Global Courant
Keenan Anderson’s family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles alleging police officers used excessive force when they fell on top of the 31-year-old teacher at a busy Venice intersection and tasered him after a minor traffic accident this year.
Anderson’s relatives also reiterated their demand on Monday that the department identify the officers involved in the Jan. 3 incident, which sparked widespread condemnation and sparked a debate about the police’s role in traffic enforcement.
Carl Douglas, the attorney who filed the lawsuit Friday on behalf of Anderson’s family, said an autopsy finding of cocaine in the 31-year-old’s bloodstream should not have necessitated the use of “excessive and unreasonable force” by officers. Anderson was clearly in distress and what he needed at the time was medical attention, not police intervention, he said.
“I don’t care what the coroner says he had cocaine in his system at the time of his death. We did an autopsy ourselves and the results were the same,” Douglas told reporters at a news conference Monday morning. “But it doesn’t matter if there was cocaine in his system, because the actions of the officers were wrong. It doesn’t matter why he was in distress, because it was clear from the body-worn images that he was never a threat.”
Douglas said he chose to announce the trial on Juneteenth because of the frequency with which young black men across the country are victims of police brutality. He said the family’s lawyers have yet to see the full, unedited body camera videos of the encounter.
The LAPD previously released two condensed videos showing officers the moments when Anderson was tasered while struggling with a group of police officers. He died a few hours later in a hospital.
“Since that video tape says everything I need to know to tell me his death was wrongful,” said Douglas, who represents Anderson’s 5-year-old son, along with another prominent civil rights attorney, Benjamin Crump. “We are filing a $100 million lawsuit against the law enforcement officers who caused this wrongful death.”
An LAPD spokesman said the department had no further comment on the case and is generally not discussing pending litigation.
Capt. Kelly Muniz, the department’s spokesperson, said the LAPD no longer names officers who are in custody, but only those involved in on-duty shootings — a policy that has been revised in recent years.
LAPD Chief Michel Moore and Mayor Karen Bass previously both promised a thorough investigation into Anderson’s death. Moore said on June 6 before the department’s board of trustees that he expected the department’s investigation into the incident to be completed by mid-July and would rule on the case the following month.
He previously said the incident led the department to review its policy on Taser use. It has also been in talks with the stun gun manufacturer about possibly acquiring a newer version of the device that is still in prototype form, Moore told the police commission.
The encounter that ended in Anderson’s death began sometime before 3:30 p.m. on Jan. 3, when a motorcycle cop responded to what the LAPD characterized as a “misdemeanor hit-and-run” car accident on the Venice and Lincoln boulevards. The still-unnamed officer encountered Anderson shooting through traffic on foot in apparent distress.
In videos released by the LAPD, Anderson became distraught and screamed for help as multiple officers restrained him with their body weight and arm grips. The footage also shows Anderson screaming in pain as an officer shocked him at least six times in 42 seconds, according to details released by authorities. He was eventually handcuffed and hobbled by his ankles before paramedics took him away.
Several police experts who viewed video of the incident for The Times previously said the amount of force used by police seemed excessive given Anderson’s actions and that the officers’ tactics seemed haphazard.
Anderson, a father of one, was in the East Coast town visiting relatives when the incident took place.
His death drew international attention, in part because Anderson is a cousin of Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and longtime advocate against police brutality.
A few weeks after the incident, the family filed a $50 million wrongful death claim against the city, a necessary precursor to the lawsuit.
The case made headlines again this month after the LA County coroner released his autopsy report identifying an enlarged heart and cocaine use as the cause of death. But the coroner’s office declined to comment on whether it ruled Anderson’s death a homicide, saying his manner of death was undetermined. Several people have died in similar circumstances in recent years.
Anderson’s relatives backtracked on the autopsy findings. In a follow-up interview with The Times, Douglas said he was baffled by the ambiguity of the coroner’s report.
“It’s unfortunate and rare for the LA coroner to hold a press conference to smear a dead man’s reputation, and it tells me they’re already circling the wagons, and that’s a shame. Two, it doesn’t matter, what matters is how they treated him and why,” Douglas said. “This is what they do, they attack the reputation of the person who died. If the man has a gun, they freeze the gun in the video.
He reiterated that the officers’ reaction was over the top as Anderson was not a threat to anyone but himself.
“This man was submissive. He called people ‘sir’ as they killed him.”
Activists and some city council members say Anderson’s death further urged efforts to relieve armed police officers of certain traffic duties, arguing that communities of color have historically suffered the most from such enforcement. The argument is a central tenet of a nationwide movement to revolutionize the criminal justice system following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody three years ago.
A long-delayed study from an outside company, due to be published this year, is expected to call on civilian workers to respond to minor traffic calls, along with major infrastructure upgrades that improve safety on city streets that are among the deadliest in the country.
The debate over the role of law enforcement in traffic incidents goes back decades, but intensified after Floyd’s murder and the ensuing nationwide reckoning in which critics questioned some long-held assumptions about policing.
In late 2019, the LAPD slashed back on pretextual stops — pulling over random vehicles for a minor traffic violation to look for more serious crimes — after a Times investigation found the department stopped and charged black and Latino drivers at higher rates. searched than whites.
