I was a freshman when I first became involved in the Chaudhry case. Olu Orange, my mock trial coach and an attorney in Los Angeles, knew I spoke Russian. When a 21-year-old autistic man was shot by an LAPD officer on the corner of North Curson and Sunset Blvd, a predominantly Russian speaking area, he asked me to come translate witness interviews.

The Chaudhry family left Pakistan to escape religious violence and to live in a place they thought would have more resources for their autistic son. They moved to Los Angeles and opened a small computer repair business. They raised their kids. Sent them to school. Payed taxes. Voted. When their son Mohammed turned 18 and began exhibiting symptoms of autism elopement, basically wandering, they were unable to force him to stay at home or to enlist the aid of the police in bringing him home. For weeks and sometimes months, Mohammed would leave home and sleep outside, not telling his family where he was; but he would always check in either by a phone call or by showing up on the doorstep of the home where he was always welcome.

When his family didn’t hear from Mohammed for longer than usual they filed a missing person report. They called the police repeatedly. But the police didn’t tell them what they, the police, knew and what they had known for almost a month because Mohammed had identification on him. They didn’t tell the Chaudhrys that their son, Mohammed, was lying in the morgue with 7 bullet wounds from the Smith and Wesson 9mm semi-automatic pistol belonging to Officer Cruz of the illustrious Los Angeles Police Department, riddled throughout his body. It wasn’t until Mrs. Chaudhry showed up at the morgue, guided by the intuition that I guess only a mother possesses, that the family learned of their son’s passing. A tragedy that was made even worse by the strict burial rules to which Muslims adhere and which were now impossible to follow given the decomposing state of their son’s body; to the Chaudhrys, it wasn’t just the loss of Mohammed’s life, it was the loss of his immortal soul and the hope of their reunion in the hereafter.

After completing a “thorough” investigation, Chief Bratton sent Mrs. Chaudhry a letter informing her that no information relating to her sons death could be provided and that no departmental action would be taken against the officer. What Chief Bratton didn’t tell her was that her son had been sleeping underneath the balcony of an apartment building, a spot he frequented when his autism took him from his home. Officer Cruz and his partner Officer Romo were making their rounds when they suddenly decided to investigate the sleeping man. It was Officer Cruz who led the approach while Officer Romo shone his flashlight. Officer Cruz neither asked for identification nor performed a pat down of the sleeping man. Or maybe he did. You see Cruz either had to admit that he had violated one of the basic tenets of officer protocol and training or he had to admit that he had patted Mohammed down and found no weapon. According to Officer Cruz, Mohammed then lunged at him with a knife, nicking him in the hand. Officer Cruz fired seven shots which left Mohammed crumpled on the dirt in a position that the crime scene investigator determined was in no way compatible with the forward moving motion alleged. As for Cruz’s partner, Officer Romo? Well from the point just before the “lunge” until right after the last shot was fired, Officer Romo lost all powers of observation including that of seeing and hearing. Or maybe he didn’t. Either Officer Romo had to claim that he saw nothing or that he saw something he knew shouldn’t have happened. When the lab tested the knife that was found at the scene, it wasn’t Mohammed’s DNA they found on the handle, the DNA that would have been there had he at any point in time held the knife, but rather they found an unidentified male’s DNA. DNA for which Officer Cruz repeatedly declined to be tested- most likely a prop knife he kept in the car and dropped on the scene after the shooting, Olu explained.

Why had Cruz shot Mohammed? Maybe Cruz was just evil. Maybe he had a little of the AUSA head bashing syndrome in him. There was evidence that these two officers had been shaking down the homeless for their GR benefits. I don’t really know.

Anyway, the LAPD conducted their investigation and concluded that Officer Cruz had done nothing wrong. Yet they swiftly moved to fire him, ostensibly, for a prior incident detailed in a departmental report, an incident that so “damaged his veracity that the LAPD had no further use for him.” (Cruz had let a female prisoner out of his car in exchange for oral sex and then told his supervisor that the girl, WHILE HANDCUFFED, had jumped out of the open window of his moving squad car and escaped…) But now, when the LAPD’s own ass was on the line, they stood by him. The city was defending him. They were asking a jury to believe his story when they themselves had fired him because they could no longer believe anything he said. In the civil trial, when the jury found him liable and awarded 1.7 million dollars in damages, it is the city that will pay. Meanwhile, Former Officer Cruz is a member of our armed forces serving in Afghanistan, where his tendencies, I imagine, are more easily expressed and less easily held to any accountability.

Like our narrator in Robinson, I was curious about what a murderer was like. When I first met Cruz at his deposition, he smiled and offered me a Sprite.

A lovely essay. It will be very hard to make it better. You could tighten some sentences and improve a couple of infelicities that mar its nearly perfect surface, but I have little to recommend. You should probably try to write something less good the next time around, so that you can get some improvement points. Bravo.