Long Beach School Officer Shoots 18-Year-Old, Leaving Her on Life Support | California

An 18-year-old woman is on life support after a school security guard shot her near a high school in Long Beach, Calif. This week, sparking outrage and renewing calls for armed officers be withdrawn from schools.

The victim, identified by her family as Manuela Rodriguez, was shot dead while in a moving vehicle on Monday afternoon. The Long Beach Police Department (LBPD) said a school district officer was driving when he observed an altercation between Rodriguez and a 15-year-old girl taking place down the street from Millikan High School and attempted to intervene.

Rodriguez then entered a vehicle which began to pull away. In cell phone video footage circulating on social media, it emerged that the officer shot the car as it fled.

The officer’s bullet hit the 18-year-old girl, who is also the mother of a five-month-old boy. Rodriguez, who police said suffered upper body injuries, was taken to hospital in critical condition. On Thursday morning, doctors declared her brain dead and were preparing to remove her from life support, according to a family lawyer.

The officer, who has not been identified, is employed by the school district and on administrative leave with pay. Rodriguez, also known as Mona, is not a high school student.

The shooting in Long Beach, a city south of Los Angeles, sparked condemnation of the officer’s tactics. “For this officer to pick on the car and start shooting inside the car was totally against politics, training and common sense,” said Luis Carrillo, an attorney for the family of Rodriguez, at the Guardian. He said there was no report that anyone was armed and that no one posed a threat to the officer.

“Everything went wrong. You don’t shoot a car leaving a place… And you shouldn’t have armed officers dealing with children, ”Carrillo said, calling for the officer to be arrested and charged with murder or dying. ‘manslaughter.

Long Beach Police and the district attorney are investigating the shooting.

US law enforcement agencies have increasingly adopted policies against shooting at moving vehicles, recognizing that shooting in a car can seriously endanger the public. Federal guidelines require officers to shoot at a driver only if the driver presents a deadly threat distinct from the vehicle (such as pointing a gun). Best practices dictate that officers should steer clear of moving vehicles instead of shooting, experts said.

The Long Beach School District’s use of force policy for its officers says they “must not fire on a moving vehicle “and”must not shoot a fleeing person, ”according to a copy of the rules shared with the Guardian.

Some have wondered why the officer was involved in an argument off campus in a parking lot. A spokesperson for the school district said its officers “work both on campus and near campuses. [to] ensuring the safe passage of students to and from the school ”, and that the officer was on duty and“ providing safe passage for students leaving Millikan High School ”.

Since the mass protests sparked last year by the murder of George Floyd, advocates across the United States have been pushing for police to be removed from schools and to reinvest those funds in programs and services for students. . Oakland is now preparing to withdraw its police department from schools, and the LA school board has voted to reduce the number of police officers in its schools.

Last year, the City of Long Beach’s Racial Equity Report recommended that the school district take action to “reduce the use of school policing” and “examine alternative models.” A spokesperson for the school said the district currently employs nine full-time school safety officers and two part-time officers.

Audrena Redmond, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Long Beach, said the group had fought to remove armed officers from schools and reinvest those resources in programs and life-saving personnel needs, such as counselors, workers. social workers and nurses.

Redmond said she didn’t want school officials reacting by promising more training, but rather removing guns from campuses altogether. The presence of armed officers in schools was detrimental to the students, she said: “It criminalizes people. This normalizes being watched from an early age.

There was no justification for the officer’s violent reaction, she added: “They were doing what is going on among the children, which is fighting and arguing… then he went on. shot a teenager at point blank range. It’s horrible.”

Rafeul Chowdhury, 20, the father of Rodriguez’s child, told the LA Times that he was in the car when he was shot: “” It was for no reason… The way he shot us was not fair. ”He added,“ I just want justice for my daughter, my little mom, the love of my life that I can never get back. ”

Carrillo, the family’s lawyer, said people from across the community gathered for a vigil to call for justice for Rodriguez: “She was a good mother to her five-month-old child. And she was a very loving young woman.

Jill Baker, principal of the Long Beach school, said in a statement, “Our school security officers are hired to protect the physical safety of our staff and students on and around campuses. They are highly qualified and held accountable for the standards set in their profession. These standards will be used to assess the incident that has occurred.