Frederick Holder was fatally shot by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) last year. His death was overshadowed by a press conference from Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva on the same day. LASD deputies fired 33 times at Holder, who was unarmed. At Norwalk Sheriff’s Station; his family is protesting for 33 consecutive days, one day for each bullet fired by deputies.
The shooting by deputies occurred at Piuma Avenue and Alondra Boulevard in Norwalk on Wednesday, June 23, 2021, at around 9:50 a.m.
According to a news release from the department: deputies from the Norwalk sheriff’s station were notified by a Los Angeles Police Department airship that a white utility box van (which was reported stolen) was driving erratically. Deputies responded and pursued the vehicle to conduct a traffic stop. The van stopped, and deputies allege that the man was holding an object that they perceived to be a gun. That is when they opened fire on Holder, who was pronounced dead on the scene by the Los Angeles County Fire Department. But it turned out that there was no gun on the scene. Holder was unarmed, and the item in question turned out to be an L-shaped butane lighter. Critics of this shooting say that the lighter is too small to have been mistaken for a gun by anyone trained in firearms. There is not even a “barrel” that stretches beyond the lighter trigger. None of the deputies were wearing body cameras, even though the department already had access to body cameras, so many of the deputy claims about this incident cannot be verified. There is only an obstructed wide shot from a dash camera, which has no audio.
The department relied on the false assumption of a gun in order to justify why this shooting occurred. Cynthia Lee of the George Washington University Law School wrote a report about the intersection of race, police use of force, and false assumptions about seeing guns that don’t exist. Law enforcement in the United States have a much higher rate of shooting unarmed people of color, especially Black men, while falsely assuming they’re armed. According to Lee’s findings, the words “I thought he had a gun” coming from a law enforcement officer is enough to justify most killings of unarmed people of color by police.
“In the old days, the cops simply shot their black victims and [planted] a weapon the officers carried for such emergencies. Nowadays, weapons need exist only in the mind of the policeman in firing position.” — Les Payne, Journalist for Newsday1
In response to the autopsy revealing that Holder was shot at 33 times, with up to 17 gunshot wounds, the family decided to protest every day for 33 days straight, starting last Friday. The first day started with almost exclusively family members, but by the eighth day, activists were starting to join in.
Day 1:
Day 2:
Day 3:
Day 7:
On the seventh day, family members and activists confronted Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva about the deputies who killed Frederick Holder.
Day 8:
I heard from a protest organizer as well as a family member of Frederick Holder about how the Sheriff Villanueva incident the day prior had gone, as well as how this first week of protest has been going generally:
The family plans on continuing to protest until there is a path to justice and accountability. They are specifically demanding that the deputies involved in this shooting be relieved from duty.