Officer shootings of unarmed rarelymean conviction
New law, Clute case raise more questions about why it happens
At first, Reggie Rossow Jr. didn’t realize the “pop” that jarred him from his sleep and nearly rolled him off the bed was a gunshot.
It was the last thing he expected — to be lying in bed, sleeping, and get shot — especially by the officer who lives next door. Off-duty police officer Matthre Gregory McInnis is accused of doing exactly that, allegedly firing his gun by accident through his apartment’s bedroom wall in Clute, 57 miles south of Houston, on Jan. 30. 2016.
McInnis, then a 25-year-old rookie with the city of Freeport, resigned within days and was quietly indicted six months later on a charge of deadly conduct, a misdemeanor punishable by a fine up to $4,000, up to one year in jail, or both. His trial is set for late October.
It’s rare for officers to be indicted in shootings of unarmed civilians in Texas or elsewhere in the U.S. — even on misdemeanor charges. And few recent prosecutions have led to convictions.
Unlike two recent highprofile arrests and indictments of officers on felony murder charges in the Dallas area, McInnis’ arrest was never trumpeted in a news release. Basic information on the case — one of Texas’ 330 officer-involved shootings in the past 22 months — was unearthed mainly because of a historic 2015 state law that requires police departments to report certain information on officer-involved shootings for the first time. It calls for the state attorney general to collect and publish online one-page reports that reveal key details in how Texas officers use deadly force.
It’s the unarmed shootings that tend to most concern experts and spark controversy and debate over reforms. Fifty-six people — one out of every six people shot — were unarmed. Among the unarmed victims, AfricanAmericans are more often shot by officers than those of other racial and ethnic groups. Rossow and 22 others — or 41 percent — were African-American, while 20 were Anglos and 13 were Hispanic or Latino.
Rookie mistake
Even among all those cases, the circumstances of Rossow’s shooting stand out.
Barely awake, Rossow reached around and felt blood and figured he’d somehow been cut. He was still groggy several minutes later when McInnis knocked on the apartment door and asked Rossow’s wife if something had happened. McInnis identified himself as a Freeport police officer and admitted he’d fired his weapon, Rossow said in an interview.
The bullet tunneled through Rossow’s spleen, which had to be removed, leaving Rossow, then 35, susceptible to infection and inundated with $50,000 in medical bills, he said.
Records show McInnis had been a licensed officer only six weeks when the shooting occurred. According to records from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, McInnis completed the College of the Mainland’s Basic Peace Officer Academy in December 2015 and was sworn into the Freeport Police Department days later.
McInnis continued living in the same apartment until he was arrested. Exactly what caused him to allegedly fire his duty weapon at the wall remains a mystery. The Freeport Police Department and Brazoria County District Attorney’s Office have declined comment because of the pending case against McInnis. Clute Police Capt. Diane Turner, who investigated the shooting, said McInnis did undergo a drug and alcohol test, “but neither one was a factor.”
‘Nobody really cares’
The charge against McInnis wasn’t headline news, nor was Rossow’s injury. Rossow’s name never became public, he said, and coworkers assumed he just didn’t shown up to work. He’d been about to start a new job and had let his health insurance lapse. He was injured through no fault of his own but was left with the bills.
Rossow, a hunter, had beenaroundgunshiswhole life and had even started teaching his 10-year-old son to shoot but says the incident left physical and mental scars. He moved to another apartment to escape bad memories and got a new bed “because every time I’d try to sleep in that bed — I just couldn’t sleep,” he said in an interview 18 months later.
“It’s just felt this whole time like nobody really cares,” Rossow said.
The new reports on his and other cases have illuminated for the first time just how often unarmed people get shot by Texas police officers. It’s typically shootings of the unarmed that most concern experts, law enforcement and advocates alike. Factors like mental illness, race, loose dogs, protection of property and gun-handling accidents contributed to fatal and non-fatal shootings statewide highlighted in other stories about the unarmed in this series.
Discussion about other officer-involved shooting cases already has contributed to reforms in Texas.
In October, readers were introduced to Garrett Steven McKinney, a 21-yearold shot and killed in an altercation with a Texas Department of Public Safety officer outside of a regional hospital. McKinney’s family said he was there to seek mental health treatment, causing advocates to push for better training.
During the spring legislative session, lawmakers upped the required 16 hours of mental health training for all Texas peace officers to 40 as part of a law named for Sandra Bland, who died in a Waller County jail cell days in another controversial arrest and in-custody death that had received national attention.
Another story revealed that Texas departments had failed to provide information on a dozen additional fatal shootings. Lawmakers later approved fines for departments that break the law.
