The call went out over the police radio as a man pointing an 'unknown type handgun at passersby.' The dispatcher asks the man if it is a small gun, and he then says he doesn't know exactly what the man is holding. In the video from Barrera's shooting that the department posted to YouTube on Thursday, a 911 caller tells a dispatcher in Spanish that a man with a gun is pointing it at people along Martin Luther King Jr. The shooting is the latest in which LAPD officers opened fire after misjudging the threat posed by an individual, in part based on inaccurate claims from others - including 911 callers - that the people were brandishing firearms. Jose Barrera, 45, did not have a gun or any other weapon, but was holding a black cellphone and waving it around. Video posted online this week by the Los Angeles Police Department shows two officers approach a man they believed was armed with a gun in South L.A.
