The Chief of the Columbus Division of Police in Ohio has called for the immediate termination of service of a police officer who was caught on body camera fatally shooting an unarmed black man. In the footage released earlier this week, Officer Adam Coy shot and killed Andre Maurice Hill, 47, who was seen walking towards Coy, holding a cell phone in his left hand.
On Thursday, Police Chief Thomas Quinan said he had filed two critical misconduct charges against Coy. He stated that departmental investigations are ongoing to ascertain the level of complicity of other officers in the incident.
Quinan, in a statement on Christmas Eve, said it broke his heart that Andre Hill would not be joining his family to celebrate the Christmas holiday or any other holiday for that matter and that a Columbus police officer was responsible for the heartache caused to his family.
According to Quinan, while normal administrative procedures required that Coy appeared before the police chief for a disciplinary hearing, Coy would not be afforded such privileges in this case because a body camera reviewed already gave details of his actions. He said he had all the evidence he needed to recommend the immediate termination of service of Officer Coy.
Quinan said that although opinions in some quarters may consider his actions a harried conclusion of the judgment, he considered it the right move since the impetuous actions of Officer Coy had cost an innocent man his life.
Following the fatal shooting, Coy was handed a suspension notice pending when preliminary investigations would commence into his behavior. He is to be served a notice of the charges against him on Friday, CNN reports.
According to a charge sheet seen by the press, Quinan asserted that Coy was guilty of a gross violation of his oath as a Columbus police officer, and had demonstrated incompetence, gross neglect of duty, misfeasance, malfeasance, and nonfeasance. On Monday, Officer Coy is to appear at a hearing before the public safety director, who would rule on recommendations to fire the officer.
A statement by the Department of Public Safety had noted that while Officer Coy and another officer arrived at the scene when contacted, Coy did not turn on his body camera until after the shooting. The body-worn camera, provided by the Columbus Police Department for its officers, records a 60-seconds capture of the high points of any encounter between the police and a suspect. However, no audio is captured by the recording device.
Coy and his partner had been called in around 1 a.m. by a neighbor of Hill, who reported that a man sat in his SUV and regularly turned on and off his car engine for hours on end. When the police arrived, they found the garage open and a man inside. Footage showed a man, who is now identified as Hill, walking towards Coy, with a cellphone in his hands. Within seconds, Hill was down. He had been shot by Coy. He died in the hospital an hour later. There was no dangerous weapon found at the crime scene.
Quinan described the shooting of Hill as a senseless killing borne out of preventable violence. He said as a father and grandfather himself, he cannot begin to imagine the amount of pain the deceased’s family must be going through right now.
This would be the second time a Columbus police officer would shoot and kill a black man this month alone. The earlier shooting had involved Casey Goodson Jr., who was shot by a deputy sheriff from the Franklin County Sheriff Office. That particular incident is still under investigation.
Source: thehill.com
