OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — Two stepbrothers suspected of trying to steal beer from a grocery store were not armed with guns when they were shot Thursday by a police officer who confronted them in Washington state’s capital city, authorities said.
The officer reported he was being assaulted with a skateboard early Thursday before the shooting that left a 21-year-old man critically injured and a 24-year-old man in stable condition. Both were expected to survive.
The shooting, which is being investigated by a team of detectives from several agencies, prompted protests.
Hundreds of people turned out Thursday evening, rallying first at a park, then marching about a mile to a building that houses the Olympia police headquarters and City Hall. They chanted “Black Lives Matter,” ”No Justice, No Peace” and the names of the young men who were shot.
“We’re not going to say this kind of violence is OK,” one speaker, Rafael Ruiz, 32, told the crowd. “I’m here to defend the victims of the police shooting.”
The stepbrothers are black, and the officer is white, but Olympia Police Chief Ronnie Roberts said, “There’s no indication to me that race was a factor in this case at all.”
Demonstrators held signs that read “Race is a Factor” and “We Are Grieving.”
Olympia police tweeted their thanks to marchers “for keeping the event nonviolent.”
“We are committed to helping our community work through this difficult circumstance and help us understand this tragic event,” the police chief told a news conference Thursday afternoon.
Brad Watkins, chief deputy of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Department, said two skateboards were recovered from the shooting scene and an investigation will likely take three to six weeks.
The two men were identified as Andre Thompson, 24, and Bryson Chaplin, 21, both of Olympia.
“It was terrible,” the young men’s mother, Crystal Chaplin, told KIRO-TV. “It’s heartbreaking to see two of my babies in the hospital over something stupid.”
Officer Ryan Donald was among those who responded around 1 a.m. to a call from a Safeway store, Roberts said. Employees said two men tried to steal beer and then threw the alcohol at workers who confronted the pair.
Officers split up to search for the men. Donald encountered two men with skateboards who fit witnesses’ descriptions, and moments later, he radioed in that shots had been fired, the police chief said.
In radio calls released by police, Donald calls dispatchers once he spots the men, and again to report that he fired shots.
“I believe one of them is hit, both of them are running,” Donald said.
He tells dispatchers that one of the men “assaulted me with his skateboard.”
“I tried to grab his friend,” Donald said. “They’re very aggressive, just so you know.”
He says he has one man, then both, at gunpoint and asks for help.
Seconds later, he shouts, “Shots fired! One down,” and asks for more backup units. He then says the second man has been shot.
The police chief said Donald wasn’t injured but an officer “has the right to defend himself” if a suspect wields an object that could be used as a deadly weapon.
The shooting follows a string of high-profile killings of unarmed black men by police, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, which set off weeks of protests and a national “Black Lives Matter” movement that has gained momentum across the country.
Donald, 35, who is on administrative leave pending the investigation, has been with the department for just over three years. No residents have filed complaints against him, and he was recently recognized by the agency for being proactive on investigations, Roberts said. He worked previously as an Army police officer, the chief said.
Olympia Mayor Stephen H. Buxbaum called for calm in the community.
“It deeply saddens me that we have two young people in the hospital as a result of an altercation with an officer of the law,” he said. “Let’s come together to support their needs, the officer’s needs, the needs of the families and our community’s needs. Let’s not be reactive.”
Merritt Long, a retired chairman of the state’s liquor control board, was one of several residents to attend the news conference Thursday.
“Does the punishment fit the crime?” he asked afterward. “Given the seeming epidemic of this happening not only here but in our country, it makes you pause and wonder what’s going on.”
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It is both illegal and against standard police protocol to shoot someone for running away. There are standards for “reasonable force” in making an arrest …and it seems very, very unlikely that they were met here. If we shot people for trying to get away with shoplifting, the hospitals would run over and we would run out of suburban teenage girls and boys in less than a decade. OK…that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.
What in the hell is law enforcement coming to in this country?
This is the whole question that needs to be addressed…at what point is deadly force really needed? Anything short of a gun versus gun should be the standard. Killing someone who has no gun but just a skateboard, bottle of Snapple or a bag of skittles is not cause for killing. What suprises me is how cowardly law enforcement is these days.
It’s so telling that when Joseph Houseman, a 63-year-old “Open Carry” advocate, just last year prompted multiple calls to 911 when he stood in front of a Kalamazoo Dairy Queen with a loaded rifle and shouted bizarre ranting threats and obscenities at traffic and passersby in broad daylight for more than 40 minutes, the police were able to apprehend him without firing a shot.
When police responded to the scene, they found Houseman wearing what
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQwlfXdDDYAappeared to be pajama pants and carrying a rifle. When they tried to
talk to him, Houseman gave the middle finger to the officers, grabbed
his crotch and shouted about revolution, according to video of the
incident obtained by the Kalamazoo Gazette and placed online at MLive.com.
Is there ANY doubt what would have happened if Houseman had been African American?
Video at noon?
The incident is murky. They were not shot for stealing beer.
They threw the beer they were stealing at store employees who tried to stop them. That means bottles or cans weighing about a pound each. I don’t want to be hit by something like that, thrown by a person with any athletic ability at all. So, that crime is not stealing beer. That crime is stealing beer, and Assault.
If the officer was then assaulted by two men using skateboards as clubs, I can see how he would feel threatened. If he goes down, they take his gun. Maybe they go back for their beer, as well? Not only the officer, but other people in the area could be at risk if these already violent individuals get a gun in their hand.
Perhaps we should simply let people walk out of stores with items in order to avoid confrontations which they might escalate into something that merits use of deadly force.
But I think we should seriously consider the implications of such a policy. I think a lot of us might not be enthusiastic about the results if such behavior became the norm in our local areas.