#police-shootings

#police-shootings

As the Martin Luther King Jr. Kingdom Day Parade wound to an end in Leimert Park, activist Jason Reedy said he tried to "bird-dog" LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell over a recent increase in police shootings. One of the police department's most outspoken critics, Reedy, often confronts LAPD and city officials face to face in public forums. After jawing with members of McDonnell's security detail, Reedy got into a heated exchange with Alan Hamilton, a deputy chief who runs the detective bureau.

As an organization, we are heartbroken for what we are having to witness and endure and watch, and we just want to extend our thoughts, prayers and concern for Mr. Pretti, his family, all the loved ones and everyone involved in such an unconscionable situation in a community that we really love, full of people who are by nature, peaceful and prideful.

Since the recent shooting death of a Minnesota woman, Renee Good, by an ICE agent, Jonathan Ross, there has been a flood of high-profile political and social responses, from the early conclusions by federal officials to the growing number of protests-and even more recently, to the mass resignation of prosecutors. The news has been emotionally overwhelming to many and doesn't seem to be subsiding.

Shortly after 7 P.M. on Wednesday, January 14th, Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, received a call at home from his police chief, Brian O'Hara. "ICE shot somebody again," O'Hara said. Minneapolis was in the midst of an unprecedented influx of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. It had been a week since one of them, Jonathan Ross, shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, throwing the city into a state of fear and havoc.

You don't want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching up people many of which turn out to be U.S. citizens that just don't have their papers on them. Are we really gonna be the Gestapo? Where's your papers?' Is that what we've come to?

Andrew Hall, a former deputy sheriff, served a prison sentence and now seeks to expunge an assault conviction, enabled by his time with the San Quentin Fire Department.