2 White Torrance (CA) Cops Arraigned on Manslaughter Charges After Murdering Christopher Deandre Mitchell. Both Cops Linked to a Racist Texting Scandal in Which Cops Spoke about Practicing Racism
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From [HERE] The L.A. County District Attorney’s Office revealed charges against two Torrance PD officers, in connection with the 2018 fatal shooting of 23-year-old Christopher DeAndre Mitchell.
Anthony Chavez and Matthew Concannon pleaded not guilty for voluntary manslaughter charges stemming from a traffic stop-turned-deadly after previously being exonerated from the incident.
When Gascón took over as District Attorney in 2021, he asked the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for permission to appoint a prosecutor to “reevaluate” previous shootings involving L.A. County police officers. That is when the December 2018 shooting became eligible for re-investigation.
“Special Prosecutor Lawrence Middleton was given the independence to reevaluate, investigate and determine whether to pursue criminal prosecution in this case,” District Attorney George Gascón said. “He thoroughly reviewed and analyzed the evidence and decided to seek a grand jury indictment. We support his decision to do so and we are pleased that the grand jury returned the indictment.”
On October 9, 2019, then District Attorney Jackie Lacey declined to file charges on the officers, saying the officers acted “lawfully in self-defense.”
On December 9, 2018, two Torrance, California, police officers shot and killed 23-year-old Black man Christopher Deandre Mitchell while he was sitting in a car minding his own business. The cops claimed they saw his hands move toward what turned out to be an air rifle that was wedged between his legs.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Matthew Concannon and Anthony Chavez have been charged with one count each of voluntary manslaughter, which carries a maximum penalty of 11 years in prison.
Police claim the cops did nothing wrong. “Based on Mitchell’s failure to follow the officers’ directions, his continued efforts to conceal the object in his lap, the physical appearance of the object, and the movement of his hands toward the object, it was reasonable for the officers to believe that the object was a firearm and to respond with deadly force,” prosecutors wrote in 2019, when former Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey declined to prosecute Concannon and Chavez.
Christopher Deandre Mitchell’s family have maintained that Mitchell did follow commands and was never a threat to the officers, who they say never gave him a chance to surrender. They claim he was asleep in the car when the cops approached him. Black Lives Matter Los Angeles organizer Sheila Bates said Monday that the officers unnecessarily escalated the situation despite Mitchell not threatening them in any way, and they opened fire within seconds of approaching him.
In the video the white cops pretend to be threatened - as the Black man appears to be very calm and trying to comply with their confusing, excited commands. Mitchell speaks in a calm, non-threatening voice and appears to be apologizing to them for not understanding their disfluent commands or not complying fast enough. Police are not facing any imminent threat of deadly harm when they fatally shoot him - at least from a reasonable, non-racist point of view.
“It’s been a long time coming, ” Mitchell’s mother, Sherilyn Haines said Monday. “It’s been a rough journey. My heart, my soul, is deeply hurting. So bad. I miss my son…so much. My son’s life was stolen by Matthew Concannon and Anthony Chavez. He didn’t get a chance to live his best life.”
Both Concannon and Chavez have been linked to a racist texting scandal in which at least 15 officers with the Torrance Police Department sent approximately 390 racist, sexist and homophobic messages from 2018 to 2020. This is something that appears to be somewhat common among cops in California and elsewhere.
More from the Times:
The messages included jokes about setting up Black men to be killed, with one officer suggesting he wanted to shoot and hang several Black suspects, and a picture of a teddy bear being lynched inside the police department’s headquarters, according to documents previously reviewed by The Times.
While The Times never found evidence that Concannon or Chavez sent any of the messages, they were both under investigation as part of the scandal, according to documents previously reviewed by the newspaper and sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Messages sent by unidentified officers used the N-word to describe Mitchell’s loved ones and celebrated other officers’ decision to use force against protesters who supported Mitchell’s family during a demonstration in front of the Torrance City Council. Several of the officers who used racist language in the messages were also later accused of using excessive force against protesters in civil lawsuits.
So, two cops—who were under investigation behind another racist police group chat in racists advocated for practicing racism have now been charged for a fatal act of alleged police brutality against a Black man.
