A few days ago I wrote a blog post about how angry I was that Salem police killed a mentally ill homeless man after he failed to comply with a traffic stop when he failed to come to a complete stop upon exiting a parking lot.
A moving violation shouldn't be a death sentence. But as I said in "Killing of mentally ill man shows Salem police are incompetent," the officers involved in killing Richard Meyers did a lot wrong in the early morning of February 7.
In this post I want to use excerpts from a February 17 press release from the Marion County District Attorney to cast more light on how Salem police screwed up in a deadly fashion.
The press release is billed as a "factual summary of evidence" by the grand jury that found the four officers were justified in using deadly force against Meyers -- a conclusion that I heartily disagree with.
Download Marion County DA Report on Meyers Killing
Actually, the press release reads like what it is: a District Attorney putting a positive spin on a highly controversial killing of a man who had a tough life and didn't deserve to have it ended by the four officers.
Below I've shared screenshots of portions of the District Attorney report. Each is followed by how I view the excerpt. Naturally this is my opinion. Others look upon what happened differently.
Keep in mind, though, that grand juries aren't like regular juries. Prosecutors, who typically favor law enforcement, control what information the grand jury gets. There isn't an attorney for the other side, such as the family of Richard Meyers, who can rebut that information or provide a different perspective.
So what you'll read below is the best effort by law enforcement to justify the killing of Meyers. Even so, I believe it shows that Salem police did a lot wrong.
We aren't told why Officer McDowell thought Meyers was trying to avoid him. It just "appeared" to McDowell that this was the case. As we'll see, McDowell believed other things about Meyers that weren't true. McDowell claims that he attempted a traffic stop because Meyers' car failed to stop before leaving the parking lot. There's no dash cam or other evidence provided to support that claim.
"They could see that he was clearly agitated." OK, I can believe that. They didn't know that Meyers, a homeless person, had been living in his car at Northgate Park. So Meyers had driven to his home, the park, after failing to comply with the traffic stop. His sister has said that he might have been afraid that his car would be taken from him. It's understandable that Meyers would be agitated when three police cars with flashing lights on tried to box his car in.
Somehow three police officers in separate cars aren't able to prevent Meyers from leaving the park's parking lot. There's no indication from this first encounter with Meyers that he was eager to engage in violence with the officers.
Later, a court order allowing police to access the dashboard camera in Meyers' car revealed that Meyers spoke (to himself) about being shot by police officers. The report of the grand jury proceedings says that he had previously expressed a desire for "suicide/death by cop" numerous times. Sadly, because of the incompetence of Salem police, he got his wish.
After the officers allow Meyers to drive into the park itself, Officer McDowell now says that he was concerned Meyers would be able to drive across the muddy field, even though his car appeared to be stuck. The report adds "or unable to control the vehicle," but that sure sounds like weasel words added to "stuck" intended to make the decision to try once again to box in Meyers' car a wise choice.
Again, keep in mind that what's said above is based on testimony from Officer McDowell. Apparently there was no dashboard camera running in his police vehicle. And Salem Police don't use body cameras. We know that sometimes police officers lie. We know that police officers can be mistaken in their memories.
But let's give Officer McDowell the benefit of the doubt. He thought he saw Meyers holding a sawed-off shotgun or rifle. He was wrong about this. It was a pellet gun. McDowell also claims that he believed he was about to be shot. He was wrong about this also, since not only didn't Meyers ever fire the pellet gun, it wouldn't have penetrated even one windshield, much less two.
But McDowell panics. He fires three or four shots through the windshield of his police car, even though he couldn't have been sure that Meyers had a lethal weapon or, if he did, that Meyers was going to fire it. McDowell doesn't appear to think clearly.
Meyers wasn't accused of armed robbery. His "crime" was failing to come to a stop when leaving a parking lot. How likely is it that Meyers now is out to shoot a Salem police officer? Extremely unlikely. Yet McDowell fires through his windshield at Meyers, not giving Meyers a chance to comply with a order to "drop the gun!" because McDowell chose to escalate the situation, not deescalate it.
McDowell compounds his mistake by telling the other officers that Meyers pointed a gun at him. McDowell claims that Meyers re-pointed what is now called an "object" at McDowell. We don't know if that really happened, because Meyers is dead and can't speak for himself, and there's no video or testimony from the other officers that this is what actually happened.
Regardless, McDowell persists with escalating the conflict. Meyers hasn't fired the pellet gun. McDowell could have backed off and reassessed the situation. If he had, Meyers might be alive today. Instead, McDowell fires again through the windshield of Meyers car, this time from outside his police vehicle, which he was using for cover.
So at this point we know that neither McDowell nor the other Salem police officers were in any danger from Meyers. They're safe. Yet after McDowell shoots through the windshield of Meyers car, Officer McNichols sees the windshield shatter and apparently thinks that Meyers is firing through his windshield, whereas actually it was McDowell who was doing all the shooting.
That causes McNichols to fire eight shots at Meyers. This is now sounding like something out of the Keystone Cops, except the screwups by Salem police aren't funny, because they led to the death of Richard Meyers.
After firing 22 shots at Meyers, hitting him five times, the Salem police officers aren't done with their misguided cruelty. (Misguided, because they wrongly thought the pellet gun was a deadly weapon, and Meyers never even fired the pellet gun.)
They spend the next three and a half minutes not in summoning an ambulance, nor in giving Richard Meyers medical aid, but in yelling orders at Meyers. Wow, these police officer "geniuses" told the grand jury that "Meyers appeared injured and in pain." Yeah, being shot five times will do that to you.
But they don't give a crap about the homeless mentally ill man they just fired 22 shots at. No, the only human being they care about is themselves, having "safety concerns" that Meyers might still be a threat. It's mind-boggling that four police officers who supposedly are dedicated to protecting and serving the public were so uncaring about protecting and serving the man they just shot five times.
Except, it was a pellet gun, not a sawed-off shotgun. This editorializing by the Marion County District Attorney leaves no doubt that the grand jury report wasn't intended to be a dispassionate neutral description of what happened that night, but rather an attempt to make it appear that the Salem police officers did everything right and nothing wrong when they killed Richard Meyers.
Note the language above. The grand jury didn't decide that deadly force actually was necessary, or that the Salem police officers actually didn't have a reasonable opportunity to use a lesser degree of force or warn Meyers that deadly force was about to be used.
All the grand jury found is that the police officers believed those things. Belief can be a long way from reality. Unfortunately, in this case the false beliefs that Richard Meyers posed a lethal danger to the police officers caused him to lose his life for no good reason.
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