Fort Worth police chief: 'absolutely no excuse' for officer killing black woman
Fort Worth’s police chief reiterated on Tuesday that a white officer’s fatal shooting of a black woman in her home was inexcusable, as an arrest warrant was released quoting the victim’s eightyear-old nephew saying she pointed a gun at a window when they heard suspicious noises outside.
Police bodycam video has shown Dean approaching the door of the home where the 28-year-old Jefferson was caring for her eight-year-old nephew early on Saturday morning. He walked around the side of the house, pushed through a gate into the fencedoff backyard and fired through the glass a split second after shouting at Jefferson to show her hands.
Aaron Dean, 34, was arrested on a murder charge on Monday night and released less than four hours later after posting bond, jail records show.
Meanwhile, the Jefferson family accused the Fort Worth police of underhand tactics and victim blaming by mentioning a gun in the warrant.
The lawyer for Jefferson’s family, Lee Merritt, accused the police department of setting up a defense for Dean, who resigned from the force on Monday and was arrested later in the day, by “villainising” Jefferson, 28.
“Law enforcement in the city of Fort Worth is saying one thing and doing another,” he said. “They’re building the defence within the arrest warrant itself for the officer alleging that Atatiana pointed a weapon out of the window. A window that was covered by blinds, that was covered under the cover of darkness. Officers are trained in order to protect those around them when they see a weapon to say ‘gun’. He never said that.”
Merritt also said that Jefferson was entitled to reach for a gun to protect herself when a group of police officers, responding to a call from a neighbour about an open door, were moving around outside her apartment without announcing or identifying themselves and then shining a light in her window.
“Maybe, when there’s someone prowling around out the back at 2am in the morning, you may need to arm yourself,” he said. “It’s only appropriate that Miss Jefferson would have a weapon in that situation. Nevertheless, the Fort Worth police department is going about the task of providing a defence for this officer.”
The Fort Worth mayor, Betsy Price, also said the gun was irrelevant.
“She was in her own home,” she said.
Without directly addressing the child’s account of the killing early on Saturday, the interim police chief, Ed Kraus, told reporters at a news conference that Jefferson behaved as any Texas homeowner would do if he or she heard a prowler.
Kraus struggled to contain his emotions as he pleaded with the Texas city to not allow the killing to reflect badly on the entire department.
“I don’t have any officers saying this action should not have been taken against this individual, this officer. I’m getting the complete opposite response,” Kraus said.
“The officers are hurting,” Kraus said, apparently close to tears himself. “They try hard every day to try to make this city better … I likened it to a bunch of ants building an anthill and then somebody comes with a hose and washes it away. And they just have to start from scratch.”
Kraus then abruptly ended the press conference.
The video includes images of a gun inside a bedroom, but Kraus has consistently said the mere fact she had a gun should not be considered unusual in Texas.
The arrest warrant released on Tuesday notes that the other officer at the scene told authorities she could only see Jefferson’s face through the window when Dean fired his gun. Dean’s own bodycam video shows that the view through the window was obstructed by the reflection from his flashlight.
The chief said Dean resigned without talking to internal affairs investigators. He said the former officer could face state charges and that he had submitted a case to the FBI to review for possible federal civil rights charges.
Fort Worth is about 30 miles west of Dallas, where another high-profile police shooting occurred last year.
In that case, a white Dallas officer, Amber Guyger, shot and killed her black neighbor Botham Jean inside his own apartment after Guyger said she mistook his place for her own. Guyger, 31, was sentenced this month to 10 years in prison.
Relations with the public have been strained after other recent Fort Worth police shootings. In June, the department released footage of officers killing a man who ignored repeated orders to drop his handgun. He was the fourth person Fort Worth police had fired upon in 10 days.
Of the nine officer-involved shootings so far this year in Fort Worth, five targeted African Americans and six resulted in death, according to department data.
Nearly two-thirds of the department’s 1,100 officers are white, just over 20% are Hispanic, and about 10% are black. The city of nearly 900,000 people is about 40% white, 35% Hispanic and 19% black.