On Monday night while, 1,800 miles away, Ferguson was rioting over the shooting of Michael Brown, Ezell Ford was walking down a street in Los Angeles.
It wasn’t the nicest street. Florence, where Ford was walking, has one of the highest rates of violence in Los Angeles County.
It’s not clear what Ford was doing. Ford had a history of mental illness and had been convicted of marijuana possession and illegal possession of a loaded firearm. In January, he was put on probation for trespassing in Long Beach. But there’s not yet information about what he was doing wrong, if anything. And it’s not yet clear why he was stopped by police.
What is clear: After he was stopped, Ford was killed, shot by two members of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Even as the LAPD released a detailed account of the incident Wednesday,the Los Angeles Times reported that “residents and community activists are demanding answers” about the shooting.
According to the LAPD’s news release, two veteran gang officers saw Ford walking on a South Los Angeles sidewalk Monday night and stopped their patrol car and attempted to speak to him. But Ford, the statement said, “continued walking and made suspicious movements, including attempting to conceal his hands.
“When the officers got closer and attempted to stop the individual, the individual turned, grabbed one of the officers, and a struggle ensued. During the struggle, they fell to the ground and the individual attempted to remove the officer’s handgun from its holster.” The other officer, police said, “fired his handgun and the officer on the ground fired his backup weapon at the individual.”
Police said Ford was detained, then transported to a hospital where he later died.
