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Follow-Up To Fatal Officer-Involved Shooting: Officer Is ID'd, Received These Commendations (1997 and 1998, See Text), Was Involved In June 2011 Taser-Use of Force (See Details) And March 2002 Officer-Involved Shooting (Details Coming)


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(May 13, 2015) -- LBREPORT.com has learned that the LBPD officer who fatally shot Hector Morejon, age 19, had received two commendations and was involved in two "use of force" incidents.

One of the use of force incidents involved use of a taser (June 2011, area of LB Blvd/7th-9th St., details below); the other involved use of his gun (March 2002 officer-involved shooting.)

LBREPORT.com provides details on the two commendations and one of the two use of force incidents (on which we have details now) below.

Mr. Morejon was fatally shot on April 23 in the 1100 block of Hoffman Ave. in a vacant apartment unit whose interior walls, police say, were covered with graffiti. LBPD provided its description of the circumstances in an April 24 (coverage here.) Mr. Morejon's family, through its attorneys, subsequently have released a statement on the matter (coverage here.)

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In response to a request by LBREPORT.com (and others) under the CA Public Records Act, LBPD identified the officer as Jeffrey A. Meyer, previously indicated as a 20+ year LBPD officer. Details of the two LBPD commendations are below. Details of the March 2002 officer involved shooting weren't available on May 12 [and LBREPORT.com has since requested information related to them]. However LBREPORT.com independently found the June 2011 taser incident in which Officer Meyer and other officers were involved detailed in a state Court of Appeal opinion. The reviewing court sustained the conviction of the defendant for attempted murder, mayhem and three counts of resisting arrest (sentenced to 27 years in prison.).

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LBPD indicates that Officer Meyer received two Merritorious Commendations as follows:

A Meritorious C commendation in 1997 is described as follows:

[LBPD text] Officer Meyer responded with other officers to a suicidal female who had cut her wrists. The woman was throwing glass objects at the officers and threatening them with a knife. She broke out a 2nd story window and threatened to jump out the window if the officers approached her. While cutting and stabbing herself with the broken glass she told the officers she wanted them to shoot her. Officer Meyer and the other officers came up with a plan to rush towards the woman in order to keep her from jumping out the window and to keep her from cutting herself. They were able to safely detain her and get her the medical attention she needed.

Officer Meyer also received a Meritorious C commendation in 1998 described as follows:

[LBPD text] Officer Meyer was on a call for service when an unrelated 16-year-old male juvenile approached him holding a 2-year-old female child and said the child was choking. Officer Meyer observed the child was limp and her eyes had rolled to the back of her head. Officer Meyer immediately performed CPR, but was initially unable to clear the obstruction from the child’s airway. Officer Meyer then performed the Heimlich maneuver which cleared the child’s airway. The child started to breath and slowly opened her eyes. Paramedics who responded to the scene stated that if it were not for the quick actions of Officer Meyer the child would have likely died.

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Below are portions the Court of Appeal opinion describing the June 2011 response in which Officer Meyer was involved. [We've removed the name of the crime victim and other responding officers.]

[Text from Court of Appeal opinion, People v. Bejarano] On June 20, 2011, [a woman] was driving down Long Beach Boulevard in Long Beach when she saw two men fighting in the middle of the street. One of them was defendant. The second man was on the ground and defendant was hitting him with his fists. [She] shouted to them to “stop fighting before I call the police.” She then parked her car in a red zone in front of a nearby market, intending to go into the store. She got out of the car, and saw the man on the ground “hollering 'help,' ” and the defendant beating him. She again yelled out, “you guys should stop fighting.” The defendant stopped and put his head down, and [the woman] continued to walk toward the store. Then, defendant punched her from behind on the side of her head. She ran for her car, and defendant followed her. He was so close that she was “scared to get in my car,” and she continued into the store. She asked the store clerks to call the police because she saw defendant trying to get into her car, and at first she thought he was going to steal it.

