New details in fatal Feb. 4 San Antonio police shooting
SAN ANTONIO — When undercover detectives asked uniformed officers to arrest Antronie Scott, 36, setting off the chain of events that ended when an officer shot Scott dead on Feb. 4, they didn’t know he was unarmed, but they apparently knew of his criminal history.
Two officers were dispatched and were told it was a felony stop, according to a San Antonio Police Department report released Wednesday.
Officers are trained to stay behind the open doors of their cruiser in such situations, parked 15 to 20 feet away from the vehicle they’re approaching, said police procedures expert Chuck Drago , a former police chief in Florida.
“An officer doesn’t have to wait for a gun to be pointed at him or for the gun to be fired, as long as the officer reasonably believes (a suspect is) pulling a gun,” Drago said.
But the risk of having to make such a decision is increased when an officer walks up to a suspect and “puts himself in no-man’s land,” he said.
Officer John Lee emerged from his marked patrol unit and was walking toward Scott’s car, weapon drawn, when he ordered him to “show me your hands” and Scott swung his car door open and spun to his left, the police incident report states.
Lee saw something in Scott’s right hand, thought it was a weapon and fired, hitting Scott in the chest, the report said. Scott was holding a cellphone, not a weapon, and died in the parking lot of his North Side apartment complex despite Lee’s attempts to revive him.
Scott’s wife was in the car, police said.
“If the officer turns out to be wrong, typically the courts are lenient on that because the U.S. Supreme Court has said that officers have to make split-second decisions,” though he said he has noticed recently that officers in such situations have started to be prosecuted more often.
The incident report does not describe what actions the other officer, identified as B. Bilica, took during the attempted arrest. Lee was placed on paid administrative leave. Bilica was not, an SAPD spokesman said.
Thomas J. Henry, the lawyer representing Scott’s family, said he plans to sue the city as early as Thursday.
“Of course, it will be a constitutional claim, (listing) violations of his civil rights,” Henry said. “I think the use of force is extremely suspect. … The claim that the officer made of him being in fear of his life is not based on the reality of (Scott) having any weapons on him.”
Scott had been to jail or prison for at least four drug convictions, though little in the way of violence appears in his court record.
After police found he had stuffed a bag of crack cocaine in an SAPD patrol car’s back seat in 2009, he offered $5,000 in an unsuccessful attempt to bribe his way out of an arrest.
Last year, when he was picked up in an SAPD sting — accused of selling an undercover officer crack cocaine — a gun was recovered from the car he was in.
Released on bond, Scott skipped his court dates, so warrants were issued for his arrest, records show.
“If (the officer) believes that person is pulling a gun out of his pocket, it really doesn’t matter what the criminal history is,” Drago said. “The courts have found the officer has to reasonably believe that there’s a threat.”
Ben Lively, who trained officers and cadets at the SAPD academy for 28 years, also said officers don’t have to wait to get shot at but must be in fear of imminent serious bodily injury or death in order to react with lethal force.
In a case such as Scott’s, the events can unfold quickly, he said.
“You don’t have much time,” said Lively, who retired in 1992. “A lot can happen in, ‘One, Mississippi.’ ”