It\u2019s no surprise District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis decided Nov. 9 not to prosecute a San Diego police officer who shot and killed an unarmed mentally ill man in the Midway district in the spring. Dumanis has been signaling that the case didn\u2019t meet the high bar needed to criminally charge officers in the line of duty.
\nThe policeman in question, Neal Browder, has also been back on active duty for months.
\nDumanis\u2019 rationale, described in a 15-page letter to Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman, cites a host of newly revealed evidence from the incident, which resulted in the death of 42-year-old Fridoon Rawshan Nehad. Browder said Nehad was threatening him with a knife that later turned out to be a metallic pen. Dumanis said the evidence clearly supports the officer\u2019s perspective.
\nBut Dumanis\u2019 decision also doesn\u2019t resolve a number of questions, especially about\u00a0conflicting accounts of key details of a\u00a0still-secret surveillance camera footage of the incident. (Voice of San Diego, along with multiple other local news outlets, are fighting in court to make that footage public. A federal court judge has yet to rule on the request.)
\nLet\u2019s review what we now know about the case from Dumanis\u2019 letter \u2013 and what we still don\u2019t. The Evidence
\nLast month, I wrote how Dumanis\u2019 decision was going to be based on longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent:
\nLaw enforcement officers can use deadly force if they believe there\u2019s an imminent threat of deadly force against them or someone else. Crucially, the standard is taken from what a so-called “reasonable officer” would believe at the time, not with the benefit of hindsight. In this case, for instance, it matters less that Nehad didn\u2019t end up having a knife and more whether a reasonable officer in the same position as Browder would think Nehad had one.
\nDumanis says that it was absolutely reasonable for Browder to believe Nehad was dangerous. Browder was called to the scene after a report that someone was threatening employees and patrons of an adult bookstore with a knife. Dumanis cites testimony from witnesses who saw the circumstances immediately before and during the shooting.
\n“Three witnesses saw Nehad had an item in his hand,” Dumanis wrote. “Two of them believed it was a knife; one was not sure what it was. Browder also believed Nehad was armed with a knife. Two of the witnesses heard Browder demand that Nehad drop the knife. Another witness believed that Browder told Nehad to stop.”
\nDumanis also quotes Browder from his interview with police investigators: “I swear I thought he was going to stab me,” Browder said. The Video
\nThis case is so controversial in part because of testimony from Wesley Doyle, an employee of the business that captured the incident on its surveillance camera. Doyle watched the footage at least 20 times and said the shooting was unprovoked. He said the video would be “shocking” to anyone who saw it.
\nIn her letter, however, Dumanis both downplayed the video\u2019s value and\u00a0said\u00a0it supports Browder\u2019s case.
\nThe video, she said, was mounted more than 20 feet in the air and was more than 70 feet from where Browder was standing during the incident. She said it was impossible for it to capture the perspectives of the officer and Nehad.
\nBut Dumanis said the video supported\u00a0Browder in that it showed Nehad advancing toward him. Dumanis hired Jeffrey Martin, an attorney and ex-San Jose police officer who serves as an expert witness in police use-of-force cases, to review the incident.
\nIn an interview, Martin said the video was just one piece of evidence he used to support the view that Browder shouldn\u2019t be prosecuted.
\n“It basically corroborated what the officer had to say and what the other witnesses had to say,” Martin said. The Discrepancies
\nEven with all this newly released evidence, it doesn\u2019t put to rest a number of discrepancies in various accounts of what happened. Two of the biggest are the distance between Browder and Nehad when the shooting occurred and how quickly Nehad was moving toward the officer.
\nFor years, officers have been taught that they were in danger if they were within 21 feet of someone with a knife, though experts in the field now are suggesting a different approach to training.
\nBrowder himself cited the so-called “21 foot rule” in his interview with police, according to Dumanis\u2019 letter: “When I first came on we would always use the 21 foot rule,” Browder said. “If they\u2019re within 21 feet they can be on top of you and stabbing you before you react to that.”
\nDumanis says the distance between Nehad and Browder was approximately 17 feet. This is just the latest estimate in the case. The city, in a legal filing from a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Nehad\u2019s family, said the distance between them was 10 to 15 feet. Doyle said it was approximately 15 feet. In a court filing, the attorney for Nehad\u2019s family put the distance at about 25 feet.
\nMartin, Dumanis\u2019 expert, said that Nehad was well within the distance to be considered dangerous.
\n“Mr. Nehad, at that point when [Browder] fired, was a matter of steps away from him,” Martin said.
\nSimilarly, Doyle said the video shows that Nehad was slowing and might have come to a complete stop before Broward shot him. Dumanis said the video shows that Nehad might have slowed but was definitely moving toward the officer.
\n“When the video is carefully reviewed, it shows when Nehad was shot he was still in mid-stride, lifting his left foot off the ground,” Dumanis wrote. What\u2019s Next
\nSome of these disputes could be ironed out if Dumanis were to make public the video and other evidence from the case. At a press conference, she said she won\u2019t release the video and the judge shouldn\u2019t either.
\nBut with Dumanis\u2019 decision, a major argument against releasing the video \u2013 that it would prejudice jurors in a potential criminal trial against Browder \u2013 now is gone. Liam Dillon is senior reporter and assistant editor for Voice of San Diego. What should he write about next? Please contact him directly at (619) 550-5663 or liam.dillon@voiceofsandiego.org.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s no surprise District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis decided Nov. 9 not to prosecute a San Diego police officer who shot and killed an unarmed mentally ill man in the Midway district in the spring. Dumanis has been signaling that the case didn\u2019t meet the high bar needed to criminally charge officers in the line of […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"DA decides not to prosecute police shooting in Midway District","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11593,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-no-images","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}