On Tuesday, the Post published an investigation examining the Long Beach Police Department’s unorthodox method for investigating an officer-involved shooting.

The story highlighted that Long Beach is the only city in Los Angeles County whose police department asks officers to provide written reports about what happened during a shooting instead of interviewing them.

‘It can easily be perceived as a cover-up:’ Long Beach’s ‘odd’ way of handling police shootings

After the article published, the department provided the Post with an additional response “to further clarify the facts and add perspective to the story.”

“The fact that other agencies use different procedures does not mean our process is bad or their process is better. We should never confuse the ‘most common practice’ as being ‘the best practice,'” it said in part.

Read the full statement below:

[pdf-embedder url=”https://lbpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/police-response-OIS-10-16-18.pdf”]

 

Jeremiah Dobruck is executive editor of the Long Beach Post where he oversees all day-to-day newsroom operations. In his time working as a journalist in Long Beach, he’s won numerous awards for his investigative reporting and editing. Before coming to the Post in 2018, he wrote for publications including the Press-Telegram, Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times. Reach him at [email protected] or @jeremiahdobruck on Twitter.