Charly "Africa" Keunang, shot and killed by the LAPD
On March 1 of this year, three Los Angeles Police Department officers shot and killed an unarmed homeless African immigrant on Skid Row. His name was Charly "Africa" Keunang and he was from Cameroon. Like thousands before him, he traveled all the way to Los Angeles to pursue his acting dream in Hollywood. Jeff Sharlet, writing for GQ, in a
powerful piece titled "The Invisible Man: The End of a Black Life that Mattered," uncovers several lies that the LAPD has told in the wake of this shooting.
See, Sharlet was somehow able to see and hear what all of us should be able to see and hear after a fatal police shooting. Two of the officers on the scene were wearing body cameras that day. The LAPD refuses to release the footage, perhaps because the footage that Sharlet has been able to view contradicts the storyline about why the officers had to kill Keunang.
At first there is only one policeman, Sergeant Chand Syed. An unusual response, if the situation was as threatening as they'd later claim.
Two more policemen arrive. Most of the police are indistinguishable to Skid Row residents, but one of the officers, Francisco Martinez, has a reputation. "Hard-ass bitch cop," says a witness. "Napoleon cop." His partner is an African-American rookie, never identified by the LAPD, whose name is Joshua Volasgis.
Martinez and Syed are wearing body cameras. The LAPD has to date refused to release that video. But I've been able to carefully review the body-cam videos and listen to recordings of police interviews with several of those involved.
Below we will expose the essential lies told by the LAPD in this case.
Lie No. 1: First and foremost, on a previously released video, one of the officers can be heard yelling for Charly to "drop the gun, drop the gun." Immediately after this is yelled, the officers begin to shoot Charly.
Truth: Sharlet has seen the body camera videos and says Charly never, not once, took a gun from any of the officers.
Charly does not have the gun, of this there is no question. He may have reached for it. His arm may have convulsed. He may have never come near. Volasgis will tell the detectives he was straddling the suspect, by which he means his right hip—his gun—was close, or close enough to Charly's hand. He will insist that the suspect had "defeated" the two safety measures on his holster. He will say he was holding the suspect's hand down as the suspect attempted to draw his weapon. And yet, on Syed's and Martinez's cam footage, we cannot see Charly reach. Volasgis will say the suspect lets go of his pistol only after the first shot is fired. But this is not true. When Martinez shoots Charly, Volasgis is already on his way to standing. The gun is beyond reach.
See, this is exactly what the LAPD does not want us to see. Charly never possessed the gun and when the first shot was fired by Martinez, the gun is not even within reach.
Lie No. 2: The police said that Charly had a mini-bat and that they feared for their lives.
Truth: Sharlet viewed every video from the day. Not only is a mini-bat never seen, he says, but police are never heard in any of the footage even mentioning such a thing.
The detectives ask Officer Martinez if he saw a bat. No, he says. But he can imagine it: "For the benefit of the tape," say the detectives, describing what we can't see on the audio recordings, Martinez is holding his hands "about maybe eighteen to twenty inches apart."
"Assault with a deadly weapon, then?" the detectives ask after more questions.
"Yes it is," says Martinez.
On this, the threat of the mini-bat none of them saw, Martinez is clear.
Lie No. 3: Police claimed that they attempted to use the Taser on Charly but
that it was ineffective. When it was used a second time on Charly, police claim that it didn't work at all.
Truth: Again, Sharlet has viewed the body camera videos and it was clear to him that the Tasers worked. First off, we must be clear on what we're talking about. Tasers are not tranquilizers. They don't sedate people. We're talking about sending huge, potentially lethal, charges of electricity through someone's body.
Each time Charly was hit with the Taser, which Sharlet makes clear the officer intended on using on a very calm Charly the moment he arrived, Charly's body shook.
Police claim that the Taser wasn't even used in the moment described below, but they refuse to release the data the Taser is supposed to record.
An officer named Daniel Torres moves in with a second Taser and, using it as a stun gun—direct to the body—hits the outer right thigh, the inner thigh, in toward the crotch. There is the beetle-like zk-zk-zk. Charly's one free foot spasms.
In addition to the injustice of Charly's murder at the hands of the LAPD, the public is now suffering another injustice as we are lied to in an attempted coverup. Maybe they thought that nobody would care enough about Charly to fight for his rights, but we care, and the LAPD needs to address these lies.
When Sharlet asked the Steve Soboroff, president of LAPD Commission, what he might do about this case, he got this reply:
In some ways, that reply is simultaneously encouraging and disheartening. It's great that Soboroff is going to evaluate and consider the information that Sharlet exposed, but why is it that a writer for GQ, four months after Charly was shot, knows more about the shooting than the head of the LAPD Commission? Apparently, even Soboroff hadn't seen the body camera videos yet?
Just know this: It's no accident that every police shooting investigation is one giant clusterfuck in which nobody knows anything, nobody talks, nobody's seen the videos, police aren't interviewed, etc. All of this is by design and is fully intended to protect officers from the real consequences of their actions.