Editorial: Shot to death for throwing a bottle?

Patrolling the streets of Los Angeles is a dangerous job. Officers encounter people at their worst — hurt, scared, angry, paranoid or drug-addled — as well as the worst sort of people. Their uniforms and their responsibility to rush into dangerous places, often when others are rushing out, make them particularly vulnerable.

That’s why the police have weapons and the authority to use them. That’s why we have special rules that give them wide latitude to use force, and the benefit of the doubt that they were justified in doing so. We understand that it’s a heavy responsibility to have to make split-second decisions that could end someone’s life, or their own.

But it doesn’t mean we should rubber-stamp officers’ decisions to shoot. Whenever someone dies at the hands of police, we owe it to the officers as well as the public to have a full and open accounting. This is all the more important now, when there’s a bitter national debate over police shootings of unarmed men and a growing rift between the city’s officers and its residents — and when another person has been killed by police under troubling circumstances.

Few facts about this latest incident have been released to the public. Two Los Angeles Police Department officers in a patrol car were stopped at a light at Victory and Van Nuys boulevards Saturday night when a 40-ounce beer bottle crashed through the back window. The officers got out and shot to death a man who they thought threw the bottle. That’s it. The police haven’t even disclosed the dead man’s name.

In the absence of facts, people are liable to fill in the blanks with a narrative that won’t necessarily favor the officers. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck has been too quiet on this case, saying only that the main question is whether the officers’ perception of imminent danger was reasonable. There are others that are just as important. Was the dead man the bottle thrower? Why did the officers believe they were in danger? Was it reasonable for them to start firing before they knew they had the right person, or whether he was armed? Are they being adequately trained to deal with such situations?

Mayor Eric Garcetti, Beck and the Police Commission must not allow the suspicions surrounding this killing to fester. We need the city to start providing answers now, rather than letting the investigation plod along in secret for a year or more. LAPD officers have killed 18 people so far this year, as many as in all of 2014, and numerous killings remain mysteries that reinforce the public’s mistrust.

There is a balance between protecting the lives of police officers and those of the people they are on the streets to defend. City officials need to assure the public that they are striking that balance.

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