The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Advocates: Change standards for police use of deadly force in state
Mubarak Soulemane was a kid who became interested in basketball and started a business selling tie-dyed socks to his friends.
But Mariyann Soulemane began to see her brother change in 2016 when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and admitted she worried about his safety.
“I did have fears that he would be in a dangerous situation,” Mariyann Soulemane said this week in a phone interview from Malaysia.
But what happened on Jan. 17 was beyond even her worse fears.
Police said Mubarak Soulemane wielded a knife at an AT&T store in Norwalk before carjacking someone in the parking lot and leading authorities on a high-speed chase on Interstate 95 that ended in his death.
State trooper Brian North fired seven shots into the stolen car, killing Soulemane, who police said had a knife on his lap.
The 19-year-old, who grew up in Norwalk and graduated Notre Dame Catholic High School in Fairfield, was among three men shot and killed by Connecticut police officers in the first three weeks of 2020.
Edward Gendron, 57, of Waterbury, died Monday after being shot during a confrontation at his home with an officer who was investigating a neighbor’s report of a bullet hole in a wall.
Michael Gregory, 30, of Ansonia, was shot and killed Jan. 2 after police responded to a report of a domestic violence incident at his home.
The deaths have prompted civil rights advocates and Soulemane’s family and supporters to call for changes in state laws regarding the police use of deadly force.
“I believe we have to change the standard by which the use of force is judged,” said David McGuire, executive director of the Connecticut American Civil Liberties Union. “They just look at that moment when the officer pulls the trigger. The totality of the circumstances is important to understand. We have videos from two of the three shootings and they show that if police had disengaged or deescalated, the people they shot would be alive today.”
Despite a law passed last year making the investigations more transparent, State Rep. Steven Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, said the shootings are likely to come up when the legislature convenes for the 2020 session on Feb. 5.
“Given recent events, there likely is going to be another conversation around the justification in the use of force and police transparency,” said Stafstrom, who is the co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
The problem, according to Connecticut ACLU attorney Dan Barrett, is last year’s revision to the state law that governs whether an officer is justified in using deadly force did not address the actual problem.
“The statute as it exists now focuses on the use of deadly force in two ways that are far too narrow,” Barrett said.
According to the two state laws governing the use of a deadly force, a state police major crime squad gathers the evidence and statements before the data is turned over to a state’s attorney for review whether the officer was justified or should be criminally charged in the death.
It's up to the individual police departments to determine if any policies were violated during a deadly use-of-force incident after a determination has been made that it was not a criminal act.
Although the state’s attorney is given a voluminous amount of data, including videos, autopsy report, statements from the officers involved and witnesses and any other forensic evidence, a second law says the only factor used in determining criminality is the few seconds before the death occurs, Barrett said.
The state’s attorney must examine if the officer had a “reasonable” belief in those few seconds that there was an “eminent” risk of serious injury or death at the hands of the suspect, according to the law.
The steps that led to the situation as it turned deadly are not considered as part of the determination of whether an officer was justified in using deadly force, Barrett said.
“They don’t look at the totality of the circumstances,” Barrett said. “It’s based on the reasonable belief of the officer in that moment, but we want an objective assessment of the entire incident.”
The standard explanation is “I was afraid,”’ Barrett said. “But if we looked at all of the circumstances of what happened, the question shouldn’t be, ‘was that reasonable?’ It should be, ‘was it objectively necessary?’”
Attorney Elliot Spector, who is representing Waterbury police officer Ronald Tompkins III in the shooting of Gendron and the two Ansonia officers who were at the scene of Gregory’s death but didn’t fire their guns, also believes the system is flawed — but for different reasons.
Spector, a former Hartford police officer who has been representing officers for decades, contends the months-long investigations by state police and the review by a state’s attorney is not worth the time and money in most cases.
Data from the state Chief State’s Attorney’s Office indicates that only one officer has been charged in 72 deadly use-of-force incidents in Connecticut since 2001. That officer was found not guilty after a trial. A Hamden officer was also charged in a non-fatal shooting last April in New Haven that sparked protests and calls for his termination. His criminal case is pending.
The investigations can last months to years but the finding focuses solely on whether the officer was justified in using deadly force in the moments before the death. If the use of deadly force is determined to be not justified, then the officer could face criminal charges — something so rare, Spector said, that it’s hardly worth requiring an investigation for every incident.
“The cases should be screened by a state’s attorney,” Spector said. “The reality of the situation is that the state shouldn’t be spending money on incidents that are so clearly reasonable. This is all done for appearances. There usually is no basis to believe that there was anything done wrong.”
The lengthy investigations should only be conducted when there are questions about what happened, he said. Spector conceded that the death of Mubarak Soulemane may be one of those instances when an investigation is warranted.
State and West Haven police had the 19-year-old boxed in with their guns trained on his car after a chase that reached speeds of 100 mph. North was standing on the driver’s side with his gun pointed at the teen shouting for him to get out when he fired seven shots into the car, body camera footage of the incident shows.
North then yelled that Soulemane had a knife and video shows the trooper pulling it out of the car.
The driver’s window was rolled up when North fired into the vehicle, the video shows. The outcry from Soulemane’s family and supporters prompted the state’s Division of Criminal Justice to take over the investigation.
Mariyann Soulemane was “just in a state of shock,” when their brother called to tell her that Mubarak had been killed by police, she said.
“The last time he had an episode he was depressed, he was almost suicidal,” she said. “When I heard that he had a knife and he was trying to scare people with it, I was like, ‘that’s not him. No way. No way.’”