Author: brandycavalli

The Los Angeles Police Commission is expected to decide Tuesday whether an officer followed the department’s policies for using deadly force last summer when he shot and killed a woman in a South L.A. alley. 

Redel Jones, 30, was fatally shot by a Los Angeles police officer in August 2015 after she allegedly moved toward officers with a knife. 

As hundreds of demonstrators descended on downtown Los Angeles, the city’s Police Commission on Tuesday faulted two LAPD officers for their tactics leading up to the killing of a black woman in South L.A. last year, but found that the fatal shooting did not violate the department’s deadly force policy.

The board’s decision touched off protests outside the LAPD’s downtown headquarters that quickly moved across the street to City Hall, where activists pounded on the glass doors and decried how police officers use force, particularly against African Americans. In the year after Redel Jones’ death, her name has been chanted at meetings, written on signs carried at protests and spread on Twitter as a hashtag.

Jones, 30, was killed after Los Angeles police say she moved toward an officer while holding a knife. The LAPD has said Jones matched the description of a woman who robbed a nearby pharmacy about 20 minutes earlier, prompting officers to pursue her into the alley.

But a woman who said she saw the August 2015 shooting from her car questioned why police opened fire, telling the Los Angeles Times that Jones was running away from the officers and never turned toward them.