Defendant pursued [the woman] into the store. Defendant told the store clerks, “Don't move. Stay where the fuck you at.” Defendant started “yanking and pulling on the soda machines and rampaging there.” Ms. Powell continued to move through the store and defendant continued to move toward her and “continued to rampage,” knocking things off the shelves. [The woman] “ended up behind the counter” and could not get away.

Defendant pursued [the woman] behind the counter, hit her with his fist “upside my head,” and said, “Don't move, bitch.” Then defendant “started just throwing everything up under the counter saying, ‘Where is the fucking gun? Where is the fucking gun?’ ” [The woman] tried to move, and defendant hit her again and said, “Don't fucking move, bitch.” Then he picked up a large glass bottle of hot sauce and struck [the woman] over the head with it. The bottle did not break, so defendant “hit it across the counter” and broke the bottle. Defendant stabbed [the woman] with the jagged edge of the bottle in several places, “[i]n the neck area and the back area, up under [her] breast area.” She had a defensive wound on her hand from “trying to cover up,” and “the whole cartilage of my ear was cut.” There was also a cut “in my head” and “one behind my ear.” She thought defendant “was getting ready to kill me.” She kept saying, “help, help, help, help,” and then “it just stopped.”

[The woman] saw defendant leave the store. She fell, but then staggered to the front door. She walked over to her car, and saw “my blouse just full of red.” She saw her reflection in the car and saw “my neck hanging open.” She grabbed her neck and “blood shot everywhere.” Bystanders came to her aid and started calling 911. A police car was turning the corner, and [the woman] flagged it down. A bystander told the officer that defendant had gone down the street.

[The woman] was taken by ambulance and treated at a hospital. That day she had two surgeries, and later had plastic surgery. Her “whole ear [cartilage] was cut off.” ([The woman]) was asked if there was “a piece of your ear that was actually missing,” and she answered, “Yes. That they had to put together.”) All the nerves in her neck were cut, and she has permanent numbness.

Officer Jeffrey Meyer was the first officer to arrive. [The woman] said, “He did it” and pointed to defendant, who was standing on the sidewalk south of her car. Defendant looked at Officer Meyer, raised his hands, turned around and started running southbound on Long Beach Boulevard. The officer pursued defendant to the 9th Street intersection, got out of his car, and, at gunpoint, ordered defendant to stop and lie down on the ground. Defendant again displayed his empty hands and continued across 9th Street to the intersection with 8th Street. “[H]e wasn't sprinting, but he wasn't at a slow walk either.” Officer Meyer followed, and again ordered defendant to stop. He did not, and the officer used his taser. One of the darts from the taser struck defendant in the back, but to no effect. Defendant stopped for “just a slight time,” and “kind of swung his hand back like he was grabbing for one of the wires or the dart.” Then defendant continued down Long Beach Boulevard.

Officer Meyer followed in his car, and called for a unit to assist him. At 7th Street, he used his taser again. Again the taser had no effect on defendant, who made the same “circular motion or reaching behind,” as if reaching for the wires, as before. He then walked into a store, went behind the counter, looking around, and came back out. When defendant came back out, Officer Meyer again ordered him at gunpoint to stop. Instead, defendant crossed Long Beach Boulevard, hopping the fence at the light-rail tracks to get to the other side, and started northbound.

[Another officer] arrived and ran after defendant. Defendant went to the door of a store that several employees were holding shut from the inside, and then turned toward Officer Petropulos, put his hands up in a fighting motion with fists and said, “Let’s go.” [The officer] took out his baton and struck defendant on the top of his left shoulder. Defendant punched [the officer] in the face with his left closed fist.

Meanwhile, Officer Meyer went up to 8th Street and came around to the other side of the boulevard. He saw defendant with legs apart, arms raised in front of him, and fists clinched, facing [the officer]; saw [the officer] strike defendant in the left forearm with his baton; and saw defendant punch [the officer] with his left closed fist. Defendant’s blow “kind of stunned” [the officer] who took a step back. Officer Meyer then came up and struck defendant in the right lower leg and the right arm with his baton. This seemed to have no effect.

