Cities pull cops off task forces
Local, federal officials clash over tactics, rules
ATLANTA – The police call was routine: A “suspicious person” was lurking at an apartment complex. When officers responded that morning in July 2016, a black man in a white T-shirt pulled a gun on them and fled, they reported. The cops shot at him, missed and hit a purple Nissan nearby.
A few days later, abandoned clothes and papers in a vacant apartment pointed to a suspect: Jamarion Robinson, 26, a former college athlete with a history of psychotic episodes but no felony record. The Atlanta Police Department asked a special fugitive task force – staffed mostly by cops but led by the U.S. marshals – to pick him up.
Armed with submachine guns and flash-bang grenades, task force members broke down the door to a friend’s duplex he was visiting. They shot Robinson 59 times, killing him.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Atlanta cleared the task force of wrongdoing.
The county district attorney said he can’t get answers to his questions: Why didn’t they try to get him to surrender? Did Robinson shoot at the officers? Why didn’t they try to get him to surrender? Was his killing justified?
The Justice Department said it doesn’t have to give the prosecutor most of the information he seeks. The matter is before a federal judge.
Clashes are erupting between local and federal officials over the hundreds of joint task forces that operate around the country, finding fugitives, fighting drug dealers or tracking potential terrorists. At least five cities, including Atlanta, have pulled out of task forces since 2017.
Police said the task forces don’t follow local accountability rules such as wearing body cameras. The task forces have looser rules about when they can legally use deadly force. Local authorities can’t prosecute officers on task forces and citizens who say they have been victimized can’t sue.
“Because of the way that this system has been created, is there a group of law enforcement officials who can essentially do whatever they want?” asked Paul Howard, the district attorney in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta.
The Justice Department “continues to have discussions with task force partners and representatives from local law enforcement organizations about best practices,” a department spokeswoman, Nicole Navas Oxman, said in an email.
On Nov. 1, federal officials started a 90-day pilot program that allows officers to wear body cameras while working on task forces in Detroit, Houston, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Wichita, Kansas. A spokeswoman said the Justice Department will control the footage.
Erika Shields, Atlanta’s police chief, said her department declined to participate in the pilot program because it was unclear whether she could release body-cam footage to the public.
“It’s critical to our transparency efforts,” she said.
‘Follow the bad guys wherever they are’
Here’s how joint task forces work: Washington provides money, expertise and weaponry. Local law enforcement agencies provide much of the manpower. Cops are deputized as federal agents, which means the Justice Department can shield them from litigation and local oversight.
As a practical matter, task forces need one set of rules for all members to follow – and the Constitution gives the feds the right to set those rules, said Paul Fishman, who spent nine years as the U.S. attorney for New Jersey under Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
Many police leaders remain committed to task forces because of benefits such as federal money for overtime, access to high-tech weapons and the authority to chase suspects across state lines.
“We can follow the bad guys wherever they are,” said Tommi Lyter, chief of police in Pensacola, Florida. He allowed the U.S. marshals to deputize a third of his 161-officer force this summer to go after violent suspects.
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force lost its partnership with San Francisco’s police department in 2017 in a clash over rules.
The city required that police abide by state and local rules while working with the task force. The force kept profiling Muslim residents and authorizing investigations without enough evidence, said John Crew, a lawyer who worked for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Two years ago, the city’s police chief did not renew his department’s agreement with the task force, citing the need to ensure public trust.
Around the same time, in Austin, Texas, a detective assigned to an FBI task force shot and killed an unarmed man while investigating a bank robbery.
A grand jury indicted the officer, Charles Kleinert, for manslaughter. His lawyers successfully argued that he was immune from prosecution, citing a U.S. Supreme Court case from 1890.
The Albuquerque Police Department pulled out of a marshals fugitive task force in early 2018 after a chaotic shooting.
The team was trying to arrest Mario Montoya, 31, who had escaped from a halfway house. A firefight erupted. Montoya was found dead in a closet, shot by a police detective on the task force.
Police officials complained that the task force’s tactics and response to a use-of-force investigation clashed with their policies, according to internal emails obtained through a public records request. The dispute highlighted a federal rule that forbids task force officers from speaking to police immediately after a shooting.
‘My son is not resting’
This year, at least three police departments have left federal task forces.
The City Council in Portland, Oregon, voted in February to pull cops from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force over concerns about racial and ethnic profiling.
St. Paul, Minnesota, withdrew from a marshals task force over the feds’ refusal to allow members to wear body cameras.
The no-recordings policy pushed Atlanta to withdraw from three task forces after the shooting in January of Jimmy Atchison, who was accused of robbing an acquaintance. Atlanta police officer Sung Kim, who was part of an FBI-led task force, shot and killed the unarmed Atchison as he hid in a neighbor’s closet. The district attorney has yet to say whether he will prosecute Kim, who took early retirement.
In 2016, Robinson’s mother, Monteria, awoke to find Jamarion, in the midst of a psychotic episode, pouring gasoline on her hallway floor. Authorities issued an arrest warrant for attempted arson.
Two weeks later came the incident at the apartment complex. When an Atlanta police detective on the task force called Monteria Robinson, she told him her son suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and was not taking his medicine. That information was passed on to the task force, which traced him to a friend’s home, a marshals investigative report shows.
When Robinson did not answer the door, the task force rammed it open. An officer in the lead called out that Robinson had a gun, and task force members fired their automatic weapons, according to cellphone video obtained by a private investigator hired by the Robinson family.
Robinson bled to death on the townhouse floor.
Task force members said Robinson fired at them two or three times. The state Bureau of Investigation’s report says there was a stolen pistol, some shell casings and two live cartridges near his body. It’s not clear that the gun was operable or fired, according to the district attorney’s office.
The DA said he wants Congress to force the Justice Department to roll back restrictions on cooperation. The U.S. attorney in Atlanta, Byung Pak, said his office had to follow protocol and wasn’t trying to stonewall the investigation. Robinson’s mother, an insurance adjuster, filed a lawsuit using a civil rights law that says cops can be sued for using “excessive force.” A federal court judge ruled against her, writing, “Officers who are acting as part of a federal task force act under the color of federal law, not state law.”
She is pursuing a claim under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that authorizes civil rights lawsuits against federal agents who’ve conducted unlawful searches or seizures.
“I feel that my son is not resting until I get justice for him,” she said. “They shot him everywhere. They shot up his entire body.”
This article was published in partnership with the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system.