Posted on 06/16/2009 11:17:30 AM PDT by Born Conservative
The four police officers who went to Brenda Williams' apartment the evening of May 28 were ready to wrap up, awaiting only the completion of a citation charging the North Scranton woman with disorderly conduct before calling it a night.
Then Ms. Williams emerged from her kitchen holding a knife with a wooden handle and an 8-inch blade, and suddenly everything changed.
Within seconds, as the 52-year-old woman ignored commands to drop the weapon as she moved toward one of the officers, three of them fired, fatally wounding Ms. Williams in what Lackawanna County District Attorney Andy Jarbola ruled Monday was a justifiable response to the threat she presented.
"In light of the facts that were presented to me by the state police, it is my opinion the officers involved - their actions - were justified and that no criminal charges will filed be against them," Mr. Jarbola said at a news conference at which he released the findings of the investigation.
If the long-awaited disclosure took some of the mystery out of what happened inside Ms. Williams' second-floor apartment at 1501 N. Lincoln Ave., it is not likely to end the questions about how the Police Department handled what started out as a harassment call involving a mentally ill woman.
Attorney William Mikita Jr., who represented the Williams family, said he disagrees with Mr. Jarbola's conclusion that the shooting was justified.
"We've got one officer making the determination that she's not a threat to herself and minutes later, she's dead," Mr. Mikita said. "How does something like that happen? Did they lose control of the scene?"
Referring occasionally to a diagram of Ms. Williams' apartment and photos from the scene posted on a wall at his Spruce Street office, Mr. Jarbola spent nearly an hour outlining the circumstances that led to the shooting and how he reached his determination.
For the first time, the four officers who were at Ms. Williams' apartment - and who have been on administrative duty since the incident - were identified.
Cpl. Robert Stanek, who was the supervisor at the scene, is a 16-year police veteran, Mr. Jarbola said. Officer James Smith, who had had previous contact with Ms. Williams, has been with the department for 11 years. The other two, Officers Jason Knoch and Eric Jordan, have been on the force for just over a year.
The district attorney also revealed Ms. Williams was shot five times, including two lethal wounds to her abdomen and another potentially fatal wound that severed the femoral artery in her right leg. She had a sixth wound from falling on the knife.
According to Mr. Jarbola, Officers Smith and Jordan were the first to respond, going to Ms. Williams' apartment shortly after 10 p.m. after a neighbor complained Ms. Williams had been harassing her and her fiance.
Officer Smith had responded to a similar call two days earlier, on May 26, when he learned Ms. Williams had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic who had possibly stopped taking her prescribed medication, Mr. Jarbola said.
When a nude Ms. Williams retreated back into her apartment after answering the door, the officers entered and found the woman underneath the covers in her bedroom. She appeared agitated and annoyed, yelling and cursing at the officers.
Around 10:40 p.m., Officer Smith contacted the Communications Center and requested an ambulance for a possible involuntary commitment of Ms. Williams under Section 302 of the state's mental health law. The law permits the involuntary commitment of individuals who are deemed a threat to themselves or others.
Around the same time, Officer Smith requested Cpl. Stanek be notified of the situation. Emergency medical technicians arrived at 10:45 p.m., and Cpl. Stanek and Officer Knoch came about 15 minutes later, around 11, Mr. Jarbola said.
At that time, the EMTs told state police, Ms. Williams "was pacing around the apartment nude, She was agitated, screaming and cursing at everyone," he said.
After a discussion with the other officers in the apartment's living room, and with no evidence Ms. Williams posed a danger to herself or others, Cpl. Stanek made the decision there would be no 302 commitment and instructed Officer Knoch to write up a citation for disorderly conduct instead. The EMTs were also released.
"They were basically waiting for the citation to be written, and they were going to leave," Mr. Jarbola said.
That's when Ms. Williams emerged from her bedroom and went to her kitchen at the other end of the apartment, he said. The officers heard her rummaging through the kitchen, and one suggested she may be getting a knife.
Mr. Jarbola said Ms. Williams, who was 5 feet, 7 inches tall and weighed about 194 pounds, then returned from the kitchen through the dining room, holding a knife in front of her as she walked into the living room. The officers drew their weapons and ordered her to drop the knife, but she refused and headed directly toward Officer Smith, who moved backward through her bedroom door.
She was 2 to 5 feet from Officer Smith when the officers fired - Officer Smith from just inside the bedroom, and Officer Knoch and Sgt. Stanek from another doorway to her right, Mr. Jarbola said.
It is still unclear who fired first, but Officers Smith and Knoch each fired twice and Cpl. Stanek once, he said. Officer Jordan, who could not see Ms. Williams from where he was standing, did not discharge his weapon.
The time that elapsed between Ms. Williams going to the kitchen and the officers opening fire was less than 30 seconds and probably "more like 10 to 15 seconds," Mr. Jarbola said.
The district attorney said law enforcement officials are allowed to use deadly force under Pennsylvania law "when there is an imminent threat of death of serious bodily injury to themselves or others" - a condition he said was met when Ms. Williams advanced on Officer Smith with the knife.
