As the daughter of a former cop, Alex Smith recalls that whenever someone referred to her father as a police officer when she was growing up, he corrected them and said “No, I’m a peace officer.”
“I know what it’s like to kiss my dad goodbye and know that I might not see him,” Smith says. “I know what it’s like to see my dad on TV in a shootout.”
But after her husband, Jason Maccani was fatally shot by a Los Angeles police officer in Skid Row during a mental health crisis when he approached officers while holding a white plastic fork last February, Smith began rethinking everything she grew up believing about police officers.
“The same institution that he was murdered by is the same institution that he was married into,” she said. “If this is something that can happen to a cop's daughter, this can happen to anyone.”
A week later, Smith went from planning her future with her husband, to planning a funeral.
“I have text messages from the week before he died,” Smith told L.A. TACO during an emotional interview in February, a year after losing her husband. “We were picking out the names of our adopted kids that we want to adopt,” she continued.
“Going from that to watching him murdered is crazy.”
The past year has been “the most devastating year” of Smith’s life, she said.
Weeks after Maccani was killed, she was at work when a notification appeared on her computer screen.
It was the body camera footage released by the LAPD showing Maccani’s final moments.
“It’s bad enough having your spouse murdered… Having to watch your spouse be murdered in the middle of my work day is not normal and will have long-lasting effects on the rest of my life,” she said.
A week after the shooting, Smith began going to therapy while having intense flashbacks and “horrible” nightmares that persist to this day.
“I couldn’t go more than 1-2 days without having a flashback of the body cam footage and then a panic attack,” Smith recalled.
That April, Smith and Maccani’s parents filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles for excessive force, denial of medical care, wrongful death, and other claims.
Exactly a year after Maccani was killed, Smith learned that LAPD Officer Caleb Garcia’s decision to use lethal force against her husband was found to be “out of policy” after the reporter of this story sent her cousin-in-law a copy of a report from LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell. Until then, the family hadn’t seen it.
The report includes Chief McDonnell’s step-by-step analysis of the shooting and presents his findings.
In their report, Chief McDonnell reveals details about the shooting that the department hadn't previously disclosed. Including that Officer Garcia had only been in the field for six months at the time of the shooting and was still under the probationary status that new hires fall under. As well as that, an LAPD sergeant was “grazed” by the bullet that Garcia fired at Maccani in the webbing between his right thumb and index finger.
Ultimately, Chief McDonnell found that “an officer with similar training and experience as Garcia in the same situation would not reasonably believe the use of lethal force was consistent with” department policy.
“Therefore, I find Officer Garcia’s lethal use of force to be out of policy,” McDonnell wrote.
While the Chief's findings act as a recommendation to the Los Angeles Police Commission—the civilian board of directors for the LAPD—the Police Commission handles the final adjudication. The board ultimately came to the same conclusion as Chief McDonnell.
A month after the fatal shooting, on April 4, 2024, Officer Garcia was “discharged” from the Los Angeles Police Department. L.A. TACO confirmed that the reason for separation was because he “did not pass probation.”
Garcia could still be hired as a police officer for another agency in California, however. And he hasn’t been criminally charged for the killing of Maccani as of publishing. A California Department of Justice investigation into the shooting is still pending.
“The fact that this officer can still be a police officer is absolutely frightening to me,” she told L.A. TACO earlier this month.
Reading through Chief McDonnell’s report on the anniversary of her husband’s killing was one of the most challenging things she’s faced in the last year, Smith said.
“It was devastating,” she said. “It was worse reading it than watching the body cam footage to be honest.”
It took her three hours to try and read the 19-page report. In the end, she couldn’t get through it, she said, because she has such bad PTSD from watching the body camera footage.
“I have nightmares about it still,” Smith said earlier this month. “It was mentally too hard [to get through the report.]”
‘Justice Is Reform’
After Maccani was killed, news outlets across the country and even overseas covered the shooting. But within weeks, the news coverage died down. The last news story mentioning Maccani was published over a year ago.
“It was just a murder that came and went,” Smith’s cousin-in-law, Carly Illick, told L.A. TACO during a February interview.
“This happens so frequently that we must keep it alive on social media,” Illick said. “Police killing people shouldn’t just be something you see in an article one day, and then the next day there’s no follow-up,” Illeck argued.
Both Illick and Smith take issue with the way that police and some news outlets initially portrayed Maccani as an unhoused drug addict. Smith notes that a toxicology report found that her husband had no drugs or alcohol in his system when he was killed. And he was supported in every way that he possibly could by family when it came to his mental health, Smith added.
“I want people to know that Jason Maccani is the son-in-law of a cop,” Smith said.
She finds it “appalling” that “not a single person from the LAPD has stated they're sorry, showed any remorse,” or attempted to contact her before or after the shooting was ruled to be out of policy.
She and Maccani’s family are hoping that Maccani’s death isn’t in vain.
“I don’t want his death to be for nothing,” Smith said. “And I want there to be some kind of change that comes from this.”
Both Illeck and Smith are concerned that if there aren’t reforms made, police will keep killing people suffering from mental health issues.
Just last week, the L.A. Police Commission ruled that another LAPD officer’s decision to use lethal force against a mentally ill man holding a knife was “in policy.”
An analysis of police shootings since 2018 by the Los Angeles Times found that LAPD officers opened fire at least 56 times on people suffering from mental health issues who were holding “edged weapons,” killing 35 of them and injuring 19 others.
“It’s insanity…it’s never going to end because even if the officer is fired, that’s not justice,” Illeck said. “Justice is reform.”
Smith agrees, “What true justice means to me [is] reform.”
“It’s not just for Jason,” Smith said. “If this can happen to me, this can happen to absolutely anybody’s family.”
More specifically, Smith would like to see the LAPD reevaluate their de-escalation training and receive training “to better deal with people with mental health issues and diverse populations.”
“This is what I do [for] a living,” Smith said, referring to her experience as a de-escalation specialist. During her 20-year career, she’s had to restrain 200-pound men, and de-escalate situations with people armed with knives and scissors. But she’s never injured anyone, she said.
“If we can’t call the police to keep us safe, then who do we call?” Smith wondered.
