LAPD Reveals More Details About Fatal Shooting In Venice

VENICE, CA — Los Angeles Police Department this week is revealing more information about shooting incidents in 2021, including a fatal shooting in Venice last month.

In 2021, LAPD officers were involved in five incidents that led to police shootings.

"While each incident had a different set of circumstances, there were some common threads with year-to-date totals for 2021," police said.

These shootings happened when officers were responding to armed suspects, police said.

"A trend that is consistent with the increase in violence we are experiencing in the city, including an increase of homicides by 17 percent and victims shot up by 19 percent when compared to 2020," police said.

LAPD Pacific Division officers responded about 5:50 a.m. Oct. 13 to calls reporting that a suspect was threatening a family member with a knife.

As officers approached the apartment where the suspect and the woman were, they heard a woman yelling in distress, police said. They forced entry into the apartment and inside they found the suspect armed with a knife, swinging it at the woman.

The officers shot the suspect, who was struck and later pronounced dead at a hospital.

"The violent situations in these five OIS incidents are unique given the number of hostage situations," police said. "Four of the five incidents involved hostage situations where officers were thrust into evolving incidents where a hostage was in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury."

LAPD is also sharing a number of other factors in these incidents, including the rise of mental illness-associated incidents.

"The other factor is the number of suspects experiencing a mental illness," police said.

As of October 25, 2021, there have been 30 OIS incidents of which 10 (33 percent) have involved a suspect with a perceived mental illness; a figure that exceeds the total percentages for 2017 (32 percent) and 2020 (21 percent), police said.

"The number of persons who are in and out of treatment for mental illnesses and who are oftentimes released from institutions without an adequate support system in place upon release has exacerbated the high levels of violence we are experiencing in the City," police said.

Police also saw a rise in the number of suspects carrying edged and bladed weapons. In fact, 10 of the 30 OIS incidents for 2021 involved suspects armed with an edged weapon. This is a rise compared to the totals for 2020 and 2017, where police noted seven and eight suspects armed with edged weapons, respectively.

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