“After a thorough review of the evidence in the case, I believe that the use of force by Officer Whaylen Phares was justified based on Colorado law regarding use of force in self-defense and in defense of others,” Walsh said in a pess release.
Phares and two other officers responded to a call made just after 4 a.m. of eight shots fired on the third floor of an apartment at 4901 E. Donald Ave. After arriving, the officers received a second report of a domestic violence assault in the same building. They then saw a woman running down the stairs with Nava-Carbajal in pursuit.
Nava-Carbajal refused police orders to stop and then attempted to leave on a bike and then on foot. The officers pursued him and failed in repeated attempts to arrest him after he resisted.
The officers saw a weapon in Nava-Carbajal’s hand, which he told them wasn’t real. But he also refused to let go of it. Officer Christopher Palmisanoattempted to wrest the revolver from his hand as the two wrestled on the ground. It was then that Nava-Carbajal allegedly grabbed at Palmisano’s holster.
As Nava-Carbajal stood up, Phares, fired his weapon and hit Nava-Carbajal near his left clavicle, killing him. Phares said he feared Palmisano, who was still on the ground and vulnerable, would be shot.
The Denver Crime Lab determined that Nava-Carbajal was holding a CO2 pellet gun that he had loaded with six live 9 millimeter rounds visible from the outside. The gun couldn’t fire live rounds, but it was a realistic replica. Nava-Carbajal likely was not behind the original call of shots fired.
A polarizing figure on the Los Angeles Police Commission will retain his seat despite having never received an approval vote from the City Council.
Erroll Southers, who previously served as president of the civilian panel that watches over the LAPD, has taken criticism for what critics say is his unwillingness to provide oversight of police Chief Jim McDonnell, while also facing renewed scrutiny in recent months for his past counterterrorism studies in Israel.
For the record:
9:33 a.m. Oct. 1, 2025An earlier version of this story reported that Erroll Southers’ nomination was not on the City Council’s agenda last week. Southers was on the agenda but the council continued the matter and took no vote.
New members of any city commission must typically be approved by a City Council vote within 45 days of their nomination. Mayor Karen Bass put forward Southers in mid-August, but his first scheduled vote was delayed because he was traveling, and the council continued the matter without explanation at a meeting Friday in Van Nuys. Now that his 45-day window has elapsed, multiple officials told The Times that city rules allow Southers to continue in the position by default for a full five-year term because he was already serving on an interim basis.
Around City Hall, news of the council’s inaction set off speculation about whether it was the result of a scheduling mix-up — or because Southers’ backers didn’t believe he could get enough votes.
Failing to vote on a member of one of city’s most important and high-profile commissions is almost unheard of, said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former councilman and L.A. County supervisor now at UCLA.
“They have responsibility to confirm or not confirm,” he said of the council. “I never understood why you would campaign for office, as hard as you campaign to get there, and not vote on something that’s as important to the public.”
Appointed by the mayor, police commissioners act much like a corporate board of directors, setting the LAPD policies, approving its budget and providing oversight, including reviews of officer shootings and other serious uses of force.
Southers, 68, has been a member of the panel since 2023, when Bass picked him to serve out the term of a departing commissioner.
A former FBI agent and Santa Monica cop turned top security official at USC, Southers helped lead the nationwide search for the next LAPD chief. The position eventually went to McDonnell — who like Southers served as director of the school’s Safe Communities Institute.
His backers say that Southers has been committed to his role, participating in numerous listening sessions with Angelenos to learn what qualities they wanted in a police chief. He has also become a regular presence at LAPD recruitment events and graduations.
Zach Seidl, a mayoral spokesperson, praised Southers for his stewardship of the commission, saying the career lawman “brings deep knowledge of the police department’s operations, a commitment to the continued development of policies that further transparency and accountability, and trusted relationships with community members and law enforcement.”
But more than any other commissioner, Southers has accumulated a loud chorus of detractors who oppose keeping him in the key oversight role.
Although it has long been part of his resume, Southers’ work in the mid-2000s in Israel has especially become a lighting rod due to the ongoing crisis in Gaza.
Last month, a United Nations commission accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas militant attacks that left 1,200 dead and 251 others kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel’s military campaign has so far killed more than 66,000 people, the vast majority of them civilians, according to Gaza health officials and international aid groups.
Although Southers has said little publicly about the conflict, he has previously described traveling to Israel and studying with the Israel Defense Forces to learn about anti-terrorism strategies for his academic work.
His opponents have argued his writings suggest that authorities should use an individual’s public support for controversial causes as a potential warning sign of extremism. Such arguments, they say, can be used to justify the criminalization of minority groups or silence dissent.
Southers weathered calls for his resignation from the commission last year after he was among the USC officials responsible for clearing encampments occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters on the school’s campus.
Others have focused on his oversight of McDonnell. Far too often, critics say, he has let the chief off the hook after recent controversies. Most recently Southers and his fellow commissioners have faced calls to put more checks on aggressive behavior by LAPD officers toward journalists and nonviolent protesters.
Shootings by police have also been a point of contention with Southers. LAPD officers opened fire 31 times in the first nine months of this year, already surpassing the total number of shootings in 2024.
The commission ordered the department to present a report on the shootings, but that was not nearly enough to satisfy Greg “Baba” Akili, a longtime civil rights advocate with Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles who has frequently spoken out against Southers’ nomination.
As commission president, he said, Southers seemed more willing to shut down public speakers at the board’s meetings than to question the department’s narrative of recent events.
“It’s like having a member of the police force on the commission,” Akili said of Southers. “We don’t want to see just Black faces in high places: We want people who actually … uplift the public.”
