BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — Tuesday’s deadly officer-involved shooting is now underneath scrutiny on the state capitol.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Wednesday the California Department of Justice will step in to research the shooting that left a person useless Tuesday morning.
The Bakersfield Police Department says it alerted the DOJ after eight BPD officers shot at a person on the finish of a foot chase in southeast Bakersfield, killing him. A BPD spokesperson says the DOJ was introduced in “out of an abundance of caution,” pursuant to a 2020 bill that requires the workplace to research lethal police shootings of unarmed suspects.
The BPD says officers responded to reviews of a person standing on railroad tracks and waving a handgun.
“Officers responded, made contact with the individual. Subsequently, an officer-involved shooting took place,” BPD public information officer Sgt. Robert Pair stated.
Police wouldn’t say whether or not the person fired any pictures at officers. It’s not clear what prompted officers to fireside on the man.
“After that gunfire, the individual ran from officers,” Pair stated.
Wednesday, police stated that as he fled, the person tossed apart the handgun. When he was fatally shot, police say the person was armed with only a knife.
It’s that element that brought about the division to alert the Department of Justice. Under the 2020 invoice, knives could or is probably not thought of lethal weapons, based mostly on the context and method of their use.
The Department of Justice will conduct its investigation alongside different legislation enforcement businesses, and its findings will probably be independently reviewed.
Meantime, late Wednesday afternoon 17 News realized the names of the eight officers concerned within the lethal shooting. Two of these officers, Sgt. Anthony Flores and Senior Officer Andrew Ferguson, had been concerned in a deadly shooting in 2020. Ferguson was additionally concerned in a shooting in 2013 through which nobody was killed.
The BPD is concerned in a single different open Department of Justice investigation of this sort. That investigation stems from an officer-involved shooting in August of 2021.
By our depend, this was the 14th officer-involved shooting of the 12 months in Kern County, and the sixth involving the Bakersfield Police Department.