LAPD use of force, shootings increased in 2023

The Los Angeles Police Department’s review of officers’ use of force in 2023 showed there were three more police shootings, 17 more significant uses of force, four more in-custody deaths, and three more accidental shootings by officers in comparison with 2022.

The LAPD said nine officers were injured in the 2023 shootings. Of those struck by police gunfire, 16 people were killed and 14 were wounded. Police bullets missed the other four people.

The report, made public Friday and set for discussion at the Board of Police Commissioners meeting next week, showed 12 of 2023’s police shootings took place in the department’s Central Bureau, followed by nine shootings in the San Fernando Valley, six in South Bureau, and five in West Bureau.

Officers fired far more rounds during all of the 2023 shootings than in prior years, with a total of 327 shots, compared with 215 in 2022 and 175 in 2021. Officers fired and missed three, hitting the person they were aiming at three fewer times in 2023.

Thirteen of the people shot by police were armed with guns, and four were holding replica or pellet guns. Twelve people shot were armed with knives or edged weapons, seven more than in 2022.

Four fewer people were shot by officers who thought they saw a weapon in 2023.

The report did not include information about whether reviews of the 2023 police shootings found they were within department policy, as the cases were still being reviewed.

In recent years, more LAPD officers have been found out of policy in shootings, including in 19 uses of lethal force in 2022, or about 34 percent of that year’s shootings.

Overall violent crime declined in 2023 in Los Angeles.

The LAPD review noted that few of the 1.1 million contacts between officers and the public, or the 42,373 arrests made in 2023, involved any use of force

Less serious uses of force, called “non categorical uses of force,” declined sharply in 2023 to 1,560 from 2,213 in 2022. Part of this was due to a reclassification in early 2023 of what is considered non categorical.

These incidents include officers grabbing people, using their body weight during an encounter, punching, striking, or knocking a person to the ground, and using less lethal weapons, such as Tasers, beanbag shotguns, or a 40mm launcher that fires a foam projectile.