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 hearth? It’s a good query — each police taking pictures calls for scrutiny. However treating final month’s three-day cluster, and even an general increase in shootings during a calendar yr as we’re now seeing in 2025, as proof of a cultural downside misses each the long-term pattern and the particular info that decide whether or not any single use of pressure is affordable.
Begin with the pattern line. In 1990, LAPD recorded 115 officer-involved shootings (OIS). In the present day, after a long time of reform and coaching, the division’s post-2018 norm is right down to about 32 OIS per yr — 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 lately, “command and management” — which incorporates designating a pacesetter, creating time and distance, coordinating less-lethal choices and stopping contagious hearth.
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 think about what drives shootings within the first place. After 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, might be defined by violent crime ranges. In sensible phrases, for each enhance of 100 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, L.A. tends to see about three extra officer-involved shootings per yr. As soon as we account for crime, the passage of time — the calendar yr — stops being a significant predictor. In plain English: shootings observe threat, not temperament.
That’s why probably the most revealing take a look at of the division’s tradition is whether or not officers shoot roughly than the crime atmosphere would predict. For the reason that command-and-control reform was applied in 2018, LAPD has persistently averaged 7.6 fewer OIS per yr. If the LAPD had been actually “trigger-happy,” as some police commissioners, politicians and activists recommend, we’d see the alternative. 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 current 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 had been fired upon from inside a residence and returned hearth; 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 fashionable command-and-control at a police taking pictures is meant to appear to be: supervision, coordination, time and distance and measured pressure.
The broader pattern strengthens this level. Since 2018, the division’s annual totals for OIS haven’t solely remained nicely under early-Nineteen 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 threat spikes. When the division is judged towards the precise risk atmosphere, 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 adequate risk, or techniques collapse into chaos, accountability should be actual and swift. Oversight, transparency and sincere auditing are requirements, not niceties. However system-level judgments needs to be grounded in information and context. The query isn’t, “Why three officer-involved shootings in three days?” a lot as “What had 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 persistently opened hearth much less typically 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 apply 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.
