The Los Angeles Police Department released a report on Tuesday touting a decline in 2024 officer shootings. This is despite authorities acknowledging that this year’s figures show trends are turning back with a huge rise in fatal force incidents.
LAPD officials fired 29 people last year, compared to 34 in 2023. This keeps the report authors effective at suppressing the use of serious forces.
But already in 2025, LAPD officials exceeded the total number of shots recorded last year, with police launching at least 31 fires within nine months.
Announcing Tuesday as the new president of the Police Commission, Teresa Sanchez Gordon said she was impressed by the fact that officers may first shoot rather than deploy clumsy weapons during their encounters with people showing signs of mental illness last year.
“Why can’t we increase it… use of that less lethal measure?” asked Sanchez Gordon.
LAPD chief Jim McDonnell told the committee that using tasers and launchers to shoot hard-form projectiles “is paramount in everyone’s minds.”
But in many cases, he said meeting people in crisis unfolds very quickly and unpredictably, as there is little time left to consider other tools. He said the majority of the shootings stemmed from 911 calls rather than “active policing.”
The timing of Tuesday’s report appeared incongruous amidst the rise in public outrage over the recent rise in police shootings.
The report also pointed to an increasing number of shootings last year where officers mistakenly believe someone is armed. This is an increasingly common scenario that has led to recent concerns.
In July, LAPD officials said a man sitting inside a utility van on the East Side of the city ignored repeated commands to drop what turned out to be a toy airsoft gun similar to an actual rifle. The deceased man’s fiance said he had dealt with mental health issues in the past.
Over the past few weeks, the committee will do more to curb the number of shootings.
Last year, the largest jumps were seen in the number of police shootings in the Southeast, North Hollywood and Harbor Patrol areas, with the 77th Avenue, Foothill, Lampert and Newton departments recording the biggest drops.
The shooting cut across race. Approximately 55% of those shot and death by officers are Latino, with blacks and whites each making up about 21% of the incidents, with the remaining 3% involved Asians.
More than half of the officers who fired the weapon were Latinos, which roughly aligns with the racial composition of the department. A quarter of the officers were white, with Asian officers responsible for 11% of the shootings.
The number of officers injured in the shooting increased from 8 to 11 between 2023 and 2024, according to the report.
The rise in police shootings has been a regular issue for police critics and social justice advocates who appear to speak at committee weekly meetings.
On Tuesday, Melina Abdullah accused the committee of not taking the role seriously when police shootings continue to rise.
“I don’t know how this watchdog is overseeing and not asking for something different,” she said.
Recent reports show that officers fired nearly twice as many bullets as last year’s 2020 bullets. On average, LAPD officers fired more than 10 rounds per shooting.
In addition to the decline in police shootings last year, department reports revealed that so-called non-categorized use of force (LAPD has immersed the deployment of a Taser or Beanbag shotgun or the development of a serious but non-life-threatening incident) from 1,451 to just 1,451.
This decline came amid a decline in the number of people who had contact with LAPD in 2024.
Also, shootings of people with knives, swords and other edged weapons have been significantly reduced. Preventing these types of conflicts from becoming fatal has been a point of emphasis by the department and committees in recent years. In February, LAPD officials faced criticism after holding a knife in their room at the Pacoima Motel after calling 911 to report that they had been lured.
Like most crime statistics, experts should be aware that they read too much of the year-over-year fluctuations. However, department statistics show that despite recent increases, police shootings have fallen considerably from the highs of the early 1990s, accounting for only a small portion of all public encounters each year.
