Family of man shot by LAPD over plastic fork grapples with grief as video is released

Jason Maccani had been known to go off by himself, sometimes for hours, but it wasn’t like him to miss “Sibling Day.”

That was the first thought Mike Maccani had when his younger brother was a no-show at a Sunday brunch date this month.

Mike was driving home from a friend’s house the next day when he got the call with an explanation: His brother was dead after being shot by a Los Angeles police officer.

The younger Maccani was going through what his relatives described as a bipolar episode when he had an encounter with LAPD officers at a Skid Row warehouse Feb. 3, the day before he was supposed to meet with his three siblings. Police said Jason “charged” at officers, holding what they thought was a weapon but turned out to be a plastic fork.

The hours that followed the call were a teary blur, Mike said.

“I just collapsed when I got home in my partner’s arms and just cried and cried,” he said.

Mike and another brother drove to their father’s house to mourn Jason together.

“We joked about how Tuesday was 3,000 years long because it was just like, every minute, there’s nothing to say, a lot of crying and just sitting in silence and thinking what happened,” Mike said.

The more he thought about Jason’s death, the less sense it made. He questioned why the item in his brother’s hand would cause anyone to start shooting.

“I’d be more scared of a closed fist than a white plastic fork,” he said. “You’re telling me you thought that was a knife or a weapon that could seriously injure you?”

The LAPD released body-camera footage of the encounter Tuesday. Chief Michel Moore told reporters last week that he felt compelled to release video before the standard 45-day window in part because he had “concerns” about the officers’ actions.

The LAPD said officers were called about 2:14 p.m. on Feb. 3 to a 911 report of a man with a “stick or a pole” who was threatening people at a warehouse in the 600 block of Towne Avenue. The 911 caller said the suspect appeared to be intoxicated and had gone into a unit where he had access to “sharp objects.”

Video from a surveillance camera inside the building shows seven officers inching down a narrow hallway and calling out to Jason, who emerges from around a corner and begins walking toward them with his hands at his side. As they order him to stop, the tip of the plastic utensil is barely visible in his clenched fist. The footage shows the police officers firing foam rubber projectiles and beanbags at Jason as he moves toward them.

After being struck by the less-lethal rounds, Jason continues walking toward an officer holding a beanbag shotgun, the video shows. As the police surround Jason and one officer grabs him, another who can be seen holding a pistol fires a shot at close range. One officer then grabs Jason and slams him against a metal gate before taking him to the ground, the footage shows.

An LAPD spokeswoman said officers immediately requested an ambulance and performed CPR until paramedics arrived. An autopsy determined that Jason had been shot in the chest.

Department officials identified the officer who fired the fatal shot as Caleb Garcia-Alamilla, who was hired less than a year ago and was on probationary status with the force. Police said an officer at the scene was injured, without providing details.

Warning: Video contains violence.

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One angle of the encounter captured by an officer’s body-worn camera shows that Jason initially complied with commands to raise his hands and walk backward toward the officers, before he spun around and advanced slowly. The video does not appear to support the department’s initial claim that Jason “charged” at the officers.

At a press briefing last week, Moore suggested that the original 911 caller embellished certain details — such as stating that Jason was armed — in order to generate a faster police response.

The incident, one of four so far this year in which LAPD officers have opened fire, is being investigated by the California Department of Justice, which handles most police shootings of unarmed individuals.

Mike said he began to notice Jason struggling with bipolar disorder during his brother’s junior year at Camarillo High School, around the time of their parents’ divorce. Jason occasionally suffered manic episodes, which made him prone to extreme mood swings that included emotional highs and lows. These episodes usually came every few years, Mike said.

Jason carved out a solid football career in school, and his family described him as “super bright.” He enrolled at Moorpark College before switching to UCLA, where he got a degree in mechanical engineering, Mike said. Quickly figuring out that engineering wasn’t for him, he started teaching spinning and yoga.

His condition made it tough to keep a “classic 9-to-5 job,” according to his brother. Jason went to work for his father, who owned a small business servicing phone customers, but “he kind of just went on one of his episodes and ended up leaving the company,” Mike said.

Jason seemed to find his niche when he started driving for Uber, which offered a chance to work on his own terms. He could take time off when he wasn’t “feeling right” or wanted to go snowboarding, a passion since childhood. He had recently hit the 15,000-ride mark.

But what stood out most about Jason was a candid, caring nature, his brother said.

He would check in regularly on his maternal grandparents, who were suffering from memory loss that left them unable to live on their own, Mike said, adding that Jason was never too busy to stop by their care facility, sometimes three times a week. Jason would hang out and read stories to his grandfather before walking downstairs to visit with his step-grandmother, who lived on the ground floor because she was considered to be at risk of falling.

Always one to bring people together, Jason played the role of family peacemaker, helping to resolve a years-long conflict between Mike and their mother.

His brother would get “amped up,” Mike said, and disappear for hours, even days, but had never been violent — nothing like the belligerent and intoxicated man described in some early accounts of the shooting.

One of Jason’s episodes came a few days before his death, Mike recalled. Jason had been popping up occasionally at the homes of relatives and his girlfriend, never staying long.

But Mike was convinced he would see his brother that Sunday for “Sibling Day,” which was what they called their get-togethers. Jason, Mike and their brother and sister made it a point to meet up once or twice a year at a random restaurant. This time, the plan was to gather for the drag brunch at Hamburger Mary’s in Long Beach before heading to the aquarium nearby, Mike recalled.

The night before, on the siblings’ text thread, Mike asked Jason how he planned on getting to brunch. He noticed that the messages weren’t “going through,” suggesting that his brother’s phone was turned off.

Sunday came and went, and there was no word from Jason. Growing worried, Mike filed a missing persons report, while their mother began calling police stations and jails on the chance that Jason had been picked up overnight.

Mike was driving home Monday night when his cellphone rang. The caller ID read “LA Cor,” sending his heart racing. It was the L.A. County medical examiner’s office.

“I think in my gut I knew, but I didn’t think it was obviously what it was,” he recalled.

Mike remembered pulling over to take the call and sitting on the side of the road for 10 minutes, sobbing, before driving home.

Jason’s death was the latest in a long line of deadly encounters between law enforcement and people in crisis, which have fueled growing calls by activists and officials to have trained civilian health workers handle most incidents involving people dealing with mental illness or substance use issues. Some argue that armed officers should be taken out of the equation entirely — particularly in cases where there are no indications of violence. Instead of investing in more training for officers, some say, those resources should be diverted away from the LAPD into services and programs for people in crisis.

Several such initiatives have launched in recent years, although calls that mention a weapon still tend to bring a police response. Another effort — pairing an officer with a mental health clinician on certain calls — is showing promise but has been hindered by under-staffing, officials say.

LAPD officials have said that not all emergencies require a police presence but caution that officers responding to a call don’t always know details about a person’s mental state, and encounters can turn violent without warning.

Mike says the LAPD needs to do a better job of training officers to deal with people like his brother whose behavior may turn unpredictable.

“He was never violent,” he said. “That’s something that kind of disturbed me about this recent incident.”