A parole officer who shot at a burglary suspect’s car in Salt Lake City won’t be charged.
But prosecutors say they couldn’t fully evaluate the shooting because state law only authorizes reviews of “critical incidents” in which someone is injured.
Now Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill is joining the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah in asking legislators to revise a 2015 law that requires police and prosecutors to set up independent reviews whenever a person is shot by an officer.
The decision to shoot at a person should be reviewed, they say, even if the officer misses the target.
“The public demands transparency when considering the actions of police officers who discharge weapons at or toward private citizens, regardless of whether injury results,” Gill said in a news release. “Independent investigation and analysis of an officer’s use of force should not depend on whether the officer was a good shot.”
On Feb. 12, two parole officers went to a store at 715 S. 900 West to investigate a burglary, and one of the officers, Agent Daniel Hampton, stopped his car in front of the car of one of the suspects, Gill wrote in a letter to the state Department of Corrections, which oversees parole agents. The suspect crashed into Hampton’s car, and Hampton fired his gun, striking one of the suspect’s wheels.
No one was injured, “or even at substantial risk of bodily injury,” Gill wrote in the letter. “... We do not believe criminal charges are warranted, or, if brought, could be sustained.”
However, Gill provided no analysis or finding as to whether it was legally justified for Hampton to shoot the car — a separate question from whether charges should be filed. Under Utah law, deadly force is justified if an officer “reasonably believes [it] is necessary to prevent death or serious bodily injury to the officer or another person.”
Most of the police shootings deemed “unjustified” in Utah have not resulted in criminal charges. But Gill said it’s still important as a matter of transparency and public accountability for police shootings to be investigated and judged by an agency that’s independent from the one the officer works for.
“There is community value to being able to examine when that decision is being made to use that force,” Gill said in an interview.
The law exempts police shootings from required review when no one is injured, and it does not address nonfatal injuries that officers may inflict without a “dangerous weapon,” Gill said — for example, kicking, punching or chokeholds.
Gill described the law’s limits as an “unintentional gap” and said he and the ACLU will discuss possible revisions with state Rep. Marc Roberts, R-Santaquin, who proposed the original bill requiring independent reviews of “critical incidents.”
“Many documented incidents of law enforcement officers using physical force against individuals do not involve what this law would consider a ‘dangerous weapon’ — including the chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York or the death of Freddie Gray by ‘rough ride’ in the back of a Baltimore police van,” Marina Lowe, legislative and policy counsel at the ACLU of Utah, said in a news release. “Limiting independent review by an outside agency to cases including only ‘dangerous weapons’ makes no sense.”
