By Brooklynn Wong
Orange County District Attorney (OCDA) Tony Rackauckas announced last week that his office has closed its inquiry from Feb. 2017 into the incident involving off-duty Los Angeles Police Officer Kevin Ferguson.
Last year, Ferguson, who resides in Anaheim, near a school, became perturbed when students would continually cut across his property walking to and from school.
In an incident that went viral and was captured in several videos, Ferguson confronted the repeat trespassers, calling one of the young ladies by a vulgar name, causing one of the males to come to her defense.
The situation escalated, and when Ferguson heard what he thought was the young man threatening to “shoot” him (the young man and the rest of the witnesses say he used the word “sue,” not “shoot”), he ran after him and grabbed on to him, intending to perform a private person’s arrest.
Ferguson had his father call 911, but in the 16 minutes before Anaheim Police arrived, Ferguson and the youths hurled insults at each other, and in the most heated moment, after pleading with Ferguson to let the first young man go to no avail, individuals punched Ferguson in the face and tackled him. One of them had a pen behind his ear, took it in his hand, held it behind his back, then reached for it, in a way that provoked Ferguson to take out a gun concealed in his waistband and fire a shot into the ground.
None of the children involved have been named on account of them being minors.
After much public outcry, the OCDA conducted an inquiry into the event over the past year.
At a press conference on Jan. 24, Assistant District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh said that the Anaheim Police Department conducted interviews and gathered all video recorded by nearby houses’ security cameras, and the children’s’ cell phones and “did everything we asked them to do and more.”
The DA’s office found Ferguson to be a private citizen lawfully possessing a concealed weapon attempting to perform a citizen’s arrest. The evidence did not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Ferguson used an unreasonable amount of force.
In a letter that was also released, Baytieh says, “Despite Ferguson’s unwise, immature, and flat-out horrible choices that terrified his juvenile detainee, his actions and language were vulgar, and the fact that Ferguson’s actions endangered the safety of a large group of juveniles, it is the OCDA’s conclusion that based on the law and the totality of all the available evidence, the OCDA will not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ferguson was not entitled to place John Doe under citizen’s arrest, or that Ferguson used excessive force under the law.”
