L.A. County awards family of Dijon Kizzee $3.4 million in settlement
The family of Dijon Kizzee has been awarded a $3.4 million settlement four years after the 29-year-old black man was fatally shot by Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved the settlement Tuesday. It was filed against Los Angeles County in September 2021, alleging civil rights violations, assault and battery, false imprisonment, and negligence, and also maintained the "improper influence of rogue deputy gangs within the sheriff's department" created an environment that directly led to Kizzee's death.
Kizzee was shot in the afternoon on Aug. 31, 2020, by two deputies in the unincorporated community of Westmont, near South Los Angeles.
Sheriff's deputies initially stopped him for biking on the wrong side of the street. Deputies said Kizzee refused to stop, fell, then abandoned his bike and ran from deputies while carrying a gun wrapped inside a piece of clothing.
He was confronted by the deputies shortly afterward, where one tried to detain him, the sheriff's department has said.
An attorney for the family, Carl Douglas, had earlier called the killing "an execution." Douglas said that witnesses said Kizzee was standing up with nothing in his hands when one of the deputies fired three shots at him.
"After Dijon fell and was no longer a threat to any deputy, both deputies then fired 16 additional shots into Dijon's body, though he was already down, clearly mortally wounded, and posing no threat to any deputy," he said. "That sounds like an execution to me."
The sheriff's department said that although Kizzee dropped the firearm during a physical altercation with the deputies, he picked it up from the ground and pointed it toward the deputies — leading to the fatal shooting.
In their court papers, defense attorneys denied any wrongdoing or liability on the county's part and maintained that the deputies acted "in good faith and without malicious intent."
However, the suit claims the county failed to properly train the deputies involved, and Kizzee did nothing to justify the level of force used against him.
The lawsuit alleges that Kizzee was "minding his own business" while riding his bike and that he was stopped for no reason.
Kizzee was "at worse, merely a Black man riding his bicycle in a manner that may be contrary to traffic safety regulations, but which is rarely, if ever, enforced by sheriff's deputies patrolling that neighborhood, especially if the rider is not a Black male," the suit stated.
The deputies had less-lethal alternatives to use on Kizzee and the plaintiffs believe he was not given a verbal warning before he was shot, the suit stated.
The suit further alleged the deputies unreasonably delayed getting Kizzee medical assistance and that each of the deputies were hopeful members of gang-like cliques within the patrol station.
The District Attorney's Office reviewed the case and declined to file any criminal charges against the deputies involved in the shooting. An internal sheriff's department investigation concluded that the shooting was within department policy, however, the "tactics were not in compliance."
The deputies involved "received additional training pertaining to the circumstances surrounding this incident," according to the county counsel report to the board.
