On a Saturday afternoon in South Los Angeles, a group of children find a patch of grass to play in while their parents wait around for the grillmaster to signal the food is done. It’s the hottest part of the day, so people try to find refuge underneath a cool shadow cast by the Southern California Library for Social Studies.

“Carnita or asada?”asks an older lady

Eddie Kizzee waits in line with his brother. His son Djion is with them too, in spirit. Dijon’s photo is plastered on a shirt proudly displayed on his father’s chest reading, “Justice for Dijon Kizzee.”

Community members, activists, and broken-hearted family members alike file into the main room at the center of the library, passing the makeshift ofrenda in the street in remembrance of their slain loved ones.

The Coalition for Community Control Over the Police is hosting a forum and many of the speakers have relatives who have been killed by local police.

In the first three days of 2023 the Los Angeles Police Department killed three men, claiming that all three instances justified the “use of force.”

The official LAPD policy on the use of force reads, “Officers may use deadly force only when they reasonably believe, based on the totality of circumstances, that such force is necessary in defense of human life.” However none of these three were armed with a gun.

Since 2017 police across the United States have shot at least 8,431 people to death, according to the Washington Post. Looking back further, since 2000 police have killed 1,002 people in LA County, according to the Los Angeles Times. In Los Angeles alone people have lost their lives at the hands of law enforcement doing everything from riding bicycles to having a mental health crisis. One factor seems to increase someone’s chances of death by cop at an overwhelming rate: being Black.

Eddie Kizze stands before community members as he prepares to speak about the death of his son, Dijon Kizzee’s.

Dijon Kizzee was 29 years old riding his bike on the wrong side of the road on August 31, 2020. Officers pursued Kizzee and he ran away. Police claim that Kizzee reached for a handgun and dropped it.. Surveillance video showed that in the moment before the encounter became fatal the victim was trying to move away from the police, not towards them. Two sheriff’s deputies shot Dijon Kizzee 16 times in his torso, back, and head.

His body was then handcuffed.

“Me and my son, we was like this,” says father Eddie Kizzee. That was my one and only. We talked everyday. We had plans.” Eddie was incarcerated at the time of his son’s death watching a community wide call to action take place on TV.

Since getting out on parole Kizzee attends every event like this that he can in the name of his son. Raischard “Wiz” Smith is relatively new to the large and ever growing world of familial activism.

On Jan. 2, Takar Smith, a 46-year-old father of six was suffering from a mental health crisis when his wife called the police. Soon after they arrived at Smith’s home where, according to his brother, Smith was unaware that the police had been called.

Still in the middle of a mental health crisis within 15 minutes Smith was on his knees cornered in the kitchen waving a knife above his head. Police shot at him and he was pronounced dead soon after in his kitchen. Like Kizzee, police had handcuffed him following the shooting. Like Kizzee, Takar Smith died in handcuffs.

Takar Smith pictured with his wife and children. (Courtesy: Shameka Smith)

Smith was one of three people killed in the first week of 2023 by the LAPD. While Lowe and Kizze are demanding that the officers be held accountable, Wiz and family, four months later, are fighting simply for the names of the officers who killed his brother.

“To this day I don’t know none of the officers' names. They released [Takar’s] name and picture that night, that same night. To this day I don’t even know the officer's name. They won’t tell us nothing.”

“At first they said they didn't have video. Then they said they was going to get it from a local place on the street. Then they said they weren’t going to show it to us.”

Yatoya Lowe’s brother Anthony Lowe was killed by Huntington Park police on January 26, 2023 but for the longest she, her mother, and her brother’s kids didn't know what events led up to his death. It wasn’t until someone from the Los Angeles Times reached out to the family saying that they had a part of the incident on video, that it finally started to make sense.

Lowe, a double amputee who used a wheelchair, had allegedly stabbed someone with a knife. Police confront Lowe and pull his wheelchair from under him, throwing him on the curb, according to his sister’s account.

“They threw Anthony out to the ground and that's when the knife came out. He actually picked it up because Anthony knows that the knife fell out, so see they might shoot.”

They did shoot.

Surveillance camera footage picked up by news stations nationwide illustrate when the altercation became fatal. At first two officers taser Lowe but when that doesn’t completely subdue him they begin to shoot as he’s trying to escape. Lowe was shot 11 times.