Editor’s Note 8/30/2024, 5:50 p.m.: This article has been updated to include new information. Dallas police officer Darron Burks was shot to death Thursday night in what Dallas police chief Eddie Garcia described as an execution…
Cleopatra Bodden in New York with her son, Dennis Bodden, who died last month at age 46 when a police sergeant in Pineville, NC fatally shot him.
Cleopatra Bodden
The mother of a man who was fatally shot by police last month in Pineville is calling for the public release of law-enforcement videos and says she believes police were aware that Dennis Bodden suffered from mental health problems.
Cleopatra Bodden also said Monday that she wants the Pineville Police Department to change the way officers respond to people with mental illnesses.
“They did not see Dennis as a human being, but as someone that could be discarded,” she said at a press conference. “Just another Black man being murdered without impunity.”
She was joined by her sister Julia Bodden and brother George as well as Corine Mack, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP.
Pineville police have said that Dennis Bodden “lunged” at a police sergeant on May 14 outside an apartment complex to try to grab the officer’s gun.
Bodden was unarmed. The sergeant who shot him earlier said Bodden bit him during the incident.
Cleopatra Bodden said that in the narrative police provided to the media about her only son, they left out his mental health struggles.
“Over the past weeks, I’ve observed with great distrust how the Pineville Police Department portrayed my son as a criminal without mentioning his illness,” she said.
She said in an interview that her son, who struggled with depression, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, which began to manifest during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cleopatra said her son, a law school graduate, enjoyed reading and running marathons. A friend of Bodden’s said he volunteered with a suicide prevention hotline.
What Pineville police say
The shooting took place after a 911 call in which someone reported Bodden concealing items inside the Food Lion on Johnston Road in Pineville. Police issued a news release the next day saying Bodden wouldn’t follow orders to stop in the parking lot, and as police followed him,officers Tased him twice, and he lunged.
That May 15 police statement said Bodden “was very well known to Pineville Police as being a chronic shoplifting suspect at this Food Lion” and said Bodden had “violent tendencies towards police and the public.”
After Cleopatra Bodden’s news conference in Charlotte on Monday, Pineville police issued a new statement saying they were not aware of Dennis Bodden’s mental health issues. They said police had only made contact with him one previous time at the Food Lion because, in previous 911 calls, he left before police arrived.
“I got the same guy who keeps coming in here, shoplifting,” a 911 caller said to a dispatcher. “Right now he’s in the produce department, making his rounds. It’s the same guy your officer keeps coming for.”
Bodden took food and wine from the store and was walking back to his apartment, which was across the street and located in the city of Charlotte. Charlotte-Mecklenburg police are now investigating the shooting, and the district attorney’s office will determine whether the sergeant should be charged.
Pineville police have not released his name, nor his disciplinary record.
Need for mental health resources
Julia Bodden, Dennis Bodden’s aunt, questioned at the news conference why the police didn’t have a person or team trained to handle someone suffering from a mental health crisis.
The police they while they do not have a mental health crisis response team, the officers were Critical Incident Team-certified through Mecklenburg County.
The county’s website said that is an effort between police and mental health professionals to train officers in how to respond to people experiencing mental health struggles.
Cleopatra and Julia Bodden said in an interview that Dennis Bodden would hear voices in his head if he didn’t take medication.
And more than once, said Julia Bodden, Dennis would go into the store thinking it was his home, and take items believing they belonged to him. The voices in his head would tell him he was allowed to take them because they used to belong to his father, and he was entitled to them, she said.
“When he was living with me, it wasn’t a problem. But I think once he got out on his own, he thought that he didn’t need [medicine],” Julia said. “And that’s where the problem came in. He thought he could do it on his own, and he couldn’t do it on his own. He needed that medication in order to live a productive life.”
Julia Bodden said Pineville Police Chief Michael Hudgins reached out to her and Cleopatra, which was “wonderful,” but that doesn’t bring Dennis back.
A police statement said the chief’s phone call “was out of compassion and empathy for the Bodden family. We as police officers all have a high level of human decency and wish to treat everyone with dignity and respect.”
The sisters said they chose to reached out to the NAACP because they weren’t familiar with Charlotte or Mecklenburg County, and wanted someone local who could help them.
“This case really hit me harder than most,” Mack told the Observer after the press conference.
In addition to the public seeing video footage, the family wants information about the officers. Under North Carolina, police videos can be released via court order from a judge.
“When it’s the officers shooting, they’re quick to put up all of the past information about the victim, and especially if they’re a Black victim or a victim of color, but no information is ever given about the officers,” Mack said.
Drew Farrar, a friend of Dennis’ who lives in Charlotte, said Monday in an interview that he thought Pineville police must have had some awareness of Bodden’s mental health struggles. Farrar pointed to the 911 caller recognizing Bodden, the sergeant’s familiarity in the radio communications, and that the store had banned him.
“This situation not only took everything he had, but it took a huge chunk out of a lot of people that he touched.”
Related stories from Charlotte Observer
Jeff A. Chamer is a breaking news reporter for the Charlotte Observer. He’s lived a few places, but mainly in Michigan where he grew up. Before joining the Observer, Jeff covered K-12 and higher education at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette in Massachusetts.
As officers kept investigating, they say they found other people who were injured and they started giving them first aid.
It’s unclear if they are involved in the shooting, or how they were injured. Police didn’t say whether they were shot or if so, by who.
They were taken to the hospital.
Officers did have their body cameras turned on during last night’s shooting and those videos are being reviewed by the State Bureau of Investigation and RPD internal affairs.
More details about the shooting could be found in the next five days when RPD is required to release a report.
Rock Quarry Road was closed for several hours last night and Sunday morning, but has since re-opened.
