Police killed Jason Maccani as he held a fork, one of many cases of confused Los Angeles officers rushing to use lethal force
The first report from the Los Angeles police department about the killing of Jason Maccani on 3 February immediately drew scrutiny: an officer had fatally shot a man who had been “armed with a stick” and threatening people in a building on Skid Row, the department said.
LAPD’s update a day later raised new concerns: the 36-year-old Maccani hadn’t been holding any weapon, but rather a “white plastic fork”.
Body-camera footage released two weeks later raised even further questions about LAPD’s shifting narrative. The footage showed Maccani alone walking out of a unit into the building hallway, not threatening anyone, when seven officers approached with weapons drawn. The officer who fired the fatal shot opened fire within roughly 15 seconds of seeing him.
I used to be a youth worker. If a kid tried to stab me with scissors, which wasn’t completely uncommon, I wasn’t allowed to fucking kill a child in my care instantly on the spot.
Instead, I learned de-escalation techniques and after a while it never even came to attempted stabbing because we worked out systems where it didn’t ever get that far.
Often the question gets asked - “What restraining techniques did you use?”
I didn’t. Didn’t need 'em.
“What if someone is completely insane?”
Fiction. No one is completely insane. It’s a myth made up to justify lethal force and summary execution.
“Would you go up against someone with a gun without a gun?”
They didn’t have a gun they had a fork. But also, I didn’t apply interview, train and get paid to be an LEO. These people did.