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A 13 year old boy was shot and seriously wounded on December 17th by an LAPD officer who mistook the teen’s toy gun for a real one. Just a week before, on December 12th, an unarmed man was shot and killed by police in Long Beach, CA, after the L-shaped water nozzle he was holding was mistaken for a gun. Thirty-Five year old Douglas Zerby was shot at about 4:40pm on a Sunday afternoon, while waiting outside for a friend to arrive home. A resident of the friend’s apartment misidentified the so-called pistol nozzle Zerby was casually handling, and called 911. Zerby was reportedly intoxicated and was apparently unaware that the police had been called. The officers who shot him reported that he had gripped the nozzle with both hands, extended his arms and pointed it in their direction. At a Press Conference on December 13th Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell confirmed his officers mistook the nozzle for a gun. He also confirmed that the Officers never made their presence known to Zerby, and never told him to drop the nozzle and put his hands up. The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project (NPMSRP) found that in the United States, in the first half of 2010, there were 2,541 unique reports of police misconduct. From these there were 4,199 alleged victims, including 124 confirmed fatalities.

GUESTS: Eden Marie Biele, Douglas Zerby’s sister, and Attorney Brian Claypool of the Claypool Law Firm in Pasadena, CA