A recently formed police oversight body in Long Beach says the LBPD should improve how it interacts with the families of people killed by police and members of the public who may have witnessed what happened.
Those suggestions were included in a series of six broad recommendations the Office of Police Oversight made last week in its first-ever annual report.
They say the Long Beach Police Department should:
- Designate a “family liaison officer” who would be a point of contact for families of people seriously injured or killed by police.
- Make sure an officer who shot someone promptly leaves the scene, to avoid his or her presence upsetting family members of the deceased who may arrive.
- Create a partnership to provide free or low-cost mental health counseling and services to individuals who have witnessed police shootings or rough arrests.
- Have contingency plans to keep a body out of public view if the department’s standard “body shield” doesn’t work.
- Streamline the process to make complaints against police officers and make sure the departmental language used in the complaint investigation is more specific.
- Enforce a policy that requires officers to check that handcuffs aren’t applied too tightly following a struggle to get someone into custody.
In its report, the oversight office said its recommendations were based on trends seen across seven officer-involved shootings and one in-custody death last year.
But many of the concerns they highlighted were on display in the highest-profile police shooting in Long Beach last year when officers killed 38-year-old Brandon Boyd during a standoff on the steps of a church.
Conflict after a standoff
Police and Boyd’s family clashed during and after the shooting. Over the past few months, Long Beach police have been gradually releasing hundreds of hours of body-camera footage that gives a more complete picture of the standoff and exchange of gunfire that killed Boyd near the intersection of 52nd Street and Atlantic Avenue.
According to police timelines and documents, when officers arrived at the scene on the evening of Nov. 19, Boyd was sitting on the front steps of the church where he said he was the one who texted 911 and was in mental distress.
Two different police officers attempted to get him to surrender peacefully over the next two-and-a-half hours, according to video reviewed by the Post. At one point, Boyd asked for cigarettes and officers borrowed a cigarette and a lighter from people at the scene who said they knew Boyd.
During the negotiations, one officer spotted a firearm under Boyd, according to a police report filed after the incident. Video from the church lobby obtained after the shooting confirmed he was armed.
With Boyd apparently refusing to surrender peacefully, the plan to apprehend him, according to multiple accounts in the police report, was to deploy a flashbang and then shoot foam bullets at Boyd to incapacitate him until officers around the corner of the church could rush in and arrest him.
Once the flashbang went off, Boyd instead picked up the gun and fired at officers, four of whom fired back, killing him. One officer was wounded in the arm.
Simultaneously, as the flashbang went off, a police sergeant was attempting to move two of Boyd’s sisters out of the police perimeter where they were standing in a vacant lot roughly 200 feet from their brother, according to body-worn camera footage.
Instead, the two sisters rushed toward their brother and came within roughly 75 feet of his body on the steps of the church.
The sergeant and two officers attempted to stop them and force them back away from the shooting scene.
A short time later, sister Tyerra Boyd comes face-to-face with the sergeant and yells at him over the shooting.
When the sergeant put his arm up to shield himself, sister Desiree Boyd stepped between the two and said, “Don’t touch my sister, you devil.”
Desiree Boyd then reaches toward the sergeant, and his camera is suddenly knocked to the ground.
A scuffle can be heard, and the sergeant later tells other officers at the scene that Desiree Boyd put her hands around his throat and he grabbed her left arm, forcing her to the ground, where he handcuffed her.
Another angle of the encounter shows an officer throwing Tyerra Boyd to the ground and handcuffing her.
Two officers then walk Desiree Boyd over to the back of a police car.
During the walk, Desiree Boyd tells the officer holding her left arm that the officer holding her right arm was twisting it and causing her pain, according to the camera footage.
At the jail, Desiree Boyd continued to complain of pain and returned wearing a cast on her right arm after she was sent for medical evaluation.
Following the arrest, Tyerra Boyd faces four misdemeanor charges, and Desiree Boyd faces seven misdemeanor charges related to obstructing or battering a police officer.
The case is still working its way through the court system where they could face penalties ranging from diversion to fines or a short amount of jail time.
New era of police oversight
The oversight office has not yet reviewed all the facts in Brandon Boyd’s death. It is waiting first for the District Attorney’s office to decide if any officers should face criminal charges — as is standard procedure in all police shootings. There could be more specific policy recommendations after that review, according to Francine Kerridge, the Office of Police Oversight director.
Based on the information they already have, at least one member of the Police Oversight Commission, which governs the oversight office, had questions.
Commissioner Michael Soto said he would like to know what metric the department uses “to value saving a life in those situations.”
“In my opinion, as a community member, I didn’t see what the rush was for,” he said. “And I want that difficult question to be answered is, ‘What is the cost of a life?’”
Brandon Boyd’s family said they were thankful for the oversight office’s work so far.
“I agreed with all the recommendations, like yes, somebody is listening,” Tyerra Boyd told the commission at its meeting Thursday. “It starts here, I appreciate this.”
They are, however, just the start of a potentially long process with no guarantee of any changes.
The report’s six recommendations will be submitted to LBPD Chief Wally Hebeish with the expectation of hearing back “some form of response” in 30-45 days, Kerridge said.
“This is a marathon as far as trying to change policy,” said Soto.
What happens next will be a test of the new system that replaced Long Beach’s old Citizen Police Complaint Commission, which was widely viewed as opaque and ineffective.
The Citizen Police Complaint Commission was first established in 1990 but dissolved in October 2023 after continued criticism and an investigation by the Long Beach Post that found it had not lived up to its lofty promises of police accountability.
The Office of Police Oversight and Police Oversight Commission were formed based on a voter-approved measure in 2022.
The office is still staffing up. Kerridge was hired to lead the office in September 2023, coming to Long Beach from the County of Sacramento where she worked as an inspector general handling investigations and audits into the local sheriff’s department.