A man was shot and killed by San Fernando police officers late Monday night after they responded to reports of a man wielding a shovel and attacking people near Third Street and Maclay Avenue. The California Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it has deployed its California Police Shooting Investigation Team to independently review the shooting, a step required under state law whenever an officer-involved shooting kills an unarmed civilian or meets other specific criteria.
According to NBC Los Angeles, the man died following the encounter, though few additional details about him have been released. The confrontation happened around 11:45 p.m. Monday in the 200 block of North Maclay Avenue near Third Street, according to MyNewsLA, after officers were called to reports that the man was attacking people, including a woman inside a vehicle, before he advanced on officers wielding a shovel. Interim Police Chief Anthony Miranda relayed those details about the encounter, per the same outlet.
State Investigators Take Over the Case
California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office confirmed the deployment of the state's shooting investigation team, which independently examines officer-involved shootings under Assembly Bill 1506. The law, enacted in 2020 and effective since July 2021, requires the state Attorney General to independently investigate and review all officer-involved shootings that result in the death of an unarmed civilian. Lawmakers designed the statute to eliminate potential conflicts of interest that can arise when local police and district attorneys investigate their own force, as CapRadio has reported.
Investigators will have to weigh whether the shovel the man was allegedly wielding meets the threshold for a deadly weapon, and whether the shooting satisfied California's use-of-force standard. Under Assembly Bill 392, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2019, officers are legally barred from using deadly force unless it is necessary to defend against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, and the law requires de-escalation tactics and non-lethal alternatives whenever feasible.
A Department in Transition
The shooting comes just weeks into interim Chief Miranda's tenure leading the San Fernando Police Department. He was appointed on August 4 to oversee the agency during what the city has said is a four-to-six-month search for a permanent chief, following former Chief Fabian Valdez's retirement, according to the City of San Fernando. Miranda brings more than 35 years of Los Angeles County law enforcement experience, including previous chief roles in Bell, Irwindale and Vernon, a transition Hoodline covered in its report on his appointment.
San Fernando Police Department is a small municipal force, with roughly 35 sworn officers and 20 non-sworn personnel serving a city of about 24,000 residents packed into just 2.37 square miles. The city maintains its own independent police department despite being entirely surrounded by the City of Los Angeles. San Fernando is also densely populated, with more than 90% of its residents identifying as Hispanic or Latino according to 2020 U.S. Census data, making it one of the smallest incorporated cities in Los Angeles County.
What Happens Next
Under Assembly Bill 748, the department is required to publicly release body-worn camera video and audio from the encounter within 45 days, unless disclosure would substantially interfere with an active criminal investigation. But a full resolution of the state's independent review could take much longer: as of June, California DOJ investigations under AB 1506 were taking an average of more than two years to resolve, according to CalMatters, contributing to a statewide backlog of pending officer-involved shooting reviews.
San Fernando has faced this kind of scrutiny before. In September 2018, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office cleared San Fernando officers of criminal wrongdoing in an October 2017 fatal shooting of a knife-wielding resident during a domestic disturbance call, concluding the officers had acted in lawful self-defense, per the San Fernando Valley Sun. This latest case marks the second AB 1506 review of a California police shooting that Hoodline has covered in the past week, following a fatal shooting during a domestic violence call in Lathrop.