After defendant punched [the officer], the officer “went in again to hit [defendant],” who was “kind of like a boxer back and forth.” [The officer] was “going for the upper body and struck him on the head.” This blow glanced off and hit Officer Meyer on the left wrist.

[The officer] told defendant to get down, and then struck him again in the right arm. Officer Meyer heard [the officer] tell defendant at least twice to get down, but defendant did not do so. Defendant ran between the two officers, southbound, where another officer used his taser. Defendant “clinched up tight but eventually reached up and ripped the prongs out of his chest.”

By this time, [a second officer] had arrived. He saw [the other officer] chasing defendant; saw defendant take an aggressive stance toward [the officer]; saw [the officer] take out his baton and start to swing at defendant; and saw defendant punch [the officer] in the face. [The second officer] had his baton out, saw another officer use a taser to no effect, and swung his baton twice to defendant’s left arm, but these blows were ineffective. He aimed for defendant’s arm a third time, but defendant lowered his body and [the second officer] struck some part of his face.

Defendant then ran southbound “to where another officer then hit him with his baton at which time he continued to run and cut toward the parking lot there at the Quarter Master [where] [a PD Sergeant] tackled him to the sidewalk.” Defendant was shouting, “fuck you, you fucking pigs.”

Officer Meyer got on top of defendant’s legs to stop him from kicking. Other officers were trying to pull his arms out from underneath his body. Defendant refused orders to put his hands behind his back, and several officers were yelling, “Stop resisting.” He did not. The officers got a handcuff on one wrist, but “were still having troubles getting the left arm out to handcuff him.” When [the Sergeant] had control of defendant’s right arm, Officer Meyer “did a drive stun” with his taser into defendant’s right calf four times, ordering him to stop resisting and bring his other hand out. This had no effect. Defendant was trying to move his legs and his upper body and trying to push himself up off the ground.

[The second officer] managed to grab defendant’s left arm, and tried to pull it behind his back, but defendant kept pulling his arm back under his chest, multiple times. [The second officer] used a taser one time (a drive stun) on defendant when he was trying to control defendant’s left arm. [The second officer] sustained three scratch marks to his forearm and another to his hand.

Officer Meyer saw at least two baton strikes while the police were wrestling with defendant on the ground. [The second officer] said that he delivered baton strikes to defendant’s rib cage during this stage of the attempt to subdue him, but “[n]othing seemed to work.” Three or four officers finally were able to get defendant’s left arm out and handcuff him. Then they applied a hobble restraint to defendant’s legs. Officer Meyer said that at least six officers were involved in the effort to get defendant under control.

Defendant was taken to a hospital. An officer assigned to guard him overheard defendant talking with hospital staff about “not knowing why he was in the hospital and what he had done because he had been on a methamphetamine bender for several days.”...

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As previously reported by LBREPORT.com, in an April 24, 2015 release, LBPD stated that on April 23, officers responded to a residential multi-unit complex in the 1100 block of Hoffman Avenue regarding a report of several subjects unlawfully trespassing and vandalizing inside a vacant residence. When officers arrived [release text] they discovered an open window with no screen at the rear of the residence; the officers located a second window that was broken, with the screen removed; an officer [now identified as Officer Meyer] looked through the opening to the broken window and observed a male suspect standing next to a wall; the officer observed the suspect turn towards him, while bending his knees, and extending his arm out as if pointing an object which the officer perceived was a gun and the officer fired, killing Mr. Morejon, who was unarmed.

Mr. Morejon's family, through its attorneys, released a statement reported by LBREPORT.com at this link.

On May 12, 2015, LBPD declined to release some items requested by LBREPORT.com related to the April 23 fatal shooting, citing section 6254(4) of the Public Records Act exempting from disclosure "Records of complaints to, or investigations conducted by, or records of intelligence information or security procedures of...any state or local police agency, or any investigatory or security files compiled by any other state or local police agency, or any investigatory or security files compiled by any other state or local agency for correctional, law enforcement, or licensing purposes."

Further to follow.




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