BRIDGETON, N.J. (AP) — A grand jury has voted not to file charges against two police officers for fatally shooting a man who defied orders by stepping out of a car with his hands raised during a traffic stop, a killing captured by their patrol car’s dashboard camera, prosecutors said Thursday.
The officers told investigators that they feared for their lives during the December 2014 stop of 36-year-old Jerame Reid, according to a statement from the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office. The officers had arrested Reid in August 2014 on charges of resisting arrest and knew that he had been convicted as a teenager of shooting at state troopers, investigators said.
Screaming repeatedly “Don’t you (expletive) move!” and “Show me your hands!” at Reid, who was sitting in the passenger seat, Officer Braheme Days reached into the car and removed a handgun.
The video shows Reid getting out of the car with his hands up, but Days — who was holding both his service weapon and the recovered gun — told investigators that he believed Reid “had a weapon or was planning to take the handgun(s) out of his hands.”
The statement said Days “perceived that he and his partner were in imminent danger” and that his partner, Officer Roger Worley, “likewise believed that his partner was in imminent danger.”
Prosecutors say Days fired seven shots and Worley fired once. The shooting lasted approximately 2 seconds and Reid was hit in the chest and left arm, according to prosecutors. Days is black, Worley is white and Reid was black.
The statement from First Assistant Prosecutor Harold Shapiro said the grand jury was instructed on potential criminal charges against the officers and the state’s rules for justified force. On Wednesday, the jurors declined to indict the officers.
Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McCrae recused herself because she knew Days.
The shooting in Bridgeton, where two-thirds of the residents are black or Hispanic, stirred protests and opened up a rift between the police department and residents in the struggling city of 25,000 people about 35 miles south of Philadelphia.
Reid’s widow, Lawanda, filed a $1 million federal civil rights lawsuit accusing the city of condoning excessive force by its officers. She also reached a tentative settlement against the county for $340,000 for abuse Jerame Reid had earlier said he suffered in jail.
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i was afraid for my life.
from police training manual: first words out of your mouth after shooting un-armed suspects.
get out of jail free card. say it early and often.
Wondering if grand juries need to be removed from the process when police officers are involved. Seems to me there is no trained rebuttal to the prosecutor’s arguments and presentations. Instead we rely on the grand jury members to be quasi-lawyers…
7 fucking shots at a guy with his hands in the air! I know I’m not a gun guy, and don’t even play one on TV, but god damn that just seems ridiculous to unload a gun on someone that’s got his hands in the air…and you got an armed partner with you. That’s just total fucking bullshit.
There needs to be more than uttering “I felt my life was threatened” to allow a cop to kill someone that is in a non-threatening position. Death is not an acceptable punishment for disobeying a cop’s order to not move, especially if his hands are in the air and he is apparently not advancing on the cop.
This is not acceptable. It is just not.
Serial killers could have it pretty easy if they just discovered this one little trick. Become a cop and blow the shit out of anybody you want! Then just claim “my life was in danger” and walk away. Works every time. Bonus points if your victims are minorities - then you get Sunday talk show pundits and a sizable percentage of the ordinary population lining up to defend you. Extra bonus - turn it all into a cash cow with a “B-b-b-but I’m the real victim!” GoFundeMe page!
God bless legalized murder, and God bless America!