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Eula Mae Love (commonly referred to as Eula Love) was a 39-year-old
African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
mother and widow who was shot and killed on January 3, 1979, by officers of the
Los Angeles Police Department The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), officially known as the City of Los Angeles Police Department, is the municipal police department of Los Angeles, California. With 9,974 police officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the third-large ...
. Although Love's death sparked outcry in
South Los Angeles South Los Angeles, also known as South Central Los Angeles or simply South Central, is a region in southwestern Los Angeles County, lying mostly within the city limits of Los Angeles, south of downtown. It is "defined on Los Angeles city maps as ...
, the Los Angeles County District Attorney exonerated both of the police officers involved in the shooting on April 17, 1979.


Death

Six months before the incident, Love's husband died of sickle cell anemia, leaving Love financially strapped and solely responsible for the care of their three young daughters. On the day of the shooting, Love had an altercation with a service person from the Southern California Gas company sent to her house to collect an overdue utility bill. After going to the store to cash a check to pay the bill, Love returned home to find additional personnel from the gas company, who had called the police on her. Further upset by the new utility workers, Love went into her house and came out with a knife. When police arrived, Love threatened the officers with a boning knife. In response, the two officers Edward M. Hopson and Lloyd W. O'Callaghan fired twelve shots into Love at close range, killing her instantly. The officers alleged that they shot her in
self-defense Self-defense (self-defence primarily in Commonwealth English) is a countermeasure that involves defending the health and well-being of oneself from harm. The use of the right of self-defense as a legal justification for the use of force in ...
.


Aftermath

The killing generated widespread coverage in the local news media and sparked public outrage, which led the Los Angeles Police Commission to conduct its own investigation of the shooting."On January 3, 1979, two officers fatally shot Eula Love, an African-American woman, in a confrontation that received widespread publicity." Black Angelenos' confidence in the LAPD declined precipitously in 1979 due in part to this case, according to Allen John Scott's book ''The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century''. The report led to "significant reforms in the Department's procedures on use of force." The academic journal '' Crime and Social Justice'' later reprinted the Police Commission's report on the circumstances of the shooting. Journal editors expressed the opinion that "her killing is a
crime against humanity Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the c ...
." Journalist Joe Domanick (author of two books on the department) described Love's shooting as emblematic of the "bad old days" of the Los Angeles Police Department. Love's death has been cited as the event that put the phrase " officer-involved shooting" into widespread use by mainstream media outlets. This incident also inspired the 1980
L.A. Rebellion The L.A. Rebellion film movement, sometimes referred to as the "Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers", or the UCLA Rebellion, refers to the new generation of young African and African-American filmmakers who studied at the UCLA Film School in ...
feature film Gidget Meets Hondo by Bernard Nicolas.


See also

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Lists of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States Below are lists of people killed by law enforcement in the United States, both on duty and off duty. Lists of killings The numbers show how many total killings per year are recorded in the linked lists, not the actual number of people kill ...
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Police brutality in the United States Police brutality is the repression by personnel affiliated with law enforcement when dealing with suspects and civilians. The term is also applied to abuses by "corrections" personnel in municipal, state, and federal prison camps, including mi ...
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Police reform in the United States The history of law enforcement in the United States includes many efforts at police reform. Early efforts at police reform often involved external commissions, such as the Wickersham Commission, that spelled out reforms but left to the police to i ...


References


External links


Eulia Love Story: Protest Flare Up
via UCLA Film/TV Archive {{DEFAULTSORT:Love, Eula African Americans shot dead by law enforcement officers in the United States Police misconduct in the United States Los Angeles Police Department Law enforcement in California Deaths by firearm in California African-American-related controversies Deaths by person in Los Angeles Protests in the United States History of Los Angeles 1979 in Los Angeles 1979 controversies 1979 deaths