Officer who killed a man initially said he saw no weapon
ASSOCIATED PRESS
San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis points to a video showing San Diego police Officer Neal Browder applying first aid to a man he fatally shot during a news conference in San Diego. Browder shot Fridoon Rawshan Nehad, an unarmed man with a history of mental illness, on April 30 in an alley of the commercial Midway District. The video image was altered by authorities.
SAN DIEGO >> A San Diego police officer who shot and killed a man within seconds of exiting his car initially told investigators that he didn’t see a weapon but said days later that he recalled thinking the man might be carrying a knife, according to a report released Wednesday.
Officer Neal Browder answered “no” when asked the day of the April 30 shooting if he saw a weapon, at which time his attorney said his client wouldn’t elaborate. Five days later, police let Browder and his attorney watch a business’ surveillance video for about 20 minutes before another interview.
Browder, who was responding to a 911 call of a knife-wielding suspect, said in the second interview that he saw Fridoon Nehad, 42, carrying what looked like a metal object as the suspect walked down a dark alley toward the police car.
It turned out Nehad was wielding a pen.
“The first thing in my mind is, ‘He’s armed with a knife.’ I mean that’s, that’s the first thought that was coming through my mind after. ‘He’s still armed with a knife.’ And then the next thing is, like, why isn’t he stopping?” Browder told investigators.
San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis on Tuesday released the surveillance footage, which showed Browder firing a single shot to Nehad’s chest about four seconds after exiting his car.
Attorneys for the Nehad family, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city and the officer, released additional evidence Wednesday, including the officer’s initial account and an interview transcript.
“It tells me the investigation was totally inappropriate, improper, inadequate,” said Skip Miller, a family attorney.
Attorneys for Browder didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Authorities have said Nehad was a transient, but his attorney said he was living at his family home at the time of the incident.
The district attorney explained her decision not to prosecute the 27-year department veteran in a letter last month to the police chief. She wrote that it was widely recognized that allowing officers to view video before being interviewed produces more detailed, reliable statements.
The family attorney also said Wednesday said evidence in the crime scene report shows the officer was about 25 feet from Nehad when he fired, not about 17 feet, as the district attorney concluded.
Last week, a federal judge cleared the way for release of the video and other evidence on a request by The San Diego Union-Tribune, Voice of San Diego, KGTV-TV, KPBS and inewsource.
Nehad, an Afghan immigrant, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to his family’s lawsuit.
6 responses to “Officer who killed a man initially said he saw no weapon”
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Police are killing too many people. For an interesting study of police killings, see the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s recent study of the 184 fatal police shootings in Georgia since 2010 (that’s one killing every 12 days!). Half of the victims were unarmed or shot in the back. Only one officer was indicted, but prosecutors dropped the charges after the indictment came down. See: http://investigations.myajc.com/overtheline/by-the-numbers/
San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis is suffering from a severe case of “Foot in mouth disease” as she willfully failed to mention the officer said he never saw a weapon.
In many cases the 911 caller gives the wrong information or the 911 dispatcher fails to give all the information to the responding officer who can’t be sure what they will find on arrival.
From January 1 to December 15, 2015, 1,152 people died from interaction with police. Ref: http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/2015/
Numbers are way too high.
Give me the statistics on how many high risk encounters are handled by Police in one year and compare that to the # of shootings and “then” we can decide if the number of shootings is too high. Don’t be like these reporters and “shoot from the hip” without facts.
There are no dependable, national statistics on police shootings. There is neither a database nor a requirement that local departments reports killings by their officers. This is not an oversight. It’s a de facto conspiracy by police departments to conceal the extent of the problem.
Washington Post: “But how many people in the United States were shot, or killed, by law enforcement officers during that year? No one knows. Officials with the Justice Department keep no comprehensive database or record of police shootings, instead allowing the nation’s more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies to self-report officer-involved shootings as part of the FBI’s annual data on “justifiable homicides” by law enforcement. That number – which only includes self-reported information from about 750 law enforcement agencies – hovers around 400 “justifiable homicides” by police officers each year. The DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics also tracks “arrest-related deaths.” But the department stopped releasing those numbers after 2009, because, like the FBI data, they were widely regarded as unreliable.”
As we have seen throughout history, anytime information is not properly vetted, audited, reviewed, it is not credible. And as we have seen from the Chicago incident, the police department has a history of willfully failing to discipline rogue officers. Letting it all go by, nothing done. Now they are paying big time for their utter incompetence.
All Law Enforcement agencies in the USA, city, state & federal must be required to report all deaths, injuries, etc, to the FBI. This would ensure standards are set and met. Agencies not meeting standards would fall under government oversight until they clean up their mess.
Public trust in our Law Enforcement agencies must be upheld.