Los Angeles cops cleared in death of homeless black man

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Three Los Angeles police officers who fatally shot a black homeless man on Skid Row last year will not face criminal charges because they acted in self-defense, according to a report released today by the district attorney.

Prosecutors determined that the shooting of Charly "Africa" Keunang was justified because he grabbed a rookie officer's gun during a struggle that ended when he was shot five times March 1, 2015.

"The officers' reasonable assessments of the threat posed by Keunang were as grave and imminent as the officers perceived," prosecutors wrote in a memo. "Keunang posed a high likelihood of killing officers and civilians at the very instant that he was shot."

Officers were responding to reports that Keunang, 43, a Cameroon national, had threatened another man living on the street in the section of the city teeming with homeless people.

Video of the shooting by a bystander was viewed millions of times online and prompted protests in the city and drew comparisons with the deaths of other black men killed by officers in the U.S.

A lawyer representing Keunang's family in a $20 million lawsuit disputed that the homeless man ever had hold of an officer's gun. Atty. Joshua Piovia-Scott said the officers who were trained to de-escalate conflicts instead initiated a confrontation that led to the killing.

"I just think that's a travesty of justice and just a weak decision on behalf of law enforcement authorities," Piovia-Scott said of the decision not to prosecute any officers. "Unfortunately, it's something we've seen time and time again in this scourge of police killings of unarmed black men we've had in this country."