After three officer-involved shootings on three consecutive days in late August, Los Angeles Police Commissioners publicly pressed Chief Jim McDonnell: What extra can the division do to maintain officers from opening hearth? It’s a good query — each police capturing calls for scrutiny. However treating final month’s three-day cluster, and even an general enhance in shootings throughout a calendar yr as we’re now seeing in 2025, as proof of a cultural drawback misses each the long-term development and the particular info that decide whether or not any single use of pressure is affordable.
Begin with the development line. In 1990, LAPD recorded 115 officer-involved shootings (OIS). As we speak, after many years of reform and coaching, the division’s post-2018 norm is right down to about 32 OIS per yr — a roughly 43% discount from a number of years of knowledge main as much as 2018, when the LAPD instituted a brand new coaching doctrine. And a 72% drop from 1990. That’s not a statistical blip; it’s a generational shift. And it coincides with a doctrine that emphasizes restraint and, most just lately, “command and management” — which incorporates designating a frontrunner, creating time and distance, coordinating less-lethal choices and stopping contagious hearth.
That expectation took on urgency after a tragic June 2018 incident at a Van Nuys church, throughout which a hostage was killed; the reform that adopted was aimed squarely at enhancing coordination, lowering chaos and safeguarding the general public.
Now take into account what drives shootings within the first place. Once we analyze three many years of knowledge, one variable explains many of the rise and fall in OIS: violent crime. About 70% of the modifications in police shootings, up or down, may be defined by violent crime ranges. In sensible phrases, for each enhance of 100 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, L.A. tends to see about three extra officer-involved shootings per yr. As soon as we account for crime, the passage of time — the calendar yr — stops being a significant predictor. In plain English: shootings monitor threat, not temperament.
That’s why probably the most revealing take a look at of the division’s tradition is whether or not officers shoot roughly than the crime atmosphere would predict. For the reason that command-and-control reform was applied in 2018, LAPD has persistently averaged 7.6 fewer OIS per yr. If the LAPD have been really “trigger-happy,” as some police commissioners, politicians and activists counsel, we’d see the alternative. We don’t. We see a sustained sample of restraint relative to the extent of violent crime officers confront.
What in regards to the optics of “three officer concerned shootings in three days”? It’s alarming but in addition unusual. The accountable response is to look at every case, not infer motive from timing or headlines. All three current incidents originated from citizen calls to 911 for violent occasions — not officer-initiated stops. In a single, officers arrived to the sound of lively gunfire and confronted an armed suspect in a car. In one other, a suspect produced a 12-inch knife as officers tried to take him into custody after responding to an assault-with-a-deadly-weapon name. Within the third, officers have been fired upon from inside a residence and returned hearth; they contained the scene, known as SWAT and medical help, rescued a sufferer and resolved the standoff with no further gunfire. That’s exactly what trendy command-and-control at a police capturing is meant to appear to be: supervision, coordination, time and distance and measured pressure.
The broader development strengthens this level. Since 2018, the division’s annual totals for OIS haven’t solely remained properly beneath early-Nineties ranges, they’ve additionally are available in beneath what town’s violent-crime publicity would predict. That’s precisely what you’d anticipate to see if reforms are working — not simply lowering uncooked numbers in quiet years, however stopping avoidable shootings when threat spikes. When the division is judged in opposition to the precise risk atmosphere, not simply the calendar, the image that emerges is of coaching, management and restraint bending the curve downward.
None of this implies LAPD is past criticism. When an unarmed particular person is shot with out adequate risk, or ways collapse into chaos, accountability should be actual and swift. Oversight, transparency and trustworthy auditing are requirements, not niceties. However system-level judgments ought to be grounded in knowledge and context. The query isn’t, “Why three officer-involved shootings in three days?” a lot as “What have been the info in every incident, and the way are we doing over time?”
If commentators need a single sentence to hold ahead, do that: Since 2018, LAPD has persistently opened hearth much less usually than violent-crime charges would predict — that’s not trigger-happiness; that’s professionalism. That story seems to be much less like a tradition of extra and extra like a division that, whereas imperfect, has established itself as one of the best in follow by making use of order and self-discipline within the moments that matter most. For that, LAPD and its officers deserve thanks and respect.
Paul B. Vernon is a retired LAPD captain (33 years) and CEO of West Coast Police Integrity Advisors LLC.
