A rookie LAPD cop could be seen in a fatal confrontation with an unhinged “bipolar” man armed with a plastic fork — firing a fatal shot after officers were unable to subdue the man with non-lethal weapons.
The chaotic body cam footage made public by the LAPD on Tuesday shows seven police officers confronting 36-year-old Jason Lee Maccani inside a warehouse in Los Angeles’ infamous Skid Row neighborhood on Feb. 3.
Police arrived at that location after getting a report from a business owner claiming that a “f—ing homeless dude” was acting erratically and barged into the warehouse threatening workers with a “stick” or a “pole,” according to the recording of the 911 call also released by the LAPD.
The caller claimed that the intruder, later identified as Maccani, had entered an office on the fourth floor where he had access to sharp items and metal objects.
In the newly released body camera video, Maccani, sporting a red checkered winter hat with ear flaps, emerges from the office into a hallway and is immediately ordered by the police to face away from them and walk backward with his hands raised.
Initially, the man complies with the cops’ commands, but after just a few paces he whips back around and begins advancing toward them while clutching a small white item in his right hand.
LAPD Captain Kelly Muniz claimed in a video statement that Maccani “charged” at the officers, but in the body camera footage the man at least at first appears to be walking rather than running toward them.
Believing that Maccani was armed with a screwdriver, one of the officers fired a less-lethal 40 mm projectile at the suspect, and his colleague fired two rounds from a beanbag shotgun, but according to Muniz, those measures had no effect on him.
Video shows Maccani moving toward the gaggle of cops and making contact with one of them by grabbing her beanbag gun. At that moment, a rookie officer — identified as Caleb Garcia-Alamilla — opens fire from his service weapon as chaos erupts in the hallway.
Muniz said just before the gunfire erupted, one of the officers mistook the item in Maccani’s hand for a knife.
After being hit, Maccani screams at the top of his lungs as he is pressed against a metal gate before being taken down to the ground. He is heard moaning in agony while the officers restrain his hands behind his back.
Cops then proceeded to perform CPR on Maccani before paramedics arrived and took him to a hospital, where he later died.
“The white object Maccani was observed holding during the incident was later determined to be a plastic fork,” Muniz said.
Last week, LAPD Chief Michel Moore told the Police Commission he had “concerns relative to the actions of the officer involved,” reported NBC Los Angeles.
Moore also said the 911 caller who summoned the police to the warehouse deliberately misrepresented what happened “in an effort to cause the department to respond more quickly.”
At the time of the shooting, Maccani was going through what his family members described to the Los Angeles Times as one of his bipolar episodes, which he had been struggling with from the time he was a teenager.
Mike Maccani, Jason’s brother, said the 36-year-old, who had a degree in mechanical engineering from UCLA, was never known to be violent or aggressive – and questioned why the fork in his hand had prompted the police to deploy deadly force.
“I’d be more scared of a closed fist than a white plastic fork,” Mike Maccani told the outlet. “You’re telling me you thought that was a knife or a weapon that could seriously injure you?”
The officer-involved shooting — LAPD’s third so far this year — is being investigated by the state Department of Justice.