Release the facts about Osceola shooting
It has been more than a week since violence erupted in the parking lot of a Target store in Kissimmee’s tourist district, leaving one young man killed by police and two others injured. And Osceola County residents are still waiting for Sheriff Marcos Lopez to confirm the most basic details about the deadly confrontation. Many of the known details about the April 27 shooting were put together by reporters from the Orlando Sentinel and other media outlets. The OSCO, despite multiple requests, has not even released the initial incident reports, which are typically available the same day. Thursday — a week after the Sentinel’s request — the sheriff ’s office finally responded with a denial.
Thursday’s news conference, featuring attorneys for the men who were fired upon and their families, provided the first hint of narrative. and it was lurid. Attorneys Albert Yonfa and Mark NeJame described deputies acting as if they were confronting “human guinea pigs,” describing a scene in which deputies boxed in a black Audi and then opened fire, without identifying themselves as law enforcement. Is it an accurate reflection of what happened? We don’t know.
The attorneys confirmed the names of the men who were shot at: 20-year-old Jayden Baez, who died, along with Joseph Lowe, 19, and 18-year-old Michael Gómez, who were injured.
Is the attorney’s characterization correct? There’s no way to be sure. But in the absence of official information, such vivid imagery is likely to stick.
Broken promises
We would have expected Lopez to understand that.
When Osceola County voters went to the polls in August 2020, the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer was fresh in many minds. The nation was living through a summer where millions of protesters took to the streets to decry police aggression, and some of those protests turned violent.
It’s easy to believe that voters were thinking about the turmoil gripping the nation as they cast their votes. Lopez certainly had been during his campaign. He posted pictures of Floyd on his Facebook page, and repeated two words many times:
Accountability. Transparency.
He made a compelling case for increased openness, and earned our endorsement in both the primary and general elections.
Lopez, a Democrat, defeated the incumbent sheriff in the August primary, then won the general election in November. And he quickly made good on some of his biggest promises. He ordered hundreds of body cameras, and set up a citizen’s review board to improve community relations.
But his closed-mouth response to this incident leaves far too many unanswered questions. It’s time for some answers.
Residents are waiting for a timeline laying out the sequence of events that began with a case of suspected shoplifting — involving Pokemon cards and pizza — and ended with rapid gunfire and an urgent call for emergency services. They don’t have details of the training exercises the Sheriff ’s Office says deputies were engaged in right before the shooting. There’s been no good explanation of the fact that none of the deputies were wearing body cams.
Residents still don’t know the names of the deputies who opened fire, or whether they had a history of discipline for excessive force. The name of one deputy was found on a booking report at the Osceola County Jail, but there’s no indication of the role he played.
An unworthy shield
It’s particularly disturbing that Lopez is hiding the deputies’ identities behind a 2018 constitutional amendment meant to protect victims of violent crime from further exposure. “Marsy’s law” — named for a college student who was stalked and killed — was never meant to be used this way. It’s currently being challenged by a broad coalition that includes free-speech and government accountability advocates — with the support of two of the state’s most outspoken sheriffs, who understand the damaging impact secrecy can have on public trust.
“Timely, open, and honest disclosure of information, including the names of the officers involved in use of force incidents, conveys a sense of transparency and accountability,” Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood wrote in his friend-of-thecourt brief. And there are those two words again.
Lopez should adopt the wisdom shown by Chitwood and Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. This was a devastating event that could echo through Osceola’s collective psyche for a long time. Providing the facts is the only way to keep speculation from making things worse.