Police accounts accuse Lowe of threatening to stab the officers. Outnumbered at least three to one, Lowe, despite being somewhat mobile without a wheelchair, was unlikely to have been able to outrun the officers. He was also unlikely to have caused any significant harm to police as he was a considerable distance from them, attempting to flee from officers when he was murdered.

“No mother, no family, no children should have seen their family gunned down by police on TV,” says Yatoya.

History

History’s first viral video is usually credited to Rodney King and the officers who beat him on the side of the road in 1991. King was struck 56 times with a baton by various members of the LAPD during the duration of the nine minute and twenty second video.

Image: Lora King, daughter of Rodney, speaks to the community members following the beating of Tyre Nichols

Police beat King so badly that his daughter recalls had over 50 broken bones. Before the tape was released law enforcement filed a report claiming that King, who had been using marijuana prior to the altercation, only suffered “a minor nature” of cuts and bruises. Police were then forced to backtrack after the bystander who caught everything on tape sold the footage to a local news station.

Rodney King survived the beating and his name became synonymous with police violence and systemic inequality after the four officers involved were found not guilty by a predominately white jury.

King was left to live with the physical and emotional scars of that night for the rest of life until he died during a swimming accident in 2012. However the pain endured by his family and the Black community withstood the test of time.p>

Today Lora King, daughter of Rodney King, now has a foundation in her father’s name which is focused on keeping his memory alive and “humanizing Black men” in an effort to stop history from repeating itself.

“My dad's not the first and he’s said it. He's not the first Rodney King,” says King.

Rodney King survived the beating and a video account to support his innocence, far too many victims of police violence are not as fortunate.

According to the Smithsonian Magazine, the first official American police department was established in Boston in 1838 as a way to control the immigrant population. Formerly enslaved people migrating North would soon find themselves victims of the punitive punishment enforced by the earliest Northern police.

Historically police have been used as a means of enforcing the laws created by states even when those laws, as within the Jim Crow Era, were outworldly racists against African Americans and people of color.

According to the CDC between 2011 and 2020 Black men were three times more likely than Black women to die by suicide, and during 2020 when the national suicide rate dropped by 3% it was on the rise for Black men.

At the same time 2020 is when nationwide protests erupted in the name of #BlackLivesMatter following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery that year along with resentment built up from the murders of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and countless others over the course of recent years.

Demonstrations in 2020 ranged from peaceful protests and marches to riots. Remembering how her father’s abuse partially triggered the 1992 Los Angeles Riots Lora King explains, “I don't condone riots, but I understand. Martin Luther King said the riots is just the language of the unheard.”

Demonstrations in 2020 ranged from peaceful protests and marches to riots. Remembering how her father’s abuse partially triggered the 1992 Los Angeles Riots Lora King explains,“I don't condone riots, but I understand like Martin Luther King said the riots is just the language of the unheard.”

While the killings of Floyd and Taylor drew national attention, local counties across America were opening their eyes for what could have been the first time to these troubling encounters that African Americans were having with police within their own communities.

Where do we go from here

The Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, comprised of five civilians appointed by the mayor, acts as the governing body of the Los Angeles Police Department, even over the police chief himself.

Then-mayor Eric Garcetti appointed Paula Madison to the commission in 2014. She remembers getting the call: “And I said, ‘Police Commission? Mr. Mayor, are you sure? I'm not sure that you vetted me well enough for that.’”

Madison, a former NBC executive and news director is a Black woman with a Black husband from the American South who was at first not happy that she would be working within a system that is historically anti-Black.

So why did she agree to do it? She recalls telling her husband,“I thought about you. I thought about my brothers. I thought about our grandson. I thought about all the Black men who I know and don't know. I thought about black women. I felt I had to do it.”

During her three years on the board, Madison commissioned a report asking for the data on the race and gender of every person who made a complaint about police bias and the race and gender of every officer the complaint was made about.

Madison specifically requested that data only for complaints that didn’t result in an arrest or a citation.

This report found that the number one complainant was Black men who were stopped while driving, and the group of officers they filed the most complaints against were Latino men.

On the day this report was released Madison remembers the chamber being full of civilians and officers who were perplexed by these findings. Madison theorizes that this disparity is a result of the tensions that exist between Black and Latino communities within housing projects, public schools, and community gangs.

