Activists Protest After LAPD Officer, Who Killed Redel Jones, Goes Scot-Free

The L.A. Police Commission says Officer Brett Ramirez had rights to kill 30-year-old Black woman.

Hundreds of protesters demonstrated at the LAPD headquarters following the Police Commission’s decision on Tuesday, July 12, that Officer Brett Ramirez, who fatally shot Redel Jones, did not violate the department’s deadly force policy.

Activists peacefully moved across streets condemning police officers’ use of deadly force against Black people, demanding justice and an action to end violence in communities.

Redel Jones was shot dead by the police, who claimed she resembled a woman who had robbed a nearby pharmacy earlier that day on August 12. As in many other cases of police fatal shootings, there were very different testimonies to Jones death. Police officers said that the woman was armed with a knife and threatened them, but witnesses say that she was in fact running away from them.

A bystander, Courtyana Franklin, 21, said “I do know for a fact that she was not charging at them. I just saw her running.”

On Tuesday, the Police Commission unanimously voted 3-0 that the killing Jones was justified because any officer could have believed that the Black woman’s “actions while armed with a knife presented an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury.”

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