City Officials Brief Community on Weekend’s Fatal Shooting

Following the fatal shooting of former local resident and John Muir High School student Martrell Eric Robinson, 22, in Pasadena early Sunday morning, scores of concerned area residents met with District 3 Councilmember Justin Jones and other City officials at Renaissance Plaza Tuesday to discuss their concerns and hear updates on the case.

“We want to see that justice is served so that we can heal as a community,” said Councilmember Jones.

Interim Police Chief Jason Clawson and Interim Public Health Director Manuel Carmona also spoke.

“Let me be clear,” Jones added, “that any act of violence in our city is one too many. And we have to double our prevention efforts because I do not believe we can police our way out of this issue,” echoing a long time position expressed by both former Pasadena Police Chiefs Phillip Sanchez and John Perez.

“I think we have to use a lot of prevention methods in this city,” Jones said. “And I think we need to allocate the proper resources and City resources towards these prevention methods.” 

Jones told the meeting that he had met with Interim Chief Clawson on Sunday as well as with the victim’s family. 

Clawson was reluctant to discuss any details of the case.

“This is an ongoing incident. There’s nothing we will release into the community yet because we need independent witnesses to come and allow us to investigate,” Clawson told the meeting. “We still have more people to interview. We have technology to look at. We have video that we have to look at, and there could be other incidents that were involved, either predicating this or after this.”

Clawson also would not discuss any ballistic evidence gathered at the scene. 

Lieutenant Keith Gomez, who is in charge of the Pasadena Robbery-Homicide Division and heading up the investigation,  told the group that detectives have a number of leads.

“At this point, as far as the investigation is concerned, we are chasing multiple investigative leads,” Gomez said. “I don’t have any information on the suspects. We don’t have suspects identified, nor do we know what the motive is at this point. I’m sorry. I don’t have any more information other than that, which isn’t a whole lot of information.” 

Gomez said he considers Pasadena investigators “the very best detectives in Southern California. There’s no doubt about it. And they will continue to chase every investigative lead to make sure that the persons responsible for this young man’s death are held accountable.”

Asked if Pasadena Police were familiar with the victim, Lt. Gomez said, “We have information on him, yes.” 

Gomez added that the police are not ruling out a gang connection to the shooting. 

“Everything is on the table in terms of motive,” he said.

Gomez also explained that although ShotSpotter equipment was active in the area and picked up the shots fired, police received no notification, as Pasadena Now reported earlier.

Gomez explained that ShotSpotter combines Artificial Intelligence technology with “human effort” and some sounds can be misidentified. 

“It’s a computerized technology that basically picks up sounds in the community on an algorithm,” he said. “AI, or artificial intelligence, will alert a user at a terminal at ShotSpotter headquarters, who will then make an assessment. So it touches on artificial intelligence, and then it touches the human perspective. 

“At that point,” Gomez continued, “a technician will then send the information to the Pasadena Police Department and say, ‘Hey, there was gunfire or suspected gunfire in this incident.’”

“It doesn’t pick up suppressed fire. If somebody has a silencer on their gun, it doesn’t pick up if shootings were within cars or inside a residence.” 

ShotSpotter has incorrectly reported fireworks incidents as gunfire, he said.

Violence Intervention specialist Ricky Pickens also addressed the group. Pickens said his specialties are violence interruption, retaliation reduction and rumor control. 

“We do not work in parallel with the police,” he emphasized. “We are contracted by the Pasadena Public Health Department.”

Pickens also noted that he knew the shooting victim personally. 

According to Pickens, much of his work occurs long before violence occurs and his program has seen results. Pickens said there has been a reduction in retaliatory violence and that he has brokered a number of current peace agreements.

Public Health Director Carmona concurred, saying, “Trauma like this affects everyone, but we believe in the Pickens model.”

Carmona also pointed out that Pickens’ work is funded by a grant through the State’s California Violence Intervention Program (CALVIP), which also funds a Pasadena Violence Intervention program.

The discussion then veered to the lack of local funding for specific mental health and crisis counseling programs in Pasadena. Several residents pressed both Carmona and Councilmember Jones to direct the City Council to pass funding for a 24-hour mental health and crisis counseling center.

“This is something that I promise to look into,” said Jones, who was recently appointed to fill the seat of the late Councilmember John Kennedy, who passed away last summer. “I will discuss this with the city manager and with the council.”

Anyone with information about the shooting case is encouraged to call Pasadena Police at (626) 744-4241,  or may report information anonymously by calling “Crime Stoppers” at (800) 222-TIPS (8477), using the “P3 Tips” mobile app on Google Play or the Apple App Store,  or visiting http://lacrimestoppers.org.