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The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) is the police department of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, United States, which includes the City of Charlotte. With 1,817 officers and 525 civilian staff as of 2020, covering an area of 438 square miles (1,130 km2) with a population of nearly 900,000, it is the largest police department between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, Georgia.
Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones was a seven-year-old African-American girl from Detroit's East Side who was shot in the neck and killed by police officer Joseph Weekley during a raid conducted by the Detroit Police Department's Special Response Team. The Team was targeting a suspect in the apartment a floor above Jones' on May 16, 2010. Her death drew national media attention and led U.S. Representative John Conyers to ask U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for a federal investigation into the incident.
The murder of Renisha McBride, a 19-year-old African American teenager, occurred on November 2, 2013, in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, United States. Renisha McBride crashed her car while intoxicated at a street in Detroit, and then walked to a neighborhood in Dearborn Heights where she knocked on the door of a house. The homeowner, 54 year old Theodore Wafer, shot McBride with a shotgun. Wafer contended that the shooting was accidental and that he thought his home was being broken into after he heard her banging on his door at 4:42 in the morning.
Akai Gurley, a 28-year-old black man, was fatally shot on November 20, 2014, in Brooklyn, New York City, United States, by a New York City Police Department officer. Two police officers, patrolling stairwells in the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA)'s Louis H. Pink Houses in East New York, Brooklyn, entered a pitch-dark, unlit stairwell. Officer Peter Liang, 27, had his firearm drawn. Gurley and his girlfriend entered the seventh-floor stairwell, fourteen steps below them. Liang fired his weapon; the shot ricocheted off a wall and fatally struck Gurley in the chest. A jury convicted Liang of manslaughter, which a court later reduced to criminally negligent homicide.
On April 4, 2015, Walter Scott, a 50-year-old black man, was fatally shot by Michael Slager, a local police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina, United States. Slager had stopped Scott for a non-functioning brake light. Slager was charged with murder after a video surfaced showing him shooting Scott from behind while Scott was fleeing, which contradicted Slager's report of the incident. The radical difference led many to believe that the shooting was racially motivated, generating a widespread controversy.
The shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, two Black American individuals, occurred in East Cleveland, Ohio on November 29, 2012, at the conclusion of a 22-minute police chase which started in downtown Cleveland. Police claimed shots were fired at them as Russell and Williams drove by a squad car; however, this was their vehicle backfiring. Over 60 officers participated in a 23-mile police chase that ended in Russell and Williams' vehicle being surrounded. The victims had no weapon on them and police claimed they fired due to being fired at. Thirteen police officers fired at Russell and Williams 137 times while they were in their car at a parking lot of a middle school, killing both. In May 2014, one of the officers involved, Michael Brelo, was charged with two counts of voluntary manslaughter, and was acquitted by a Cuyahoga County judge of the charges on May 23, 2015.
On July 19, 2015, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Samuel DuBose, an unarmed man, was fatally shot by Ray Tensing, a University of Cincinnati police officer, during an off-campus traffic stop for not having the front license plate on the vehicle.
The killing of William L. Chapman II, a black 18-year-old, occurred on April 22, 2015, in Portsmouth, Virginia, when Chapman was shot and killed in a Wal-Mart parking lot by Portsmouth Police Officer Stephen D. Rankin. Rankin had been responding to a report of suspected shoplifting and engaged in a physical struggle with Chapman, who instigated the altercation while trying to arrest him. The shooting occurred approximately four years after the killing of Kirill Denyakin, who died after being shot by Rankin in 2011.
The shooting of Anthony Hill, a U.S. Air Force veteran, occurred on March 9, 2015, in Chamblee, Georgia, near Atlanta. Hill, fatally shot by police officer Robert Olsen, suffered from mental illness and was naked and unarmed at the time of the incident. The incident was covered in local and national press and sparked the involvement of Black Lives Matter and other advocacy groups who demonstrated their anger at the shooting. In January 2016, a grand jury indicted officer Olsen on two counts of felony murder and one count of aggravated assault. Nearing the fourth anniversary of the homicide, it was decided that Olsen's trial would be rescheduled for September 23, 2019, with delays including three successive judges having recused themselves in the case.
On July 18, 2016, Charles Kinsey, a behavior therapist, was shot in the leg by a police officer in North Miami, Florida. Kinsey had been retrieving his 27-year-old autistic patient, Arnaldo Rios Soto, who had run away from his group home. Police encountered the pair while they were searching for an armed suicidal man. Kinsey was lying on the ground with his hands in the air, and trying to negotiate between officers and his patient, when he was shot. The officer who shot Kinsey said he had been aiming at the patient, who the officer believed was threatening Kinsey with a gun. Both Kinsey and his patient were unarmed.
