Ogden police Chief Eric Young said Tuesday that the four officers involved in the beating of a 30-year-old man as he was lying on the ground Saturday were justified in their use of force because the man had acted like he had a gun.
The man, identified Tuesday as Shawn Sims, suffered facial fractures and bleeding behind one eye as he was repeatedly punched by police, Young said at a Tuesday news conference. The chief addressed the public days after cellphone footage of the altercation filmed by a witness went viral online, prompting a series of comments criticizing the Ogden Police Department.
During the news conference, Young shared body camera footage from the officers involved in the beating and said he believed they were in fear for their lives.
A woman who identified herself as Sims’ mother shared a more detailed account of Sims’ injuries on a GoFundMe campaign she set up after the beating, saying that he suffered a “broken nose, fractured jaw, broken orbital sockets and complete loss of vision in one of his eyes.”
“The possibility of him getting his vision back is very, very slim,” she wrote on the GoFundMe page, noting that the video “clearly shows him laying on the ground defenseless, not resisting at all.”
What happened
Young said Sims had been walking in traffic near 17th Street and Washington Boulevard on Saturday around 5:40 p.m. when Ogden officers first spotted him.
Two officers turned around their patrol car to find out why Sims was walking in traffic, Young said, and they activated their blue and red lights.
When Sims saw the officers, he apparently reached into his waistband, then pointed his finger at officers under his shirt, acting like he had a gun, Young said.
The officers commanded him to stop, but Sims ran from them with his hand in his waistband. As they began to approach, Sims took a “stance that led officers to believe that he was about to withdraw a weapon and fire at them,” Young said.
Sims ignored police commands, Young said, so an officer decided to take him down to the ground and “commanded him to release his hands from his waistband.” But Sims instead rolled into his stomach, reaching both hands into his waistband, Young said, refusing to remove them.
The officer accompanying the arresting officer — as well as two other officers who were nearby and had since arrived on scene — together were unable to force Sims to remove his hands from beneath his stomach, Young said.
For about 10 seconds, two of the four officers struck Sims with their fists in the head, shoulder and back “numerous times,” Young said, then used a Taser twice, once in his back and once in his side.
In the video, the officers can be heard yelling, “Stop reaching into your waistband!” and “Give me your hands!”
After the second Taser deployment, the officers were able to get Sims’ hands out from under his stomach and out of his waistband, then bring them to his back to be handcuffed, Young said.
“Sims never complied with any of the officers’ commands,” Young said, adding that Sims was under the influence of “at least one illegal narcotic,” though Young did not state the narcotic.
After the officers got Sims to his feet and sat him on the edge of a sidewalk, one of the officers can be heard in the video saying, “Why are you reaching like you got a gun, dude? Are you trying to make me do something stupid to you?”
Young also played audio from a call between Sims and his mother after he was arrested, in which Sims tells her, “I did the stupid-ass finger gun thing again, honestly, I think.”
Later, when Sims was in a holding cell at the Weber County jail, an officer asked him why he would pretend he had a gun. Sims replied that “he’s had a lot of problems with his mind,” Young quoted him as saying, adding that Sims was “hoping [the Ogden Police Department] would’ve shot [him].”
The investigation
The Ogden Police Department’s after-action, use-of-force investigation into the altercation Saturday is now complete, Young said. All four officers’ use of force was found to be “justified,” he said. The officers weren’t suspended.
“Some experts have rushed to judgment publicly without taking the time or exercising the patience to gather all the facts and information,” Young said. “I would describe that behavior in general as dangerous and disingenuous.”
Young added that he’s asked the Weber County attorney’s office to conduct a criminal review into the officers’ actions, to see if any laws were broken.
Sims’ mother, Marsha Quintana, said the money raised by the GoFundMe will be used to help pay for a lawyer. As of Tuesday afternoon, the campaign had raised more than $500.
