In February Los Angeles Police officers shot and killed a Boyle Heights sixteen-year-old named Jose Mendez. According to the police, was driving a stolen car and carrying a sawed off shotgun.
The Los Angeles Times reported back in February that, according to Chief Charlie Beck, a description of the stolen car had been broadcast to LAPD officers. Several hours later, cops from the Hollenbeck station spotted the stolen vehicle and began following the car and its driver. The car pulled over and sixteen-year-old Mendez allegedly armed himself with a sawed off shotgun.
In a later account, an LAPD spokesperson said that Jose Mendez pointed the gun at one of the police officers, at which point police shot the sixteen-year-old multiple times and he died at the scene.
Now LA Weekly reporter Jason McGahan has broken the news about a surveilance video that has surfaced showing officers dragging Mendez’ body immediately after the shooting, from the private driveway where he was shot, down the sidewalk a distance of approximately 30 feet, for reasons that are unclear.
Attorney Arnoldo Casillas, who is representing Jose Mendez family in a civil suit, shared the video with the Weekly on the condition that they agreed not to publish the video itself online. But the publication was allowed to excerpt screen shots for publication
Here’s a clip from the Weekly’s story:
The video in question — which Mendez’s parents, Juan and Josefina Mendez, discovered the day after the shooting while visiting the scene with Casillas — was filmed by a security camera from a nearby apartment complex. Looking north to an area on the downhill slope of East Sixth Street, the video captures the black Honda Mendez was driving coming to a stop in a residential driveway. Immediately, a patrol car pulls in behind it. The glare from the cruiser’s headlights obstructs the camera’s view of the shooting, but in the last clear sequence prior to the shooting, at 10:42 p.m. on the video timestamp, two officers can be seen rapidly exiting the patrol car, their guns drawn and pointed.
The officers quickly climb out of the patrol car and appear to point their weapons toward the vehicle with Mendez still at the wheel. One officer circles around to the right of the parked Honda, and the other to the left. The police car’s lights obscure the rest of the incident from view.
Four and a half minutes later, at 10:46 p.m according to the video timestamp, two police officers are shown dragging Mendez’s body by the shoulders down East Sixth Street and laying him face-down on the sidewalk, about 30 feet away from the driveway where the traffic stop was conducted and the shooting had taken place moments before.
After officers dragged Mendez’ body, the video then shows one officer fishing what appears to be a cell phone out of the boy’s pocket, after which time, another officer handcuffs him. More officers arrive. Mendez does not move, nor does anyone appear to check his condition.
So, what if anything does this video mean? The Weekly talked to several experts to whom they showed the video. These experts gave various circumstances that could necessitate the moving of a body at the scene of such an incident. However, none of those circumstances seemed to be in evidence after the Mendez shooting.
One a former prosecutor, a deputy district attorney for Riverside County named Ambrosio Rodriguez, told McGahan, “I was in many officer-involved shootings, when [the victim or victims] were dead, and they’re treated like a homicide scene. There’s lots of little differences, but you cannot move a body. That’s tampering with evidence. You can’t do that…”
LAPD officials have not yet commented on the video.
Read the rest of the Weekly’s story here.
Photo by Scott L, Wikimedia Commons
Certainly, moving the body would be prudent if the officers believed the residence he pulled into was associated with the suspect. Staying in the driveway would have placed them in a “kill zone” if additional gang members were at the residence. Just one possibility. I’m sure there are others…..
Here we go again. Mrs Freemon, you and your liberal friends need to stop already. Because of bleeding hearts like you, street violence will continue and Cops won’t do their jobs.
The SJWs have chosen not to focus on the little gangster who had the unmitigated temerity to steal a car, have a sawed-off shotgun in his possession, run from the police, and then point said shotgun at the police. Oh, sorry, “allegedly.”
No, they focus on why the officers may have moved the fine little misunderstood youth after he was shot. The “reasons are unclear” was the quote from the article. That’s liberal codespeak for “we don’t like the police and everything they say is a lie.”
Keep treating gangsters like they’re the good guys and see what happens – oh wait, it’s happening in most communities already. Enjoy your mess.