Mr. Jarbola said he could not speak to the issue of whether the officers were complacent in allowing Ms. Williams to go to her kitchen unsupervised.
"She's not under arrest. It's in her own home," he said. "The officers - I don't know - they could have assumed she was going to the bathroom."
Police Chief David Elliott, who received a copy of the state police report late Monday afternoon, called the four officers "good cops" who have never had any type of disciplinary issues in the time he has been chief.
With the completion of the state police investigation and Mr. Jarbola's review, the department will now conduct its own internal review "to make sure we followed the correct procedures and whether there is anything we could have done differently," he said.
In the meantime, three of the four officers have seen psychologists and have been cleared to return to duty, he said. The fourth had an appointment Monday.
"These officers just took someone's life. Mentally, it can take a toll on you," he said.
Mr. Mikita, the attorney who represents Ms. Williams' family, did not rule out the possibility that the family will file a civil suit, but he said they will need to review all the evidence before making that decision.
Um no, crazy does not imply innocence. Crazy people commit crimes all the time. Sometimes they know what they are doing is wrong, sometimes they can’t, but regardless of their ability to distinguish right from wrong their ability be an imminent threat is undiminished.
And for that matter guilt or innocence has nothing to do with causing an imminent threat or self defense.
Cops aren’t supposed to be deciding innocence or guilt in the first place, much less shooting or not shooting people based on their assessment of same.
That is a straw man argument.
Every time you post, you make me think less of the police.
Cops aren't supposes to be deciding innocence or guilt? How comforting. NOT. I would say that you must mean that they aren't supposed to be handing out the final sentence, but then you say:
much less shooting or not shooting people based on their assessment of same.
Sentences don't get more final than that.
When it becomes common practice for the police to shoot innocent people because a certain formula allowed it, then we need to get rid of the police. Hell, anyone can go around shooting innocent people, why do we need to pay people to do it?
As police are citizens like everyone else, I think its always prudent to ask what the reaction to an incident would be if it were carried out by a non-badged citizen. The merit of an action should not be judged by who did it, but rather what they did. Let's look at a few recent incidents in that light:
1. Four physically fit men confront a woman who's been acting crazy. She's found naked, pumped full of bullets from three of the four. They say that she surprised them by acting irrationally, approaching them with a knife.
2. A man has a brief inconsequential issue of right of way with an ambulance. Screaming profanities and refusing to talk to the supervisor of the ambulance about the incident, he physically attacks the supervisor.
3. A man comes out of a restaurant and sees a group of teenagers playing loud music. He thinks one of them is holding a rifle and pointing it at another group of kids. He pulls his gun and yells at the kid with the "gun". Despite the obvious loud music and no one acknowledging him, he fires from across the parking lot. He hits the kid in the arm. Post incident it is determined to be a pellet gun and that he was pointing at a sign.
4. A man shoots an unarmed teenager in the face. The man says the teenager was running right at him and wouldn't stop.
Its hard to imagine the above incidents not resulting in at least an arrest isn't it? I assume that you would be defending the decision to make arrests.
The ability of the police to effectively investigate their own shootings is certainly questionable, so the more openness the better.
Self-defense shooting is based on threat assessment, not assessment of innocence or guilt. That is a straw man argument.
You simply confuse and conflate multiple issues because you want to hate cops and blame them for everything. You are biased and blinkered and not using logic to think through the logic of use of force.
It has an established logic, until you understand it, you really have no business criticizing and debating about it. You are more interested in insult than information.
Quite to the contrary, you want to label everyone that thinks that the police must obey the same laws as everyone else as a "cop hater".
I notice that you didn't answer the question concerning whether you think any other citizen would have walked away without at least an arrest in the listed instances.
Whether the police are to be held to the same standard of law and justification as everyone else is very much the point, hardly a straw man argument.
Indeed, if the point of having a police force is to increase safety, don't you think it logical that they might be expected to come prepared to such calls? You completely ignored that question previously.
i.e. I call the police and tell them that my neighbor bill is off his meds and sitting on his porch with an ax. They come out and as they walk up he starts trotting toward them with the Ax. They then shoot him 22 times in self-defense. What exactly was the point of calling the police? I could have shot Bill from my front porch and saved them the trip. Would you not at all question why they didn't come prepared with a shotgun full of non-lethals and a stun gun? Is their lack of thought not responsible in any way for Bill doubling as a colander?
Case in point. Barney comes in the front door and there is a two year old holding a sawed off shotgun. Should Barney:
A. Shoot lower than usual.
B. Shoot more than usual, as the vital area is small.
C. Scream at the kid to drop it, and if he doesn't respond instantly revert to A&B.
D. Take the additional risk to protect himself and get the shotgun away from the toddler, knowing that there is a chance he may be killed, but realizing that the toddler is someone he is supposed to protect.
IF, big IF, you chose answer "D", why would you say that was? Could if have anything to do with innocence?
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