Balto. Co. to pay $4M to family of man killed by police
Baltimore County has reached a $4 million settlement with the family of a man shot and killed by police in 2015 at his Bowleys Quarters home after he refused medical treatment for prescription pills he’d taken.
Attorneys argued Jeffrey Gene Evans, 52, was not making threatening moves or advancing toward police when he was shot six times by three Baltimore County Police officers. A federal lawsuit filed in 2018 alleged officers used excessive force against Evans, in violation of his civil rights when they fired a Taser at him and then fatally shot him.
The settlement was reached at the end of October, according to an agreement provided by the county in response to a request from The Baltimore Sun. The federal case had been slated for a five-day trial beginning last Monday.
It marks at least the fourth settlement within the past two years of more than $2 million following fatal shootings by Baltimore County Police. The county also paid $2.5 million to the family of Spencer McCain; $6.5 million to the family of Eric Sopp; and $3 million to the family of Korryn Gaines.
Tomeka Church, an attorney representing Evans’ estate, said the plaintiffs and counsel “have no comment at this time.”
Baltimore County Police declined to comment on the settlement itself but said a number of changes have been made in recent years, including improvements to its use-offorce training, new policy requirements to intervene and report unnecessary force, and an expansion of its mobile crisis team.
County executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. said that “any loss of life is tragic.” While Evans’ shooting took place years prior to his election, he said, his team has “continued to take steps to better provide those in crisis with the help they need,” pointing to the mobile crisis team expansion and a pilot project stationing a clinician in the 911 call center.
“We will continue to do all we can to ensure we are treating those experiencing behavioral health issues in an appropriate, patient-focused manner while also making sure our first responders have the tools and training they need for successful interactions with Baltimore County’s most vulnerable residents,” Olszewski said in a statement,
Last year a federal judge refused to dismiss the Evans lawsuit and wrote the department’s account of the incident was “not consistent” with video footage.
Police initially said Evans advanced on officers with knives from his kitchen drawer. But U.S. District Judge Ellen L. Hollander wrote in her July 2021 memorandum that Evans was “essentially stationary” when he fell to the ground from the shooting.
Rather, Hollander said, police deployed the first Taser with no warning and without risk of immediate danger. That, combined with a subsequent deployment, was a “hasty resort to violence” that she said “undoubtedly escalated the tension in the room.” Only after the first two deployments did Evans retrieve knives from a kitchen drawer, she described, prompting a third deployment Hollander called appropriate.
She wrote that “very little” time elapsed between Taser deployments and officers’ turn to firearms.
“They shot and killed a man who needed ... help,” Hollander wrote.
She noted in the opinion that Evans was “emotionally disturbed” at the time of the incident and may have been “cognitively” impaired due to the painkillers he’d reportedly taken. Evans’ girlfriend initially reported to 911 that he had taken numerous prescription painkillers and was acting suicidal.
Hollander concluded in the July 2021 filing that the officers weren’t entitled to qualified immunity for the first two Taser deployments and their use of lethal force.
The three officers who shot Evans — Officer Michael Spahn, now-Corp. Chad Canup and now-Corp. Michael Pfadenhauer — were not criminally charged by the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office. Each is a current member of the police department, Baltimore County Police confirmed.
Other named plaintiffs included one of two officers who deployed their Taser and the first officer on scene at Evans’ home.
The department did not respond to questions about the outcome of any administrative investigation into the December 2015 killing.
In a statement Baltimore County Police spokeswoman Joy Stewart highlighted use-of-force training that now includes the Integrating Communications, Assessment and Tactics, or ICAT, training designed to defuse situations with people who might be experiencing a mental health or other crisis.
A federal lawsuit filed last month on behalf of the family of Jamaal Taylor, who reportedly stabbed several people at the Hunt Valley Towne Center in 2019 before officers shot him to death, alleged the police department has a pattern of using deadly force against individuals with mental health disabilities or in mental health crisis. It specifically pointed to the killings of Gaines and Sopp, among others.
In Evans’ case, the first officer to arrive in response to the 911 call found Evans lying on his couch. He told her he’d taken dozens of Oxycodone, Tylenol and Vicodin pills, according to court filings, and she said he’d have to go to the hospital. He refused.
A second officer who arrived on scene also asked Evans to go to the hospital for treatment. When Evans emphatically refused, officers used a Taser on him. After the first two discharges, Evans retrieved knives. Officers then fatally shot him.
His family’s suit said he was holding knives while trying to remove Taser probes from his body, not moving toward officers or threatening them, when he was shot.
According to court filings, officers said the first Taser discharge was necessary because he was next to a drawer with knives and could have grabbed them.
The shooting, they said, took place because he moved toward an officer. Hollander’s memorandum notes officers’ statements are contradictory as to which direction they say Evans moved.
Hollander wrote last year a jury could reasonably find officers should have used alternatives to the first and second Taser deployments. One expert quoted in the filing called it “unreasonable” for police to call for Taser operators rather than the mobile crisis team.
Evidence, Hollander added, also could support a jury finding that when Evans was shot, he didn’t threaten the officers or move in a sudden or threatening manner.
She quoted from a West Virginia case she called “pertinent” to Evans’ circumstances: “Non-cooperation with law enforcement has never given officers carte blanche to use deadly force against a suspect,” the ruling said. “Luckily for many of us, neither has being ‘armed’ with a small knife.”