LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Los Angeles Police Department is experiencing what one of its own describes as “a feeling of depression” following the deaths of five officers - four of them during traffic collisions - in just the past two months.
A fresh wave of grief swept across the department Friday, when off-duty Det. Ernest Allen was killed after a cement truck smashed into the pickup truck he was riding in. Allen was killed on the same street where on March 7 the first of the five officers died.
Flags outside LAPD headquarters already were at half-staff - two officers died less than a week before.
The Los Angeles Times reports (https://lat.ms/1gb09w4 ) that the deaths have cast a pall over the LAPD.
“Walking around the hallway in the headquarters building or in another one of the stations, you can certainly feel - I don’t want to say gloom - but a feeling of depression,” Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Andrew Smith told the newspaper.
The three other deaths involved a veteran motorcycle officer who was killed after a woman driving an SUV rear-ended him at a traffic light, an officer killed during a hit-and-run, and an officer who died of an apparent a heart attack.
Officers have gathered after hours to remember their friends, and text each other reminders to make it home safe. They wear black mourning bands on their badges.
“We are all grieving,” Chief Charlie Beck told the newspaper in an interview. “But here we have no opportunity to move beyond the first stage of grieving before we suffer another loss.”
In Beck’s 37 years with the LAPD, more than 55 officers have been killed in the line of duty, he said, including five since he took over the department in 2008.
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