A rude awakening has cost the city of Sacramento more than half a million dollars.
Two police officers used excessive force while responding to an anonymous phone call, which in all likelihood was false and malicious to start with.
Now the city is paying for this reckless and impulsive behavior.
Details of the incident
Not many people get visitors in the early hours of the morning, so hearing someone banging on your front door at 4 AM can be worrying.
On March 25, 2011 African-American man Robert I. Reese Jr probably felt the same when he heard pounding on the door of his home, apartment 144, in the early hours of the morning.
So he tried looking through the peephole to find out who needed such urgent attention, but he couldn’t see a thing.
Then he opened the door, he still could not see anyone – then, two seconds later someone opened fire.
It turns out Reese had found himself on the wrong end of Deputy Duncan Brown and Zachary Rose’s weapons.
The two cops were responding to a mysterious call that someone had fired shots and gone into Reese’s apartment. The anonymous report was probably false.
The victim filed a lawsuit and now a federal jury has awarded him an enormous $ 534,340 in compensation.
It all started when a 911 operator communicated information received from an unidentified caller stating that an African-American adult had stepped outside apartment 144 and shot an automatic gun, while holding a steak knife in the other hand.
The caller added that he believed the person was at home by himself and either had mental health issues was high on drugs.
Brown and Rose responded to the call and started thumping Reese’s door.
According to court papers, the latter used the butt of his flashlight to knock. He did not announce who he was.
When Reese opened the door he had quickly grabbed a kitchen knife in self defense.
Two seconds later, Brown fired his rifle butt narrowly missing the man, who immediately dropped the knife in his hand and went back into his apartment.
Following this, Rose who was standing 5 feet from Reese fired a round hitting him in the chest. Then, the victim was arrested.
Reaction from the department
The initial investigation by the sheriff’s department had deemed that the deputies were acting responsibly and within the prescribed policies.
According to the Sacramento County district attorney’s office, the encounter did not warrant prosecuting the two.
The department spokesman Sergeant Tony Turnbull was clear that they were not pleased with the verdict.
“We don’t have any control over how a jury in a civil trial interprets the evidence."
How it’s presented and interpreted in the trial of a civil suit and how it’s weighed for criminal culpability are two different things,” he said.