CALIFORNIA POLICE CLEARED IN SHOOTING OF BLACK WOMAN

Prosecutor says officers acted hastily, not illegally

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Four police officers were justified when they fired 23
bullets at a young black woman they found sitting armed and unresponsive in
a disabled car, the district attorney said yesterday.

District Attorney Grover Trask said the officers may have acted hastily and
made mistakes in judgment, but they did not act criminally when they killed
Tyisha Miller, 19, in December.

Miller's death led to allegations that the officers -- three whites and a
Hispanic -- were racists. Religious leaders, civil rights activists and
residents of Riverside, 60 miles east of Los Angeles, protested the shooting
at meetings, vigils and marches.

"We thought we were going to get justice but we just got the same old
thing," said the Rev. Bernell Butler, Miller's cousin. "Police officers are
able to murder and get away with it."

Miller had pulled into a gas station parking lot with a flat tire. Relatives
who arrived to help her said they called police after Miller appeared to be
having a seizure and was foaming at the mouth.

Trask said the officers found Miller unresponsive, lying on the fully
reclined driver's seat with a gun in her lap. They were unable to awaken her
by banging on the windows, shining lights or shaking the car, he said.

When an officer tried to break the driver's side window with a baton and
reach for the gun, Miller sat up, lifted a pager and stared at the cop, who
backed away, Trask said.

One officer yelled at the others to hold their fire, and the woman lay down
again, Trask said. When she rose up again and appeared to reach for the gun,
the officers all fired, the prosecutor said.

A coroner's report indicated all the bullets entered her body from the back,
proving that she was not lying down when she was shot, Trask said. Miller
was hit by 12 of the 23 bullets. Four struck her in the head.

Toxicology tests showed Miller had a blood-alcohol level of 0.13 percent. A
driver in California is legally intoxicated at 0.08 percent. Tests also
detected marijuana residue.

Trask said the officers' plan to break in the window of Miller's locked car
to get the gun out of her lap may have been a mistake, but it did not reach
the level of criminal conduct.

"In deciding whether or not to file criminal charges, the job was not to
determine what the police could have done or even what they should have
done," Trask said.