“Texas has the opportunity to lead the nation in transparency and accountability in policing,” said the law’s author, Rep. Eric Johnson, D-Dallas. “We made great strides by passing a law last session to require officer-involved shootings and peace officer injuries and deaths to be reported, but need to make sure our data is complete.”
‘Tough to overcome’
Statewide, few shootings of unarmed people since September 2015 have resulted in the prosecution or even punishment of an officer.
The reasons vary. Officers, like other citizens, are permitted to use deadly force in self-defense. Peace officers in Texas also are justified in using deadly force if they believe it is immediately necessary to make or assist in making an arrest or search, or to prevent escape if they reasonably believe their life or someone else’s life is in danger.
“The law, in a lot of these cases, tends to maybe favor the officers — it’s tough to overcome a lot of the defenses,” said former Harris County Assistant District Attorney Julian Ramirez, who oversaw reviews of several dozen officer-involved shootings annually before leaving office in early 2017. “Also, I think most people tend to be sympathetic towards officers and are going to afford their version of events, and their testimony, great weight.”
‘A freaky thing’
Across Texas, different district attorneys handle officer-involved shootings differently, though larger counties use a specialized unit for reviews. In Dallas and Harris counties, all of the cases are then presented to a grand jury, which chooses whether to indict based on any allegations of violations of Texas laws. Travis and Bexar County present only selected cases to grand juries.
Typically, police department conduct their own separate internal affairs investigations to decide whether to impose punishments for violations of policies. Often department leaders wait to make disciplinary decisions until criminal probes are complete — but they don’t have to.
In March 2016, Austin police officer Geoffrey Freeman was fired for violating department rules in the fatal shooting of a naked African-American teenager running toward him.
Two months later, a grand jury declined to indict Freeman in the shooting of David Joseph, who was unarmed. Freeman appealed his termination, and the city settled the dispute in December 2016, paying the officer $35,000 and classifying his termination as a “general discharge,” which allowed Freeman to keep his peace officer’s license.
Art Acevedo’s decision as Austin police chief to fire Freeman before the grand jury probe was complete upset the local union and caused a rift between administration and rank-andfile officers.
Still, Acevedo, who is now Houston police chief, insists that it was the right thing.
“It is a freaky thing to have a naked guy running at you full speed. But freaking out is not what we want officers to do,” he said in an interview. “Well-trained officers respond appropriately with the level of force that’s appropriate to the totality of the circumstances.”
By requiring all agencies to file shooting reports with the attorney general’s office, Texas continues to stand apart from other states in transparency in officerinvolved shootings, though California later adopted a similar law.
Pending cases
No federal agency tracks shootings by officers nationwide. But Philip M. Stinson, a Bowling Green State University associate professor of criminal justice, attempts to track prosecutions of police officers involved in fatal shootings on duty. There have been four so far this year, including one officer in a suburban department in Dallas County. Stinson does not track off-duty incidents, like another in a Dallas area suburb that resulted in another officer being charged with murder.
The victims in both Dallas-area cases were unarmed teenagers driving or riding in vehicles. And both officers were arrested within days.
Roy Oliver is accused of firing a rifle into a car full of teenagers driving away from a party in early May, killing Jordan Edwards, 15. The Balch Springs police officer was fired and arrested on a charge of murder by the Dallas County Sheriff ’s Department. In July, a grand jury indicted Oliver on one count of murder and four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon by a public servant.
Off-duty Farmers Branch police officer Ken Johnson allegedly chased and then shot two teenagers in March 2016, killing one and wounding the other. He, too, was arrested on charges of murder and aggravated assault and fired. Both cases remain pending.
‘This is different’
There was no immediate arrest after Rossow was shot in Clute early last year.
McInnis quickly resigned what had been his dream job as a police officer, his father said.
In photos from his swearing-in as an officer in December 2015 ceremony, McInnis is smiling, flanked by his father, Greg, and mother, Irma Romero McInnis, a former Galveston County Sheriff’s Department officer.
“My son is a wonderful person, and it’s a terrible thing that happened,” Greg McInnis said. “I pray about it every night.”
Six months after McInnis shot through the apartment wall, the former officer was indicted on the misdemeanor charge. He was arrested at the same apartment complex.
The case has been delayed several times, but McInnis’ defense attorney, Charles Adams, said he rejected a plea deal and doesn’t think McInnis is guilty.
“This is different from your typical police shooting,” Adams said.
McInnis did not respond to multiple interview requests. But some time after he was released from jail on a $15,000 bond, he left flowers and an apology note at Rossow’s new apartment door one building over.
Rossow had never previously heard from McInnis or from his former police department. He’s received no compensation from either to help with medical expenses. A lawyer he consulted told him he was unlikely to be able to pursue a claim since the shooting occurred when McInnis was off-duty.
Upon seeing who the gift was from, he threw it in the trash.