It’s sickening how so called journalists don’t understand they’re a HUGE part of the problem. They’ve proven they don’t care about the people they claim to care about. Unbiased journalism is truly dead.
Hey, Jim Crow, if you’re intent on nonsensical ranting, at least spell the host’s name correctly.
Sincerely, liberal friend of blogmeister
Here we go again. In the name of the free press or under the auspices of “the people have a right go know”, we have bias tinged fragments of an ongoing investigation being released to the public before all the facts are in. No wonder some cops don’t take a pro-active approach in doing their for fear of being judged before their department and legal system investigations have had a chance to run their due course. When you let the court of public opinion dictate how and what news is reported and the rampant introduction of personal and political bias color the stories we read/hear, we are no better than other propaganda dominated societies of the world. Very interesting times we live in indeed.
Maybe he should have just been home with his 8 siblings and extended family and not driving a “G Ride” armed!
Hitchcock, Crow makes a lot of sense. It’s too bad you are your Birkenstock wearing ignorant liberal friends like Celeste don’t realize it. It’s going to take you or a family member to be victimized by some gangster…err…victim…to get you to wake up. But there are no gang members in Topanga Canyon. Keep living in your bubble. Do some ride alongs with the police in the inner city and get a small glimpse of reality. Go Trump!
EDITOR’S NOTE:
Dearest commenters,
We don’t have an opinion on this situation. The kid was driving a stolen car and according to the police he had a sawed off shotgun. We don’t know if he brandished the sawed off or not as the LAPD hasn’t said. We reported on this story because a controversy has arisen due to the video, which makes it news again.
Reporting facts in a case—or in this case, new facts—doesn’t constitute bias, no matter what some of you wish to believe.
The issue of moving the kid’s body may be for the reason that Bandwagon suggested. His was a constructive comment as it added more information about why the officers might have moved the boy’s body, and thus expanded the conversation.
We appreciated new perspectives and additional information that helps us—and readers—better understand the facts.
May your Labor Day weekend be a good one.
C.
Never worn any sort of sandal since zori’sw ml when I was a little kid, Dulce. In hindsight, hated them, stubbed my toes a lot!
My point is more that such easy assumptions are made, how anyone who questions authority is no doubt a lib, or a bleeding heart.Life is just not that black and white.
If by being your definition of a liberal is someone who sees The Donald ™ as a lunatic, so be it. For the record, I cannot stand his opponent either
If you think I favor violent, evil scum over solid law enforcement, well, you’d be full of beans 😉 And trust me this is not a cops vs civilians world (us vs them) as you often see it.
I was 14 or so, flying cross country on a DC 8, cast on a broken wrist, $36 nylon string guitar packed away in a storage closet.
Sitting next to me was a road manager of Canned Heat, who started talking to me because his fellow roadie also had a broken wrist..
Sitting in the seat in front of me was a fellow named Al Wilson. You’d all know him from the song ‘Goin’ Up the Country’.
A month later me and my family were walking out the door headed for a vacation in Yosemite, and the news was on, stating that Wilson was dead, died in a sleeping bag in Topanga from an overdose of Nembutal.
I understand the public has a right to know, the need for the free flow of in formation and the danger of “Censorship.” However, just like I’ll fated (luckily ) dictatorships of the past used the media to promote their twisted agenda (Nazi Germany), the USA government was able to successfully use the media to motivate and gain support for its mission. Depending on the end goal, telling a story will have the desired outcome. The power of the press and written word is mighty but the power of the camera is downright dangerous in these times. To much of the wrong information in the hands of the wrong “consumer” is definitely not always a good thing.
Up to us, conspiracy, to separate the wheat from chaff.
@ 8. Dulce……Funny how after you sank on the SS Tanaka, you reappear with the same “Extreme Right” rhetoric. Now you roll the dice and come up with “Snake Eyes” with the Trump rant. Incredible!
Where is Boomer and the radio car of trust? LMAO
“Because of bleeding hearts like you, street violence will continue and Cops won’t do their jobs.”
I say we arrest Celeste and realize unprecedented drops of street violence in the dangerous streets of Los Angeles.
We will all be safer when Celeste in residing in San Quentin’s east block.