Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck, two members of an internal review board, and the LAPD’s Police Commission have faulted a police officer for shooting a man who tased his female partner last summer. Officer Stephan Shuff and his partner—who has not been identified—responded to a call of a man breaking car windows with a skateboard in the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles. They came upon 38-year old Neil Peter White who matched the description of the person.

“[Shuff’s partner] yelled at White to get on the ground, the reports said, but he ignored the commands and got on his skateboard. The officers radioed for backup and drove down Sycamore Avenue in their patrol car, trailing White as he rode away, according to Beck’s report. At one point, the reports said, White stumbled off the skateboard and Shuff told his partner to get out of their car to try and grab it. The rookie cop ran for the skateboard. So did White. Fearing White would get to the skateboard first and attack his partner with it, Shuff got out of the car and tackled White from behind, according to the reports. The officers struggled to handcuff him, prompting the rookie officer to draw her Taser. She pressed the stun gun against White at least twice, the reports said, but the struggle continued. The officer set the Taser on a nearby step. She later told investigators she believed the device was out of White’s reach but close enough for her to grab if she needed it again.

According to police, White then grabbed the taser and used it on Shuff’s partner. With his partner incapacitated, Shuff told investigators that he was “afraid the man would try to grab his partner’s holstered gun.” Shuff drew his firearm and shot White once in the neck, killing him.

“Simply believing White was going to gain control of [the] service pistol … did not constitute an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury,” the two [LAPD] board members concluded. The Police Commission also faulted the tactics used by Shuff and his partner leading up to the deadly encounter, saying some of their actions “unnecessarily compromised the safety of the officers.”

The ruling marks at least the fourth deadly shooting that the LAPD has ruled as unjustified: the shooting of homeless man Brendan Glenn at Venice Beach in May of last year; the Burbank shooting of Sergio Navas in March of of last year; and the August 2014 shooting of Ezell Ford. Ford’s shooting occurred during the same time period as that of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Members of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles have made a point of showing up to weekly police commission meetings confronting the members about the issue of police shootings; some of those confrontations have ended in the arrests of BLM-LA members. The increased scrutiny on the police commission, coupled with the national clamor for police accountability, has undoubtedly played a part in the commission’s recent rulings.

Shuff has returned to the field; any discipline he faces will be decided by Beck. As per California’s Police Officer’s Bill of Rights, that decision will be part of Shuff’s personnel file and will remain private.