On September 16, 2016, Terence Crutcher, a 40-year-old black motorist, was shot and killed by police officer Betty Jo Shelby in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was unarmed, standing near his vehicle near the side of the street.
Keith Lamont Scott, a 43-year-old African-American man, was fatally shot on September 20, 2016, in Charlotte, North Carolina, by Brentley Vinson, an African-American city police officer. It sparked both peaceful and violent protests led by Black Lives Matter in Charlotte.
On July 26, 2013, 32-year-old Larry Jackson Jr. was shot dead by Austin Police Department Detective Charles Kleinert in Austin, Texas. Jackson was at the scene of a bank robbery earlier that day in central Austin. When questioned by Kleinert as to why he falsely identified himself to a bank employee, Jackson ran. When Kleinert caught up to Jackson a struggle between Jackson and Detective Charles Kleinert ensued. One gunshot was fired, fatally striking Jackson in the back of the neck.
Robert C. Ervin is a North Carolina Superior Court judge who has presided over numerous high-profile cases. He is the grandson of U.S. Senator Sam J. Ervin, the son of U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Sam J. Ervin III and the brother of state Supreme Court Justice Sam J. Ervin IV.
On October 10, 2012, at the Mexico–United States border near Nogales, Arizona, U.S. Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz fired 16 shots at teenager José Antonio Elena Rodríguez, killing him, on the grounds that young men threw rocks at him and other law enforcement agents.
On the night of September 6, 2018, 26-year-old accountant Botham Jean was murdered in Dallas, Texas by off-duty Dallas Police Department patrol officer Amber Guyger, who entered Jean's apartment and fatally shot him. Guyger, who said that she had entered Jean's apartment believing it was her own and believed Jean to be a burglar, was initially charged with manslaughter. The absence of a murder charge led to protests and accusations of racial bias because Jean—an unarmed black man—was killed in his own home by a white off-duty officer who had apparently disregarded police protocols. On November 30, 2018, Guyger was indicted on a charge of murder. On October 1, 2019, she was found guilty of murder, and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment the following day. The ruling was upheld on appeal in 2021.
The killing of Greg Gunn occurred on the morning of February 25, 2016, in Montgomery, Alabama. Gunn, a 58-year-old African-American man, was shot and killed near his home after fleeing from a stop-and-frisk initiated by Aaron Cody Smith, a white police officer. Smith was charged with murder and indicted by a grand jury in 2016. The case came to trial in late 2019 following a change of venue to Ozark, Alabama. Smith was found guilty of manslaughter, and, in January 2020, was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
References
- ↑ Berlinger, Joshua; Mann, Gigi (August 28, 2015). "Prosecutors won't seek retrial for officer in Charlotte shooting death". CNN. Retrieved September 21, 2016.
- ↑ "SortedByName.com". sortedbyname.com. Retrieved February 3, 2023.
- 1 2 Katz, Jonathan M. (August 22, 2015). "Mistrial for Charlotte Police Officer in Death of Unarmed Black Man". New York Times. Retrieved August 22, 2015.
- 1 2 Cooke, Christina (August 22, 2015). "Mistrial for officer and no justice for unarmed man: family vows to fight on". The Guardian. Retrieved August 22, 2015.
- 1 2 3 "Police officer accused in fatal shooting resigns from force". The Charlotte Observer. The Associated Press. October 8, 2015. Retrieved October 14, 2015.[ dead link ]
- 1 2 3 "Police Officer Accused in Fatal Shooting Resigns From Force". BET. October 8, 2015. Retrieved September 23, 2016.
- ↑ "Mistrial for Police Officer Who Killed Unarmed Black Man in North Carolina". Newsweek. Reuters. August 21, 2015. Retrieved August 22, 2015.
- 1 2 Leland, Elizabeth (August 1, 2015). "The tragic path from a 911 call to a fatal confrontation". Charlotte Observer . Retrieved February 11, 2016.
- ↑ Ford, Dana (January 21, 2014). "No indictment for Charlotte officer who shot Jonathan Ferrell". CNN. Retrieved August 22, 2015.
- ↑ McLaughlin, Eliott (January 27, 2014). "2nd grand jury indicts officer in shooting of ex-FAMU football player". CNN. Retrieved August 22, 2015.
- ↑ Gordon, Michael (May 14, 2015). "Charlotte settles with Jonathan Ferrell's family for $2.25 million in police shooting". The Charlotte Observer . Retrieved August 22, 2015.
- ↑ Post, The Washington (January 19, 2016). Lethal Force: The True Toll of Police Shootings in America. Diversion Books. ISBN 9781682303757.
- ↑ Post, The Washington (January 19, 2016). Lethal Force: The True Toll of Police Shootings in America. Diversion Books. ISBN 9781682303757.
- ↑ "Two arrested during Kerrick trial protests in Charlotte". WTVD. August 21, 2015.
