Video released Thursday by the LAPD shows police flying a drone to get a closer look at a man inside a van who had been shot by officers in Boyle Heights last month.
Police said they shot the man after he ignored their commands to drop what appeared to be a rifle.
The rifle, it turned out, was a battery-powered airsoft gun, which shoots plastic pellets.
As the drone zoomed up to the white utility van, it captured a graphic image of Jeremy Flores, 26, slumped over the steering wheel, the fake gun lying on his lap. A SWAT team then approached and pulled Flores out of the vehicle.
Moments before the shooting, an LAPD officer was heard on body-worn camera video yelling at Flores to “drop the f— gun.”
Another officer is heard requesting a “Code Robert” — police code for summoning an officer with a rifle.
The original officer starts to say that one is already there, but his words are suddenly drowned out by the sound of police gunfire.
The LAPD has said that Flores pointed the gun in the direction of officers, prompting them to open fire.
But the footage released Thursday on the LAPD’s YouTube channel offers only obstructed views of the shooting from several officers on scene, without capturing Flores’ actions in the moments before he was shot.
Jeremy Flores, 26, was shot last month in Boyle Heights as he sat in a van holding what turned out to be an airsoft rifle, which shoots plastic pellets.
(Courtesy of Isabella Riviera)
A police spokesman said Thursday that an internal investigation of the shooting is ongoing, offering no further comment. The department has identified the Hollenbeck Division patrol officers who shot Flores as Livier Jimenez, Fernando Godinez and Michael Ruiz.
The LAPD video shows that officers were initially summoned to the scene on July 14 by a 911 call about a shirtless man with facial tattoos and black jeans who was walking through the neighborhood carrying “what looks like an assault rifle.” Videos shows officers surrounded a white utility van at the mouth of an alley in the 1200 block of Spence Street.
Officers repeatedly yelled for Flores to drop the weapon, but a response is not audible on any of the released videos.
After the shooting, police flew a drone up to the van to determine what Flores was doing. Eventually, a cadre of heavily armed SWAT officers lined up behind a ballistic shield approached the vehicle and found him unresponsive. He was pronounced dead due to multiple gunshot wounds.
The LAPD’s SWAT team has for years relied on technology such as robots and drones to survey potentially dangerous scenes, without putting officers at risk. Recently, the department announced it would deploy the unmanned aircraft on more routine emergency calls.
Paola Mendez said she was horrified watching the final moments of her fiance’s life, and also angered by what she saw as the department’s attempts to twist facts to justify officers’ decision to fire.
“To claim Jeremy ‘refused to exit the vehicle’ — before being shot at and after — is not only misleading, it’s a cruel manipulation of the facts. Jeremy was wearing a seatbelt. He was gravely injured. He could not move,” Mendez wrote in a text message to a Times reporter. “The so-called ‘weapon’ was on his lap, not in his hands, and there is no evidence whatsoever that he pointed it at anyone.”
She added: “He was dying, not defying.”
In addition to the LAPD’s review, the case is also being investigated by the state attorney general’s office, which looks at all police shootings of unarmed individuals.
Earlier this month, Flores’ family members and activists packed a Police Commission meeting, questioning why officers didn’t do more to try to defuse the situation, also demanding to know why police waited about two hours to provide medical assistance.
On Tuesday, Police Commission President Erroll Southers asked the department to report back on why police shootings are up.
So far in 2025, LAPD officers have opened fire 30 times — including three shootings in three days last week. That compares with 19 police shootings through this time last year, police records show.
According to a Times database, the increase is being driven at least in part by a rise in what police refer to as “perception shootings” — in which officers shoot what turns out to be an unarmed suspect based on the mistaken belief that the person was armed and posing a threat.
There have already been 10 such shootings so far this year, compared to six in all of 2024, the Times database shows. The database shows that 18% of all police shootings since 2015 fall into this category. In a majority of the cases, the suspects were carrying replica firearms — which are not considered deadly weapons under state law, which considers people carrying them to be unarmed.
In other cases, officers shot people who they said appeared to be armed, but were in fact holding a towel, a set of keys, a cellphone or a beer bottle. In at least 19 instances, the person shot by police wasn’t holding anything.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
