The California Department of Justice will investigate a fatal shooting by Los Angeles Police Department officers under a law that empowers the state attorney general to probe police shootings of unarmed people — despite the LAPD saying the man killed Tuesday was holding a gun.
At 10 p.m. Tuesday, officers responded to a reported shooting in an apartment building in the 1000 block of Ardmore Avenue in Koreatown, LAPD officials said in an unsigned statement.
As they entered the building, Ronald Gainer Jr. exited an apartment holding a handgun, officials said. The officers fired at Gainer, who retreated into the apartment.
The officers entered the unit and took Gainer into custody, according to the LAPD. Gainer, 35, died at a hospital, according to the L.A. County medical examiner’s office.
Officers found a handgun and discharged cartridge casings “at scene,” the LAPD said, along with a second gun and ammunition inside the apartment.
According to the police statement, Gainer was involved earlier that evening in a “domestic violence incident” with his girlfriend. After she fled, Gainer allegedly fired a gun into the air and toward a building, prompting the response by the officers who shot him, the LAPD said.
The LAPD’s Force Investigation Division was already probing the shooting — standard protocol for all uses of force by officers — when on Wednesday California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced his office was investigating as well.
In a news release, Bonta cited Assembly Bill 1506, which requires the state’s Department of Justice to investigate police shootings of unarmed people.
Alexandra Duquet, a spokeswoman for Bonta, said state prosecutors will investigate cases when it isn’t immediately clear whether the person killed had control of a weapon.
AB 1506 defines “possession” of a weapon as being “under the civilian’s dominion and control at the time of the shooting.”
Agents from the Department of Justice’s Division of Law Enforcement will conduct an investigation separate from the LAPD’s and present their findings to prosecutors in Bonta’s office, who will make a decision on whether to bring criminal charges.
If no case is filed, state prosecutors must release a report detailing the evidence and the legal reasoning for why charges were not warranted.
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