The Eulia Love OIS
It was January 3, 1979. “415 Business Dispute; meet the gasman at 11926 S. Orchard; Code 2” was broadcast to Southeast Division. Proving that no good deed goes unpunished, 18 Adam 97 was near the call and agreed to handle. The lives of the two officers and the LAPD would never be the same.
Although 34 years have passed since that incident, we are still feeling the effects. As recently as December 2013, a Los Angeles Times reporter described the Eulia Love shootings as “two white officers” who shot Love, an African American woman “who had threatened them with a knife during a dispute over an unpaid $22 gas bill.” Despite the usual spin to make this a racial incident, the fact is that one officer was a 25-year-old Hispanic and the other was a 41-year old African-American.
To the two officers, race had no part in it. This was simply a radio call dealing with a violent mentally disturbed person. These, along with many other facts surrounding the Love shooting, have been forgotten. If we are going to live under the effects of the Love officer-involved shooting (OIS), maybe we should review and remember the entire story. It is also a warning bell for us all on what happens when an OIS goes political.
The officers arrived at the scene and saw two gas company vehicles parked at Eulia Love’s residence. A gas company supervisor approached the officers and told them that Love was behind on her gas bill and one of their employees had been there earlier in the day to either collect the bill or turn off the gas. He was met with a tirade of abusive language and when he began turning off the gas, Love hit him with a shovel, causing a contusion on his arm. He described her as frothing at the mouth and wisely decided to flee the residence.
He reported what happen to his supervisor and the police were called. They had made out and signed an ADW report. The supervisor showed the officers the ADW report memo. They requested police presence to turn off the gas.
In the meantime, Love was whacking bushes by her house with an 11-inch boning knife. The officers exited their vehicle. Love began waving the knife at them and shouting obscenities and how she would kill anyone that came on her property.
The two officers drew their guns and approached her. They ordered her to drop the knife and stopped 8 to 12 feet away from her and tried to talk to her. A child came out the door and they ordered her back inside. They could hear the sounds of other children inside.
Love began moving toward the door. They ordered her to stop. One of the officers knocked the knife out of her hand with a baton and it fell between her legs. She scooped it up and started to throw it at the officers. “Don’t do it, lady!” One of the officers yelled, but she continued. Both officers shot in rapid fire and the knife was thrown, all simultaneously.
The knife landed 68 feet away. Two witnesses stated that the knife hit one of the officer’s shoulders as it went by. Both officers had emptied their revolvers. Love was hit eight times, mostly in the legs, but one shot was in the middle of the chest, which was fatal.
It became an instant media event. At the time, a special section of Robbery Homicide Division did officer-involved shooting investigations. When the investigation was turned in, it went to the Shooting Review Board, which was comprised of two Deputy Chiefs and a Commander. Two of the three members of the board found that the shooting was in-policy. They ruled that at the time that the officers fired, they were in danger of great bodily harm and the shooting was within the policy of the Department.
The Deputy Chief who dissented did not focus on the time that the officers fired. He found that they had used poor tactics when they approached Love with their guns drawn and that they did not need to shoot as many times as they did. He found that the shooting was “in policy, but failed to meet Department standards.”
This fueled the media fire. Mayor Bradley was publicly critical of the OIS. It was the bad fortune of the two officers to have Stephen Reinhardt as president of the Police Commission. Reinhardt would marry Ramona Ripston, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, and about a year later would be appointed to the 9th Circuit Federal Appeals Court, the most liberal and overruled appellate court in the federal system.
The Police Commission announced that it would conduct its own investigation into the Love OIS. In the meantime, on April 17, 1979, the district attorney issued a report that concluded that the firing of the shots was simultaneous with Love’s throwing of the knife and was therefore legally justified.
Chief Gates adopted the majority Shooting Board decision that the use of force was in policy. That set the media on fire again and Maxine Waters, a member of the Assembly Judiciary Committee, pressed the U.S. Department of Justice to take action. They conducted an investigation of possible civil rights violations and on August 10, 1979, they declined to prosecute.
There were widespread demands for Chief Gates to resign, or be fired.
All through this process, both officers were receiving death threats. Metro was assigned to protection details in and around their houses, extended even to the parents of one of the officers who had been threatened.
On October 4, 1979, the Police Commission issued part one of what would be a four-part report condemning the officers’ actions. The report followed the minority opinion of the Shooting Review Board. Officer morale spiraled into the basement.
On October 5, 1979, a Los Angeles Times article quoted the Wilshire Division captain wondering if a recently killed LAPD officer who had exchanged shots with a robbery suspect had drawn his weapon too slowly because of hesitation caused by the criticism of the Love OIS officers. The robbery suspect had gotten off nine shots to the officer’s two.
On October 11, 1979, the Los Angeles Police Protective League presented a petition signed by 4,363 LAPD officers titled “Vote of No Confidence in the Los Angeles Police Commission” to the Commission.
In an article on March 6, 1980, the Los Angeles Times wrote an article on the resignation of Police Commissioner Salvador Montenegro, who spent many hours at roll calls, ride alongs and Department functions. Commissioner Montenegro said he resigned because of his “concern for the cop on the street,” which caused him to be “totally ignored” by his fellow Commission members. “They don’t know what real life is out in the field because they’ve never gone out there with the officers,” he said.
Parts two through four of the Commission’s report were eventually published. The Commission decided that it would from now on oversee all officer-involved shooting investigations and make the final adjudications as to whether they were in policy or not. Furthermore, the out of policy ruling by the Commission would be placed in both of the Love OIS officers’ personnel package.
The League filed a lawsuit. The Superior Court judge ruled in the Commission’s favor. The officers appealed the decision. Finally, in Hopson v. City of Los Angeles, it was determined that placing an out of policy report in their personnel package was punitive action and entitled the officers to an appeal under the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act.
The Commission’s report, however, started the system in which the Department now judges uses of force and makes recommendations. The Police Commission is responsible for final adjudications of uses of force. The system of judging uses of force in three categories was started at that time. Those categories are Tactics, Drawing and Exhibiting of the Weapon; and the Use of Force itself.
The legacy of the Love OIS is with us today. An understanding of the Eulia Love officer-involved shooting as it really happened is instructive to all of us. It helps predict what will happen when the next media-intense controversial shooting occurs, and it helps us understand why we have the system we now have in place.
It should also bring understanding to how we treat those officers who are destined to be the next political footballs. Each of us is only a quarter of a second away from making a controversial use of force decision under extreme pressure. All it takes is being in the right place at the right time to protect the public and making what some will want to call a wrong decision.
If you find yourself in that position, you need to call the League immediately so we can bring you a helmet and some shoulder pads. In the meantime…
Be legally careful out there.
