The household of an unarmed 18-year-old fatally shot by an undercover Los Angeles police sergeant final month plans to sue town for wrongful dying and is asking state prosecutors to file prison expenses.
Ricardo “Ricky” Ramirez Jr. was shot and killed by Sgt. Michael Kilos round 10:30 p.m. July 13 whereas the plainclothes vice officer was conducting a prostitution enforcement element alongside South L.A.’s Figueroa hall. Kilos shot the younger man from behind his automobile’s dark-tinted driver’s aspect window.
“Ricky, my solely son, was child, made everyone smile and really feel beloved. He was on the threshold of his entire life, having simply graduated, and the LAPD shot him, inflicting him to fall by means of dying’s door,” stated the teenager’s father, Ricardo Ramirez Sr. “Hiding behind tinted glass, with none warning, Ricky was killed. His solely crime was being younger and of colour. This has to cease.”
The night time of the taking pictures, an LAPD vice unit broadcast over the police radio that the “occupants of a silver Cadillac sporting ski masks [were] in a potential dispute with the driving force of one other car,” in response to a launch from the division. Kilos was alone in an unmarked automobile when he started following the suspect car, which police stated later stopped throughout each lanes of site visitors on 66th Avenue.
Based on the police report, two males bought out of the Cadillac and “approached the entrance driver and passenger sides of the vice sergeant’s car” because it was stopped within the roadway. That’s when Kilos opened hearth by means of his window, placing Ramirez, who fell to the bottom because the others fled.
Paramedics took Ramirez to an area hospital, the place he was pronounced useless.
In a authorized declare filed Wednesday, legal professional Christopher Dolan alleged the taking pictures was an unprovoked assault on an unarmed younger man who was on the town from Northern California after commencement.
Though the declare alleges assault, battery and violation of civil rights and seeks compensation, Dolan stated the household needs reforms, together with video cameras in undercover automobiles to seize officers’ conduct.
“We wish to be certain that undercover cops are held accountable,” Dolan stated.
The lawyer stated that previous to the taking pictures, Kilos “tailgated and aggressively menaced” the Cadillac from his darkish sedan with blacked-out window tinting.
“Unarmed, Ricky and one other passenger exited the Cadillac and approached the sedan, asking — arms prolonged, palms up — why they had been being adopted,” Dolan stated.
“With out hitting any lights or siren or figuring out himself as a police or rolling down the window, a single shot was fired by means of the driving force’s aspect tinted window immediately into the center of Ricky,” the lawyer stated Wednesday at a information convention exterior police headquarters whereas surrounded by two dozen supporters clad in T-shirts that includes the teenager’s face.
After Ramirez was shot, the opposite younger males fled “in concern for his or her lives, unaware that the shot was fired by an LAPD officer,” in response to the declare.
LAPD models pursued the fleeing Cadillac, in response to a launch from the division, and finally handed off to the California Freeway Patrol, which stopped the car on the 15 Freeway in San Bernardino County.
The three occupants of the automobile had been taken into custody with out incident, together with the driving force, 26-year-old Israel Dezama, who was arrested for felony evading, police stated. The opposite two occupants had been later launched from custody.
Dezama has since been arrested and charged with homicide in Contra Costa County in reference to a killing over the July 4th weekend, data present.
Ramirez’s dad and mom say their son had come to L.A. to go to the seashores and had simply been to the Santa Monica Pier. He didn’t actually know the driving force of the Cadillac, they stated, solely by means of a good friend. His father identified that not one of the males within the automobile that night time have been arrested apart from Dezama, who fled the scene.
Dolan stated the taking pictures was “with out justification and in violation of police coverage designed to save lots of lives. … The police should be held accountable to ensure that these killings to cease.”
He stated Kilos by no means recognized himself as a police officer.
“Ricky by no means knew that he was approaching an officer, by no means made any threats or contact with the car and was shot for asking why the automobile was harassing them,” Dolan stated.
Ramirez’s mom, Renee Villalobos, cried whereas addressing the group in entrance of police headquarters, saying, “I’ll by no means have my son again.”
“The police sergeant was sitting in an unmarked automobile, and he determined to kill and shoot my son for no motive in any respect,” she stated. “I wish to know why the police officer is just not handcuffed and charged for the homicide of my son.”
Ramirez’s father stated that stated regardless of police stories, his son “didn’t have a weapon; he didn’t have a ski masks.”
Los Angeles police stated in an announcement that no weapons had been recovered.
Ramirez’s household and Dolan have referred to as on Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose workplace handles deadly police shootings on unarmed individuals, to file homicide expenses towards Kilos.
Police shootings are statistically uncommon; these involving officers in unmarked automobiles much more so.
Based on a Occasions database of LAPD shootings, there have been a minimum of 12 such shootings since 2017, leading to 4 folks being killed and eight being wounded.
The newest incident occurred in January 2022, when two members of a drug unit shot and wounded a 28-year-old man in Boyle Heights whereas driving in an undercover automobile. The extra senior member was displaying the youthful officer across the space once they noticed a number of males exterior a recognized Tiny Boys gang hangout. After parking close by to conduct surveillance, the officers noticed one of many males take off working, they usually opened hearth after he appeared to level a gun at them.
The person, Adrian Aldaco, later sued the division, alleging he was unarmed and that the officers by no means recognized themselves as police earlier than firing. An inner report discovered that a number of of the officers’ pictures had been out of coverage.
As within the Figueroa incident, there was no physique digital camera footage of the taking pictures.
In June 2020, plainclothes officers from the Southwest Narcotics Enforcement Element had been driving an unmarked automobile whereas conducting “crime suppression” in the course of the summer season of protests that adopted the police homicide of George Floyd in Minneapolis. They drove previous a fuel station close to twenty second Avenue and Vermont once they noticed an obvious carjacking in progress. The suspects shot on the officers, who returned hearth, placing a person who was with the suspects however who wasn’t armed. One officer suffered a graze wound.
One other undercover operation wherein the officer who fired wasn’t sporting a physique digital camera occurred in 2019 in Sherman Oaks. A gang detective who was a part of a surveillance element shot and killed a person who was being sought on homicide expenses exterior of his house.
No less than 5 of the incidents concerned members of the Metropolitan Division, which conducts crime-suppression operations and in addition sometimes known as on to trace down violent fugitives.
