Police’s decision to handcuff Walker after receiving a shot was an “insult added to a terrible loss,” Walker’s family attorney Bobby DiCello told CNN on Saturday. Walker’s family “can’t understand these so-called safety reasons when they know Jayland suffered so many injuries and lethal force.”
“It’s disconcerting. It sends a symbolic and inhuman message despite the procedure in place,” DiCello said, adding that the incident raises a critical question about the extent to which compassion comes into play when police officers decide to handcuff them. to someone who had received dozens of shots. .
“If no one thought he should be handcuffed, then why not just out of respect for the loss of human lives, avoid it?” added DiCello.
It is a common practice across the country to handcuff a person deemed dangerous and armed, even after receiving a shot by the police, so that the person cannot access the weapons or pose any additional threat, three told CNN law enforcement experts.
Choosing to handcuff someone who has just been shot by police “is not a human or inhuman issue,” said Maria Haberfeld, a police science professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Beyond an injured suspect, the broader circumstances of the situation may “impact the (agents’) perception of the threat,” he said, adding that someone who is already clinically dead may show movement, suggesting which is still alive and dangerous.
“That’s the way they think, that’s the way they’re trained, that you can never underestimate the level of threat from someone who shot you before,” Haberfeld said, generally talking about police encounters with suspects who it is believed. be armed.
Details of Walker’s case continue to emerge amid public scrutiny of how U.S. police personnel use force, especially against people of color. Walker was black, while seven of the eight officers who shot him are white and one is black, the city said. All have been placed on paid administrative leave, by department policy.
Agents are asked not to manipulate the body
All police departments have policies that dictate when officers should use lethal force, usually when there is a weapon and a suspect poses an immediate threat to officers and the public, experts told CNN.
But there is no national standard for detaining a person after they have been shot, they said. Most agencies train officers to immediately handcuff a suspect so they can insure any weapon and assess injuries for help, but do not explain how officers should use restrictions beyond the guidelines for controlling a suspect. the arrest and security of officers.
Police say Walker fled while officers tried to stop him for traffic and equipment violations, and during an 18-minute car chase, he fired what appeared to be a shot out the window. The chase then went on briefly to a chase on foot, during which police shot and killed Walker after he stopped quickly and they believed he was getting to his waist and “felt that Mr. Walker was he had turned around and was making a gesture and putting himself in a shooting position, “according to officials. they said.
While a gun was found in his car after the shooting, Walker was unarmed when he was killed, Akron police chief Stephen Mylett told a news conference on July 3, when police released long body camera videos of 13 agents at the scene.
If officers hadn’t handcuffed Walker as they approached him, believing he had fired a gun at them from his vehicle, he would have “surprised” Thor Eells, the executive director of the National Association of Tactical Officers said. .
Even after that, “unless medical professionals make a request to remove the handcuffs, so that they can do some kind of advanced life support that requires it, officers would not remove them,” he said.
If a person is pronounced dead at the scene after a police shooting, officers are usually advised not to handle the case by touching the body, including removing the handcuffs, so that they can be handed over to the police station. forensic doctor as part of the process. investigation into the shooting, said Eells, a former commander of the Colorado Springs police department.
“Once they determine that this is now a shooting involving an officer with a death, most agencies are taught not to touch or disturb anything,” he said. “Everything is left as it is for the corner that has the legal responsibility to assess all of this in its entirety. way? ‘ “
“It’s time to review these policies,” the expert says
Akron’s police department policy requires officers to hand over a suspect after all shootings involving officers so the suspect can continue to pose a threat, Mylett told Cleveland’s WEWS subsidiary. All restrictions are left to preserve the crime scene, the chief said.
But the chief acknowledged the need to review the policy.
“If this was my brother, if this was my son, if this was my grandson, I wouldn’t like that,” Mylett told WEWS. “I get it, I really get it. And I’ll have a conversation with others about the need for that.”
The Akron police department, the city and the police union have not responded to CNN’s repeated requests to comment on the practice of restricting suspects, including those who have been shot by officers.
In many cases like this, officers “simply comply with their department’s rules,” but those guidelines may be outdated, said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Investigation Forum, a police research and policy organization without profit.
“These procedures were put in place a long time ago and I think it is time to review these policies in situations where it is clear that someone has been seriously injured and first aid is needed,” he said.
In Walker’s case, the Summit County Forensic Bureau’s preliminary report contains several pages of miniature photos showing the young man dead and handcuffed at the scene and after his body arrived at the Summit County Office. forensic.
A final autopsy report will be delivered to the Ohio Office of Criminal Investigation, which is investigating any criminal offenses by officers, and will be part of what the state attorney general’s office considers to file a case in a grand jury.