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 fireplace? It’s a good query — each police capturing calls for scrutiny. However treating final month’s three-day cluster, and even an general increase in shootings during a calendar 12 months as we’re now seeing in 2025, as proof of a cultural downside misses each the long-term development and the precise info that decide whether or not any single use of power is cheap.
Begin with the development line. In 1990, LAPD recorded 115 officer-involved shootings (OIS). At the moment, after a long time of reform and coaching, the division’s post-2018 norm is right down to about 32 OIS per 12 months — a roughly 43% discount from a number of years of information main as much as 2018, when the LAPD instituted a brand new coaching doctrine. And a 72% drop from 1990. That isn’t 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 fireplace.
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 bettering coordination, lowering chaos and safeguarding the general public.
Now take into account what drives shootings within the first place. Once we analyze three a long time of information, 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 improve of 100 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, L.A. tends to see about three extra officer-involved shootings per 12 months. As soon as we account for crime, the passage of time — the calendar 12 months — stops being a significant predictor. In plain English: shootings monitor danger, not temperament.
That’s why essentially the most revealing check of the division’s tradition is whether or not officers shoot kind of than the crime surroundings would predict. Because the command-and-control reform was carried out in 2018, LAPD has constantly averaged 7.6 fewer OIS per 12 months. If the LAPD have been really “trigger-happy,” as some police commissioners, politicians and activists counsel, we’d see the other. 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 latest incidents originated from citizen calls to 911 for violent occasions — not officer-initiated stops. In a single, officers arrived to the sound of energetic gunfire and confronted an armed suspect in a automobile. 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 fireplace; they contained the scene, referred to as SWAT and medical assist, rescued a sufferer and resolved the standoff with no extra 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 power.
The broader development strengthens this level. Since 2018, the division’s annual totals for OIS haven’t solely remained effectively under early-Nineties ranges, they’ve additionally are available in under what town’s violent-crime publicity would predict. That’s precisely what you’d count on to see if reforms are working — not simply lowering uncooked numbers in quiet years, however stopping avoidable shootings when danger spikes. When the division is judged in opposition to the precise risk surroundings, 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 individual is shot with out enough risk, or techniques collapse into chaos, accountability have to be actual and swift. Oversight, transparency and sincere auditing are requirements, not niceties. However system-level judgments must 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 constantly opened fireplace much less usually than violent-crime charges would predict — that’s not trigger-happiness; that’s professionalism. That story seems much less like a tradition of extra and extra like a division that, whereas imperfect, has established itself as the perfect in observe 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.
