Devin Brown officer plays his ace

Steven Garcia, the LAPD officer who shot and killed 13-year-old suspect Devin Brown, today released the finding of the confidential Board of Rights proceeding that cleared him of wrongdoing. The secrecy surrounding the board's rationale had fed into community controversy over the shooting, which the Police Commission had previously ruled as partially out of policy. Now the public can read the 19-page document explaining how the board rejected the commission's stance and concluded that the shooting was reasonable. It makes a good case for Garcia.

The Board of Rights unanimously "found the testimony of Officer Garcia to be genuine and credible," and that his fear of being killed was real when Brown's accelerated at him that night. Inaccuracies in Garcia's account about where the bullets struck were explained by the "traumatic situation," the board found. The board consisted of an LAPD captain, a retired captain and former police commissioner Ann Reiss Lane.