of he leg. The shot turned him around … and they shot him in the chest and the mouth.”

Witnesses said Storey had a cell phone in his hand and not a gun.

The committee intends to have all of its demands and plans for action finalized for a Jan. 17 press conference and march at the LAPD Rampart station, which has jurisdiction over the area where Storey was shot.

Jitahidi said the committee is not characterizing all police officers as bad.

“There are good people who are police officers,” he said. “We want to make it very clear that we’re also supporting those officers, and we want those officers to join us.

“We also understand that there’s risk to that.”

The committee hopes its efforts will become a model for other agencies in the area, he added.

“This work should not be seen as a threat to their work,” Jitahidi said. “It should be seen as an effort to create the trust between law enforcement and the community that they say they want to have.”

The LAPD already has five civilians on its commission who are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the L.A. City Council, according to LAPD’s official Web site.

But Jitahidi said he feels the “police commission has been very impotent, particularly around the issue of police (killings), which is the issue that we’re really centered on.”

“The community needs to have real control,” he added.

The committee has not made efforts to contact LAPD or Sherriff’s personnel, he said.

Jitahidi said the coalition includes the mother of Carlos Rivera, fatally shot on May 17, 2008; family members of Christian Portillo, shot in Lennox July 23, 2008; and the aunt of Deondre Brunston, who was shot in Compton by Sheriff’s deputies multiple times on Aug. 23, 2003.

Jitahidi said the families feel as if they have not seen justice served in their cases, and feel like they have been “really left hanging.”

Some of the committee’s other goals is to seek change in the Sheriff’s Department’s policies, and focus on the need of public awareness.

The organizations involved in the effort focus on various aspects of violence, including groups that focus on broad violence and self-policing.

Invited in the strategizing efforts is Nana Gyamfi, attorney and co-founder of Human Rights Advocacy, a community-based organization.

Part of HRA’s strategy is to have the ability to identify police officers who engage in police violence in the community, isolate them, prosecute them and make it easier for families to recover using civil suits, as well as making it easier for the community to have information in order to track “rogue” officers.

“For the past three years, we have been looking at ways to  develop independent, people-power-oriented ways to address and eliminate or reduce police violence in the community,” Gyamfi said. 

“The rules say that you don’t shoot unarmed people,” she added. “The rules already say that, but often the police don’t follow their own rules because there is no accountability when they don’t follow the rules. 

“We need to develop strategies that will focus on pulling these individual cops who engage in police violence out of the big blue mass.”

Managing Editor Samuel Richard contributed to this report.