However on a broader level this data illustrates that reforming the police system does not mean simply hiring more officers of color or putting more people of color in leadership roles.

Despite being on the police commission, Madison was still concerned for how she might be treated by the police.

“When I was a police commissioner, do you think that I would get pulled over… ‘I'm good. No, I'm not.’”

“I didn't have anything on my car, on my license plate or on my forehead that said Paula Madison, Police Commissioner.”

LAPD is also undergoing a recruitment shortage following national and community wide scrutiny of the police. According to the Police Commission the most recent class to graduate from the Police Academy was only composed of 22 individuals when ceremonies once featured upwards of 60 graduates. In the 2023-2024 Los Angeles city budget LAPD is requesting an additional $118 million to bring in over 700 new officers.

In terms of policing solutions the Los Angeles Police Protective League, or the LAPD’s official police union also wants to put limits on which situations officers respond to.

According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, people –like Takar Smith– who are suffering from an untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to die during a police encounter.

In March of this year the police union released a proposal which included over 20 types of calls that their union no longer wants police officers to respond to. Non-criminal mental health calls were on the list along with non-criminal welfare checks, non-violent juvenile disturbances, and “non-criminal and/or non-violent homeless” related calls.

"We’re glad to see the LAPPL taking the initial steps to join us, and the majority of Los Angeles, in agreement around removing armed officers from many calls where they are simply not needed,” explains City Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez.

The logic is that everyday encounters with the police are less likely to become deadly for Black people and all people in Los Angeles if police encounters are limited to emergency situations.

This solution addresses a part of the problem. Coalition for Community Control Over the Police leader Cliff Smith believes that amending the city charter to make the police accountable to the people they serve is the most community centered approach to reform. Section 571 of the Los Angeles Carter and Administrative Code outlines the responsibilities of the Board of Police Commissioners but it does not require that commissioners are elected by the members of the communities they serve.

Currently commissioners are appointed by the mayor, who is elected, and confirmed by the elected members of the City Council. If community members were able to campaign for a position on the police commission then the police would be directly accountable to the community.

Additionally, the most recent city budget set aside a little over $637,000 to go towards the expansion of the Mental Evaluation Unit and another $960,000 to go towards call direction in cases of suicide. The relatively small allotments are the first step in redirecting money from policing towards alternative forms of community support.

Based on the lack of success with political slogans such as “Defund the Police” and an apparent increase in the budgets of LAPD and other police departments across the country it is clear that policing as we know it is not going anywhere in the near future. However there is shooting after shooting that illustrates the biases in our society as reflected by biases in policing.

On Super Bowl Sunday people get ready to cheer for their team or enjoy the halftime show. On this day in 2018 a 16-year-old AJ Weber was walking around his low-income neighborhood when police stopped him because he matched the description of suspect: Black male in blue jeans. Soon after the stop he was shot by police who claimed that the high schooler had a gun, a gun that to this day has yet to be found. AJ Weber was shot over 10 times and his body was left uncovered in the street for hours.

“They’re trying to George Floyd me,” says high school teacher Keenan Anderson on police body cam footage. After getting into a car accident Anderson got into an altercation with the police. According to California Highway Patrol an estimated 1,500 car accidents happen every day in California. It was nothing uncommon but in January 2023 Anderson lost his life after one officer held their elbow on his neck while another tased him for over 30 seconds. This led him to go into cardiac arrest and he was pronounced dead.

Dozens if not hundreds of people ride their bike on the wrong side of the road every day. When Kizzee, a heavyset Black man with dreads and tattoos engaged in something so typical he – like Anderson, Weber, and so many others – ended up dead.

The main thing each of these men had in common was the mundaneness of the actions that preceded their deaths and their identity as a Black man. Today they are no longer people.

They are memories.

They are memories that highlight injustice and shine a light on the hope that things will change with policy, with legal action or just with time. They are memories carried by the people of Los Angeles, the ones that loved them the most, and the rare police commissioner who sees her grandson in them.

“The fact is that the trauma, the intergenerational trauma that we feel. It's going to take a lot for it to go away,”Madison explains.

“Am I hopeful?”

“I'm always hopeful.”