Two former Torrance city police officers have been charged with voluntary manslaughter in the 2018 fatal shooting of Christopher Deandre Mitchell, according to an indictment unsealed Monday. This brings to 15 the number of on-duty law enforcement officers accused of crimes in connection with shootings or in-custody deaths under Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón — far more than his predecessors.
The DA has been in office two-and-a-half years. In the previous two decades, only two officers were charged. One pleaded guilty. The other was acquitted. None of the 15 cases brought by Gascón have yet been adjudicated.
The Torrance case stands out: former DA Jackie Lacey had decided the shooting was legally justified. During his campaign against her, Gascón promised to reconsider that decision. He scheduled a 1 p.m. news conference to discuss the charges.
Torrance Police Officers Matthew Concannon and Anthony Chavez had pulled over Mitchell, 23, for allegedly driving a stolen car. In declining to charge them, Lacey’s office said Mitchell would not get out of the car and the officers opened fire after Concannon saw Mitchell move his hands toward a gun in his lap. It was an air rifle.
In the previous analysis by Lacey’s office, the officers reasonably feared for their lives in part because “the tattoos on Mitchell’s face made Chavez wary that Mitchell was a gang member.” It also cited Mitchell’s “failure to follow the officers’ directions, his continued efforts to conceal the object in his lap, the physical appearance of the object, and the movement of his hands toward the object.”
“It was reasonable for the officers to believe the object was a firearm and to respond with deadly force,” the previous analysis stated….
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