Consistency seen in charge against officer

IN charging an Oklahoma City police officer in the shooting death of a local man, Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater again showed that he’s not averse to making tough calls, whether they involve law enforcement or not.

Prater filed a second-degree murder charge Tuesday against Sgt. Keith Sweeney, who shot Dustin Pigeon, 29, early Nov. 15 after Pigeon called 911 threatening suicide.

According to Prater, two officers who responded to the call found Pigeon holding a bottle of lighter fluid and a lighter, and threatening to set himself ablaze. They urged him to drop the lighter, with one officer eventually firing a bean bag shotgun, striking Pigeon in the hip. Sweeney, who arrived on the scene last, yelled a warning and then fired his service pistol five times.

The victim had refused to drop the lighter but was “substantially compliant,” Prater said at a news conference. He said Sweeney, 32, told investigators he fired because he thought Pigeon had a knife and felt his life was in danger. The district attorney determined the officer “crossed the line.”

Prosecutors are often criticized as biased toward the men and women in blue whenever officer-involved shootings result in no charges being filed. Prater has heard that during his 11 years in office. Indeed, the Sweeney case marks the first time he has brought charges against an Oklahoma City police officer involved in a fatal shooting.

Yet Prater has also shown that police don’t have carte blanche.

In 2012, he filed a manslaughter case against a Del City police captain who shot and killed an 18-year-old man. The victim had led police on a chase, scuffled with officers and then fled on foot, before being shot from behind. The officer was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.

The highest-profile example of a willingness to hold police accountable was the 2015 rape case of former Oklahoma City officer Daniel Holtzclaw. Allegations that Holtzclaw had sexually assaulted multiple women while on the job were investigated by his fellow officers, then prosecuted by Prater’s office. Holtzclaw was convicted and sentenced to 263 years in prison — a case that prompted allegations in some circles that Holtzclaw had been railroaded by Prater’s office.

The DA had been challenged before. During his first term, he filed a first-degree murder charge against Oklahoma City pharmacist Jerome Ersland, who shot one of the young men who had tried to rob the place. Prater said Ersland’s actions went far beyond simple self-defense, and the jury concurred, sentencing him to life in prison.

That case generated howls of outrage from the public, but a year later Prater won re-election the easy way — no one ran against him. He was unopposed again in 2014. That’s an indication Prater is doing the job and representing the voters well, as in 2012 when he fired two assistant DAs for withholding a witness statement from defense attorneys in a murder trial.

Of the Sweeney case, Prater said, “I wanted to make this public statement to assure the public that we’re going to do the right thing every time.” His office is to be commended for taking each case as it comes, and applying the law consistently.