A man was wounded by LAPD officers in Boyle Heights on Saturday night, in one of two officer-involved shootings taking place in Los Angeles over the weekend.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Boyle Heights shooting involved officers assigned to the department’s Metropolitan Division, an elite unit recently expanded to deal with increased violent crime in the city. An LAPD officer told the newspaper the officers were working a “crime suppression detail” at the time of the incident.
The LAPD spokesperson told the Times the officers were driving an unmarked car near the 200 block of North Soto Street when they saw a man running across the street. When the officers stopped the man, he allegedly turned and pointed a handgun at them and one of the officers opened fire.
The wounded man, believed to be about 34 years old, was taken to a hospital with a non-life threatening injury. Neither the wounded man nor the officer firing the shot were identified.
The spokesperson said investigators are still trying to determine why the man had the gun and were examining surveillance footage as part of the LAPD’s investigation into the shooting. He said there were no reports of a robbery or assault near where the shooting occurred.
Earlier this year, the LAPD reported the city’s first major crime increase in over a decade. It said violent crime was up 26% citywide and property crime is up 11%.
Another man carrying a steak knife was shot and wounded by police in a separate incident reported on Friday in the Adams-Normandie neighborhood of South LA. The mentally ill man in his 20s had allegedly assaulted his caregiver. The unidentified man was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
Including the two shootings this weekend, Los Angeles police officers have shot 27 people so far this year. Thirteen have died.
The Times reported that 26 people were wounded by LAPD in 2014. The paper cited department figures that showed 35 people were wounded in 2013, 29 in 2012 and 47 in 2011.
Photo above by Flickr user Chris Yarzab/Creative Commons
