LOS ANGELES – Friends and neighbors of Kevin Wicks didn't accept the official explanation of why police fatally shot him when they were called to his apartment building. Now they say the officer who pulled the trigger shouldn't even have been there – just two months after being involved in another fatal shooting.

Officer Brian Ragan, a five-year veteran of the Inglewood Police Department, was placed on leave for the second time in 10 weeks after he fatally shot Wicks, 38, early Monday. Residents said Wicks was a gentle man who never had a problem with police, and they called for a federal probe into the death.

While it's not uncommon for an officer to return to the streets after a shooting, it's rare to be involved in a similar incident so soon.

“It is unusual,” said Randolph McLaughlin, a civil rights lawyer and professor at the Pace University law school in New York. “I've never heard of (that).”

Ragan was still under investigation for a May 11 shooting, in which he and his partner fired multiple rounds at Michael Byoune, 19, as he was riding in a car. The Inglewood Police Department said at the time the officers believed the car was being driven at them and gunshots were coming from within. Byoune died and the driver was hit in the leg. The car's occupants were unarmed.

Officials said at the time that the officers apparently did not verbally identify themselves before opening fire.

In that incident, Byoune and his companions were fleeing the same gunfire that had drawn Ragan and his partner to the scene, said Byoune's cousin, John Benoit, 29, of Inglewood.

“They put him back on duty after he did that?” Benoit said Tuesday. “It's crazy.”

In Monday's shooting, officers, responding to a report of a family disturbance, said Wicks pointed a gun at them as he answered their door knock.

Friends described Wicks, a 19-year employee of the U.S. Postal Service, as a kind and gentle “teddy bear.” A family member claimed in a television news interview that officers had gone to the wrong door, something police categorically deny.

Other police agencies said officers frequently return to duty soon after a use-of-force investigation had been initiated. Los Angeles Police Department spokeswoman Officer Ana Aguirre said officers typically are taken off the street for between two weeks and a month, even though investigations often are not completed for at least a year.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said each case is different, but deputies are often removed from the field for five days following an incident in which they use a firearm.

New York Police Department spokesman Detective Brian Sessa said officers could be returned to the street while an investigation is ongoing, though the exact timing depends on the situation.

Ralph Stein, a former police officer and a law professor at Pace University, said it's generally understandable why police departments would want to return officers to duty.

“If the facts of the shooting tend to indicate on its face that it was justifiable, I don't find it unusual at all,” said Stein. “Most of the time, they are making split-second decisions where second-guessing is easy. They've got to decide right on the spot.”

Still, several residents of Inglewood, a working-class city of about 110,000 in southwest Los Angeles County, called for an independent investigation into the department, which has been at the center of a string of high-profile incidents in recent years, including a videotaped encounter in which an officer was seen punching a handcuffed, 16-year-old suspect and slamming him into a car.

Others called Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks' leadership into question.

“I just don't feel she is doing a good job,” Stephanie Reed, 37, said of Seabrooks. “If she is not doing what she's got to do, she's got to step down.”

Seabrooks was out of town for a week and could not be reached for comment. Calls to the Inglewood Police Department and Mayor Roosevelt Dorn's office were not immediately returned.

Ragan had been returned to duty in part because he had been cleared by a psychologist, said Capt. Eve Irvine, commanding officer of the department's detective bureau.

Merrick Bobb, executive director of the Police Assessment Resource Center, a nonprofit police oversight organization, said Monday's shooting is part of a wider pattern of questionable shootings at the Inglewood Police Department.

“The number of incidents and the questionable nature of those incidents leads me to believe the time may be right for an outside independent investigation,” Bobb said.