Officerwho shot Blackman has history of complaints
The Columbus COLUMBUS — police officerwho fatally shot an unarmed Black man on the city’s Northwest Side Tuesdayhas ahistoryofcomplaints and issues with excessive force.
Adam Coy, 44, has been a police officer in Columbus since July 2001. Police said he has been relieved of duty pending the outcome of investigations.
Early Tuesday morning, Coy shot and killed 47-yearold Andre Maurice Hill at a home on the 1000 block of Oberlin Drivewhere hewas visiting, police said.
Hill was shot by Coy after officers responded to a non-emergency disturbance complaint from a neighbor at 1:37 a.m. Tuesday about a person sitting in a SUV and turning its engine on and off repeatedly, police said.
According to previous reporting by The Dispatch, Coy had nine complaints filed against him in 2003, four of those coming in a one-month period. Coy received written counseling, The Dispatch reported at the time.
In 2012, the city paid a $45,000 settlement to a manwhomCoyhadstopped for drunken driving one morning at 3 a.m.
According to reports from TheDispatch, a cruiser camera showed Coy “banging the driver’s head into the hood four times during the arrest.” His actions were deemed “excessive for the situation.”
Coy was suspended for 160 hours for that incident.
The D i s p a t c h h a s requested a copy of Coy’s latest personnel file from the Division of Police.
Coy could not be reached for comment Wednesday. His two-story home in Union County is decorated for Christmas but now has a store-bought “No Trespassing” sign taped to the front door.
Mayor AndrewJ. Ginther said at a press conference Tuesday that neither Coy nor another officer who responded but did not fire a weapon turned on their body cameras until after the shooting had occurred.
The body cameras have a 60-second “look-back” feature that captures video, but not audio. This look-back recorded the shooting, indicating the officers turned the cameras on within 60 seconds after the shooting took place.
Ginther and Columbus police Chief Thomas Quinlan are furious because division policy for the body cameras, which were a $5 million investment by the city, requires officers to have the cameras on “when dispatched or upon a self-initiated response to a Priority 1 or 2 call for service.”
The disturbance complaint on Tuesday morning was made through the division’s non-emergency phone line. Disturbances are typically dispatched as “priority three” or get to them as soon as you can get to them calls, whichwas the case with the Tuesday morning call.
Nonemergency call
Division policy says that all sworn personnel are required to render “appropriate aid and/or summon emergency medical services … as soon as it is reasonable and safe to do so.”
The body camera footage was released Wednesday afternoon, after Hill’s family viewed it privately.
John DiLoretto, whose bedroom overlooks the Oberlin Drive home in the Cranbrook neighborhood where Hill was fatally shot, said he was awakened to the sounds of an angry exchange of words outside across the street.
He said he looked outside and could see people, but couldn’t make outwho. He decided to head outside to see what was going on.
“As I’m going down the stairs, I heard the gunshots — bam, bam, bam,” he said. DiLoretto said two or three shots were fired.
Hewent back upstairs and looked out. At that point, he said, police were trying to resuscitate a man lying on his back, parallel to the entrance of the open garage door.
A nearby neighbor, who did not want to be named, told The Dispatch the home on Oberlin Drive where the shooting occurred is owned by BillWadley, former Ohio StateUniversitymen’s swimming coach, whose adult niece lives with him.
The neighbor saidWadley told her that his niece had expected an acquaintance of hers to drop off money early Tuesday for her to buy Christmas presents for her kids. She didn’t know anything more about who the manwas or his relationship to the niece.
‘Devastated’
Amemorialcomprisedof a rowof lighted candles lined the sidewalk besideWadley’s home. No one answered the front door for a Dispatch reporter. .
“You feel devastated that a person has died in your neighborhood, the way he did,” the neighbor woman said. “We need to remember that this was a human being that’s dead.”
DiLoretto, who is a former television personality for WSYX, (Chanel6), has rented his home since March. He said the neighborhood has been quiet and safe even as homicides in the city have soared.
“Humanbeingsdonot surpriseme anymore,” he said of the spate of gun violence this year. “Stuff happens all the time.”
Ginther said Tuesday that heaskedPoliceChiefThomas Quinlan to relieve Coy of duty, the division’s term for a suspension, as a result of the hearing. Quinlan later issued an update to the statement indicating Coy was made to turn in his badge and his firearm and he will have no police powers pending the outcome of the investigation, which is being conducted by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation in accordance with city policy enacted this summer.
Lack of body cameras
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, whose BCI agents are investigating the shooting, said in a statement Wednesday that “BCI will conduct a complete, independent and expert investigation — a search for the truth ... Only the truth – the whole truth and nothing else – will result in justice.”
Yost said “every use of deadly force is serious, and the loss of life is an occasion for grief.”
Community leaders and activists expressed angerand frustration over the shooting of the unarmed Black man.
“We were outraged,” said NanaWatson, the local NAACP chapter president. “It’s another sad day in the community.”
“Whydowehave thebody cameras if they aren’t going to be turned on?” Watson asked. “It begs the question, when you don’t have the body camera on and something like this happens, what’s the punishment for not having it turned on?”
Policies surrounding the use of police body cameras need to be closely examined, Watson said.
“We need an explanation as towhy this occurred,” she said. “Lawenforcementofficers are going to have to be held accountable for their actions.”
Stephanie Hightower, the president and CEO of Columbus’ Urban League, said Tuesday is “an inflection moment in a terrible history that never seems to end.”
“Together, we have to ask ourselves: Howmany? How many more black people have to die at the hands of those we trust to protect us?” she said.