Brian HoweyThis story is part of a two-part exposé that won a George Polk Award for Justice Reporting in 2024.
Luke Smith, 15, high on acid and suffering from severe mental health issues, stabbed his father and uncle before fleeing into the early-morning darkness on Nov. 19, 2016.
As the men were airlifted to a hospital, deputies from the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Office closed in on Luke, who was still armed with a knife. They fired beanbags and sent in a dog, but Luke refused to drop the weapon. An officer opened fire, killing the teen.
That night, when detectives grilled Luke’s father at the hospital, they didn’t mention that police had killed his son. Sedated on painkillers, Ian Smith answered their questions, telling them about the boy’s drug use, poor impulse control and suicidal thinking in hopes the information might mitigate his son’s culpability.
“What’ll they do to him?” he said, according to a recording of the interview.
“I don’t know how much time someone would do for that in juvenile hall,” a detective said. Police records show that he knew Luke had been killed.
It was only when the detectives stepped out of the room, department and medical records show, that Smith learned of his son’s death — from a doctor who had come to check on him.
The omission was not an accident, and it was not unusual. For years, law enforcement agencies across California have been trained to quickly question family members after a police killing in order to collect information that, among other things, is used to protect the involved officers and their department, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism has found.
Read the full story here. Listen to the companion audio piece here.
