Free Republic

SANTA ANA -- After a day of deliberations, a jury Thursday found Long Beach police officers violated the civil rights of a man who was shot and killed without warning in 2010, awarding his family $6.5 million in damages. Officers Jeffrey Shurtleff and Victor Ortiz were found liable in the death of Douglas Zerby, 35, who was killed without warning as he sat on the stoop of a friend's apartment playing with a pistol-grip hose nozzle that police mistook for a gun. In a unanimous verdict in federal civil court, the jury of women and two men found not only...

McDonnell says the officers believed the man had a gun and were awaiting the arrival of backup when the man pointed the object in a two-handed posture that looked like what a person would do when they are about to fire a weapon.

The 35-year-old Long Beach man killed in an officer-involved shooting Sunday was holding a pistol-grip water nozzle, not a gun, Long Beach police officials said Monday. Two officers responded to a 911 call at 4:40 p.m. Sunday from a neighbor reporting an intoxicated man holding a "six-shooter" in the 5300 block of East Ocean Boulevard in the upscale Belmont Shore neighborhood. "The officers had a position of cover and were observing the suspect while other officers were en route," said Sgt. Dina Zapalski, a spokeswoman for the Long Beach Police Department. Zapalski said Douglas Zerby had been sitting on a...