Liberal LA Cty DA Won't Charge White Cop Who Murdered Anthony McLain. Cops Had No Legal Basis to Detain Black Passenger Shot in the Back as He Fled. Fearful Cop Reasonably Believed a Belt was a Gun

From [HERE] In a separate report also made public late Wednesday, prosecutors said they would not charge the Pasadena police officer who shot and killed Anthony McClain as he fled from a traffic stop two years ago. The Aug. 15, 2020, shooting spurred protests by Black Lives Matter in the streets of Old Pasadena and gained the attention of nationally renowned civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump.

The city of Pasadena has already paid out $7.5 million to McLain’s family.

The decision not to prosecute could engender political backlash against George Gascón, the embattled white Los Angeles County district attorney, who is facing the threat of a recall and who was elected on a promise of holding police accountable in cases where they used deadly force in unnecessary situations.

Activists in San Francisco had long warned that Gascón, who did not charge a single officer in a shooting case in eight years as a top prosecutor in the Bay Area, would fail to do so in Los Angeles as well. Gascón also promised to reopen a number of cases in which police used fatal force that his predecessor, Jackie Lacey, declined to prosecute. But that plan has also hit a number of roadblocks.

“We know this is excruciating and that the families are understandably devastated. We also understand that the public has questions, but out of respect for the families, we wanted to meet with them first and give them time to process this difficult information,” Gascón said in a statement. “We do want to be clear: the burden of proof for prosecution is high. Our decision does not mean that what happened is right.”

Attorneys for the family of a Black man who was fatally shot by a Pasadena police officer last year said Monday that video of the incident is evidence that the shooting was unjustified.

Around 7:52 p.m., officers stopped a four-door, dark-colored Infiniti without a front license plate. McClain was the passenger. 

When police asked the driver for his license, the driver said his license was suspended. The driver cooperated with police after being asked to get out of the car, the department said.

McClain, who was also asked to get out of the car, is seen on video getting out, then running away from the officers. There appears to be no lawful basis for the cops to detain or seize the Black man because he was the passenger in the vehicle. While a passenger may be ordered out of a vehicle for officer safety the Supreme Court has explained that unless the officer has a reasonable articulable suspicion, he may not further detain a passenger. Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408 (1997). Cops apparently did no articulate any reason they wanted to detain McLain. The driver may have been under arrest for something but that did not provide the police any justification for detaining or arresting McClain. Flight alone is not a basis for an arrest.

Police say he reached for an item in his waistband, which they believed to be a firearm. That is bullshit unsupported by the video - watch for yourself.

“The natural swinging movement of the individual’s arms while running revealed what both officers immediately recognized as a firearm in his left hand,” according to the department.

With two officers chasing him, McClain can be seen turning [more bullshit from white journalists- watch the video yourself] and looking at the officers over his right shoulder. Police say they feared he was turning back to shoot at them, so the officer closest to McClain shot at him twice.

It wasn’t immediately clear that he had been shot, as he continued to run “for a considerable distance,” police said. He eventually fell.

Caree Harper, the McClain family’s attorney, said what police saw in the video was a large metal belt buckle, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Neither McClain nor the second officer fired a weapon. No weapon was found on McClain, but a gun was recovered across the street. Apparently no prints or DNA connect the gun to McClain’s possession. At any rate, no officer’s saw him throw a gun up in the air and across a street as he fled.

Attorneys Benjamin Crump and Caree Harper presented a video during a news conference that they say shows that as Anthony McClain lay bleeding on the sidewalk after being shot in the back by police while trying to flee, he told approaching officers “I can’t breathe.” Yet, one of them knelt on McClain’s back as he handcuffed him, Crump and Harper said.

One of the two gunshots that hit McClain traveled through his right lung before coming out of his chest, leading to fatal blood loss. McClain died a few hours later at Pasadena Huntington Memorial Hospital on Aug. 15, 2020.

Crump, a nationally renowned civil rights attorney representing some of the McClain’s family, said McClain’s shooting combines the elements of two high-profile police shootings. One was that of Jacob Blake Jr., who was shot while running from police in Wisconsin and left paralyzed; and the other was the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police as an officer knelt on his neck.

“Not only was Anthony McClain shot in the back like Jacob Blake Jr.,” Crump said. But in the aftermath, as officers handcuff him with his hands behind his back, they worsen his blood loss by kneeling on his back.

“You can hear him say hurry up, I cannot breathe,” Crump said of McClain. “And so you have elements of Jacob Blake Jr. and George Floyd both here in Anthony McClain’s death.”

“Go look at the video; it tells you about the mentality” of the police officers, Crump said.

Floyd was captured on video saying “I can’t breathe” in the minutes before his death, and the phrase has become synonymous with alleged police misconduct during the last year. Crump represents Blake’s family and secured a $27-million settlement for Floyd’s family.

“I am passing out,” McClain said in the video footage. “Hurry up I cannot breathe.”

The officer asks McClain how many times he was shot and he says twice.

“I don’t have a gun,” McClain tells the officers in the video.

As the officer and another officer begin to handcuff McClain, a bystander video shows an officer’s left knee or thigh over McClain’s back but does not clearly show the exact position. The officer with the body camera tells onlookers, “I have got pressure, okay,” seeking to assure those watching he is trying to stem the bleeding. The officer can be heard repeatedly assuring McClain he is trying to help him.

But Harper said the officer’s body pressure on McClain quickened his blood loss. The department, in court papers responding to the lawsuit, recently identified that officer as Officer Sereno, according to Harper.

Pasadena Police Lt. Bill Grisafe said department policy allows the use of knees to restrain a detainee.