The mother of a Los Angeles Police Officer has filed a damages claim against the department and the city of Los Angeles. Her son, Houston Tripping,32, a five-year veteran of the LAPD, died several days after being paralyzed during an on-duty training exercise on May 26th at the LAPD’s Elysian Park Training Academy.
Shirley Huffman, Tipping’s mother, is suing the city for wrongful death and civil rights violations, claiming that her son was “repeatedly struck in the head severely enough that he bled,” and suffered multiple breaks in his neck, causing his death.”
An attorney for Ms. Huffman indicated that Tipping had recently reported that several of his fellow officers were allegedly involved in a sexual assault. Brad Gage, family attorney for Huffman, has alluded that one of the officers involved in the sexual assault was in the training class and might have been the one who became entangled with Tripping, contributing to the fall which fatally injured the officer.
“You have to understand why they would do that, where is the motivation?”When you have information that the motivation comes from an alleged sexual assault, it’s being investigated by Officer Tipping, now you understand why,” Gage said Monday. “You have a situation where officers are going to be interested in at least scaring Officer Tipping to prevent him from carrying out this investigation, where they could get prosecuted criminally, and or lose their jobs.”
An internal investigation into the death indicated that the officer died following a bicycle-patrol training exercise. Lizabeth Rhodes, director of the Office of Constitutional Policing Policy, reported to the Police Commission that the officer was killed in an exercise where he played the role of a suspect who confronted a bicycle officer.
Cindy Huffman is under the impression that her son died during a simulated mob attack “This was not a mob attack, as has been alleged, rather (a one-on-one scenario) which was Officer Tipping playing the role as a suspect in order to help officers learn how to deal with that one individual,” Rhodes said.
Rhodes described a scenario in which Tipping, portraying the suspect, aggressively attacked the trainee officer, who at one point strikes Tipping in a leg with a foam baton. The strike caused no injury, but Tipping reacted “as he was supposed to in this scenario by going down on one knee to simulate a successful baton strike.”She said Tipping then re-engaged the other officer.
“Officer Tipping then lifted the officer, the student officer, from the ground and the student officer’s arm went around Officer Tipping’s neck, wrapping toward the front of Officer Tipping’s cheek and throat. As the two fell to the floor Officer Tipping’s neck remained in that grasp,” Rhodes said.
She said other officers in the training session immediately realized Tipping was injured and “appeared to be struggling to speak,” leading to various first-aid efforts while paramedics were called.
The department and the coroner’s office have determined that the death was accidental. Gage says that the next step will be for the district attorney’s office to open up an independent investigation.
