La Times is questioning why police are shooting unstable people who carry "sharp objects"

LA Times: LAPD shootings of unstable people wielding sharp objects a deadly problem

On a North Hollywood street last year, Los Angeles Police Officer Daniel Harty watched through his rifle scope as 50-year-old Rommel Mendoza walked “erratically” toward him and a line of other officers, waving a sword and holding the lid of a cooking pan like a shield.

Mendoza, who lived on the block, seemed confused after being confronted at home by two officers investigating a report that he had hit a neighbor’s car with a stick. Mendoza’s family said he was sobbing, screaming, muttering incoherently and clearly needed help.

Again and again as Mendoza slowly advanced, Harty lifted his gaze to a white SUV parked between them, which he guessed was 20 to 30 feet away, he said. His LAPD training taught him that such distances could be closed by suspects with “edged weapons” such as knives or swords in a matter of seconds, putting officers in imminent danger, Harty said.

When Mendoza got to the SUV, Harty fatally shot him in the chest.

“I believe that if I didn’t press the trigger, he would have continued to close that distance,” Harty told investigators of the May 2020 shooting. “A lot of people don’t ... appreciate the fact that our bulletproof vests don’t stop swords.”

While LAPD shootings have dramatically declined in recent decades, scrutiny has grown in recent months around shootings like Mendoza’s, where mentally ill, intoxicated or homeless people are shot by police while armed not with firearms but with knives, swords, heavy tools or other blunt objects.

Police officials and officers like Harty say such weapons represent real, imminent threats. Others claim the danger is exaggerated and that officers are too quick to pull the trigger — another reason, amid the broader “defund the police” movement, they want mental health clinicians to take over calls from cops.

LAPD data reviewed by The Times show suspects were allegedly armed with “edged weapons” in about 18% of police shootings between 2015 and 2019, and with “impact devices” like bats in 4%. In 2020, edged weapons were identified in 23% of cases.