The Right Call by the D.A.

The fatal LAPD shooting of a frail and mentally ill homeless woman in May 1999 has long deserved a more thorough investigation. Now that is going to happen with L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley’s decision Friday to send the case to a grand jury.

Officer Edward Larrigan and a fellow police officer on bicycle patrol confronted 55-year-old Margaret Mitchell to investigate whether the shopping cart she was pushing had been stolen. According to the police report, the frail woman threatened them with a screwdriver in what hardly seemed like a life-or-death encounter.

After an internal police LAPD investigation of the incident, Chief Bernard Parks conceded that Larrigan had made mistakes in the confrontation that led to the shooting of Mitchell, but that ultimately the officer was right to fear for his life. The Los Angeles Police Commission’s inspector general, Jeffrey Eglash, strongly disagreed, saying that the shooting of Mitchell was “out of policy” and that she did not pose a deadly threat. The five-member commission backed Eglash on a narrow 3-2 vote.

Last year, the City Council offered a $975,000 legal settlement to Mitchell’s family, but Gil Garcetti, district attorney at the time, failed to further pursue the case. Cooley is also offering indirect and long-needed support to the views of the LAPD’s civilian overseers, perhaps at the expense of his relationship with Parks.

Cooley’s other early decisions in office have included moving on a long-stalled indictment against a health care worker in the deaths of at least six people at a Glendale hospital and instituting a more reasonable policy on California’s three-strikes law.

The grand jury in the Mitchell case might be asked to directly indict the officer who shot her, or it might be used to test the strength of potential witnesses first and decide later whether to file. The jury has subpoenaed at least four witnesses, including an eyewitness and a police officer on a nearby traffic stop. Both have expressed grave concerns about the shooting.

Whether indictments result or not, the new civilian scrutiny should help lay the Mitchell case to rest.