Police Brutality / Individual record
Eula Love
Eula Love, a Black mother, was fatally shot by LAPD officers outside her home on January 3, 1979.
- Record ID
- PB-007
- Incident date
- January 3, 1979
- Date of death
- January 3, 1979
- Outcome
- Fatal
- Location
- Los Angeles, CA
- Category
- Police shooting
What happened
Officers responded after a conflict involving a utility-company employee at Love's home. During the encounter she held a kitchen knife, according to accounts from the period; two officers opened fire, striking her twelve times. Her death provoked major community protests, public Police Commission hearings, and scrutiny of whether police had escalated a confrontation that could have been resolved without deadly force.
Investigation & findings
Los Angeles's Police Commission identified serious errors in officer judgment. Civil-rights activists and community leaders sought stronger review of excessive-force allegations; there was a dispute between the commission's concerns and police leadership's policy determination.
Source record details
- Source incident ID
- Historical source-derived record, pre-2015
Sources & records
- Primary source
- Additional source
- Methodology and national police killings trackingMapping Police Violence · Dataset/methodology
- Published historical compilation of Black people killed in police custody (1999–2014)SAGE journal / cited NAACP LDF memorial listing · 2016 · Secondary scholarly source