A civilian review body charged with examining the police killing of an unarmed, mentally ill young black man in Los Angeles has found that one of the officers comprehensively violated police department policy, a decision that opens the way to disciplinary proceedings and possible criminal prosecution.

The decision, which followed hours of emotional public hearings and closed-door deliberations, was met with relief and some confusion on Tuesday. The five-person Police Commission rejected the recommendations of both the LA police chief and an independent inspector general, who had found the shooting of 25-year-old Ezell Ford to be consistent with department policy because he apparently reached for a gun.

The Police Commission found, instead, that one officer had acted outside the policy guidelines throughout the encounter with Ford, who was detained near his home in south Los Angeles last August and shot three times, once in the back. The other officer was faulted for some of his actions during the final shootout but otherwise exonerated.

Steve Soboroff, the Police Commission chair, said he and his colleagues had faced a “long and extremely difficult task”. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who has taken heat from protesters over the past several days, said the system had worked as it was supposed to. And he added: “Ezell’s life mattered. Black lives matter. All lives matter.”

Earlier the commission listened to one impassioned speech after another, many of them withering in their criticism of race relations in the city that gave rise to the beating of Rodney King and the ensuing riots of 1992.

“I’m asking you. I’m begging you. Please. Please,” Ford’s mother Tritobia said to the commissioners. “He wanted to live.”

Even after Soboroff announced the findings, some activists were unsure whether to celebrate or continue to express outrage. Eventually they understood it was now up to LAPD chief Charlie Beck how to discipline the officers, and up to the district attorney’s office whether to press criminal charges.

Ford was killed two days after Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the case has been emotional from the outset. Those emotions threatened to boil over after the Los Angeles Times reported last Friday that both the Police Department and an independent police watchdog were planning to find the killing “in policy”. Had that finding been upheld it would have meant that the officers, both members of an anti-gang unit, were exonerated and free to return to patrolling the streets.

Both Beck, the police chief, and Mayor Garcetti have made it a priority to avoid the divisive, hostile and frequently violent style of policing that once made the LAPD notorious. They have struggled, however, with a police culture that still provokes more civilian deaths than any other city in the United States.



Ford was one of 18 people killed by the LAPD last year. A Guardian investigation found the LAPD to be the most lethal police force in the US in 2015.

According to the information leaked to the Los Angeles Times, Ford’s DNA was found on one of the officer’s guns, bolstering the claim that the officers opened fire in the context of a violent struggle. The autopsy showed that Ford had scratches on one of his hands. There were also scratches on the holster of the gun.

Beck, according to the reports, wanted to exonerate the officers entirely, while the independent watchdog faulted the officers for the way they approached Ford and detained him before the struggle began.

Garcetti called Ford’s mother on Sunday night and left a message to tell her his heart “goes out to her and her grieving family” – a gesture one of the protesters dismissed as “a day late and a dollar short”.

On Monday morning the protesters tried to block the mayor’s official car from taking him to the airport for a short trip toWashington.

“I voted for you,” one man yelled, “and I want to take my vote back.”

Shortly after Garcetti put out a statement: “Trust and transparency are the foundation of the relationship between the Los Angeles Police Department and people it serves,” he said. “I have confidence that the Police Commission will conduct an impartial and fair-minded review of the investigations.”