(AKRON, Ohio) — Two relatives of police shooting victims were arrested Wednesday in Akron, Ohio, on rioting charges for allegedly protesting the police shooting of Jayland Walker.
Jacob Blake Sr., the father of Jacob Blake — as well as Bianca Austin, a relative of Breonna Taylor — were arrested on first-degree misdemeanor rioting charges, ABC Affiliate WEWS found.
Wednesday night was the first without a curfew since the body camera footage of Walker’s death was published. Walker, a 25-year-old Black man, was reportedly unarmed when eight Ohio officers opened fire on him on June 27, fatally shooting him after a traffic stop turned into a pursuit.
Akron police allege that Walker shot at them before he exited his car and ran away from police. A gun was recovered in the car, according to officials.
The officers involved in the shooting are on paid administrative leave, pending the outcome of the investigation being led by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
The shooting sparked protests similar to those that erupted after other incidents of police violence that also made national headlines — including Blake’s and Taylor’s.
Blake was shot seven times by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in an incident that left him partially paralyzed. No police officers were charged in Blake’s shooting, with Kenosha County District Attorney Michael D. Graveley saying that he did not believe “the State could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Officer Sheskey was not acting lawfully in self-defense or defense of others.”
Taylor was fatally gunned down when three Louisville, Kentucky, police officers executed a “no-knock” search warrant on her home. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, said he thought they were intruders and shot at the officers, who returned fire with more than 25 bullets, killing Taylor.
No police officers were charged directly for Taylor’s death after a grand jury declined to charge any officers.
“According to Kentucky law, the use of force by [the officers] was justified to protect themselves,” Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said at the time. “This justification bars us from pursuing criminal charges in Miss Breonna Taylor’s death.”
Both of these incidents prompted protests nationwide as they collided with other incidents of police violence such as the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Blake Sr. and Austin were not together when they were arrested. The two were arraigned Thursday morning and its unclear if they have offered pleas to the charges.
Attorney Antonio Romanucci, Founding Partner, Romanucci & Blandin
(PARK RIDGE, Ill.) — The family of a 14-year-old boy who was allegedly pinned down by an off-duty Chicago Police officer in Park Ridge, Illinois, is speaking about the incident that was caught on cellphone camera.
“We see the bias in an off-duty officer taking advantage of our brown boy, with afro hair, smaller in stature, choosing to take the law into his own hands with physical force — a clear abuse of his position of authority — the authority meant to PROTECT my son, not harm him,” Angel and Nicole Nieves, parents of the boy, said in a press release sent to ABC News.
On the afternoon of July 1, a man who Park Ridge police have identified as a CPD sergeant in the video put his knee on the teen’s back for about 15 seconds, according to cellphone footage taken by a friend of the teen. It is unclear what happened before the video was captured on camera but the family’s legal team says the teen was just trying to move the bike out of his way.
Park Ridge Police Chief Frank Kaminski told ABC News that the officer believed the teen had stolen his son’s bike. The bike was apparently stolen from a local library before the incident, according to police.
Kaminski confirmed that the teen had a bike of his own. He also said that officials now have images of the person who did steal the bike, saying that it was likely abandoned by the culprit where the incident between the teen and officer occurred.
The Nieves’ legal team said that the teen had touched the bike because it was on the sidewalk and he was trying to pass by it with his own bike.
The family’s legal team also said the teen will remain unnamed. Romanucci & Blandin, LLC, a national personal injury firm primarily based in Chicago, is representing the family for any potential litigation.
The teen’s friends kept telling the officer to get off the boy and helped him up from the ground, according to the footage.
Chicago Police told ABC News that there is an internal investigation concerning the incident and officials cannot comment further. The officer’s name has not been released. The police union has not responded to ABC News’ requests for comment.
The boy’s parents are calling for accountability from the officer, including releasing the officer’s name and filing criminal charges for his conduct involving a child.
The Nieves family says their son is a straight-A student, a three-sport athlete and is active in his church youth ministry.
“It’s ironic that the type of person we are raising our boys to be — thoughtful, respectful young men who are quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger — is the opposite of the example this Chicago police officer set,” they said.
According to WLS, the Chicago Civilian Office of Police Accountability is also investigating the incident. The Park Ridge police are also investigating alongside the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, according to WLS.
Neither agency has responded to ABC News’ requests for comment.
“The off-duty officer used excessive force on a child and escalated the situation where this type of aggression was clearly not necessary,” said Bhavani K. Raveendran, an attorney at Romanucci & Blandin.
(St. PAUL, Minn.) — Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been sentenced to 21 years in prison on federal civil rights charges Thursday in the death of George Floyd.
He had previously pleaded not guilty to the charges but in December 2021, he pleaded guilty to violating Floyd’s civil rights and admitted that he kept his knee on Floyd’s neck even after he became unresponsive.
U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson made the final decision.
In April 2021, Chauvin was also found guilty on three counts in Floyd’s death — second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter — for pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes.
He has already been sentenced to 270 months, minus time served, which equals about 22-and-a-half years in prison.
Former officers J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao were also charged for their role in Floyd’s death.
The three of them had pleaded not guilty but were convicted by a jury.
The four former officers were attempting to place Floyd under arrest on suspicion of using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes at a convenience store.
During the encounter, Chauvin held his knee on the back of Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes. Floyd, who was handcuffed and in a prone position on the pavement, repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe before falling unconscious and losing a pulse, according to evidence presented at Chauvin’s state trial. Floyd was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Thao and Kueng now await a state trial for charges of aiding and abetting in murder and aiding and abetting in manslaughter in Floyd’s death. The two have pleaded not guilty.
The trial is set to start on Oct. 24.
Thomas Lane pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in exchange for the dismissal of the top charge against him of aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder.
Under the agreement, a sentence of 36 months, or three years in prison, will be recommended by both prosecutors and Lane’s legal team. If he went to trial and was convicted on both counts, he could have faced a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, according to the plea agreement.
(HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.) — The father of the alleged Highland Park parade shooter has told ABC News that he is not culpable in the Independence Day attack, in spite of having signed a consent form for his son to apply for gun ownership.
“I had no — not an inkling, warning — that this was going to happen,” Bobby Crimo Jr. told ABC News about the Fourth of July attack his son, Robert “Bobby” Crimo III, allegedly carried out in Highland Park, Illinois. “I am just shocked.”
Crimo claims both he and his wife asked their son just days before if he had any plans for the holiday. “He said ‘no.’ That was it,” Crimo recalled.
Crimo says he spent nearly an hour with his son in his yard the night before the attack talking about the planet. “Great mood,” he remembered. “I’m just shocked.”
Crimo says he never saw his son as a danger to anyone, but authorities recently disclosed at least one past instance in which his son allegedly threatened violence. In 2019, police in Highland Park confiscated 16 knives, a dagger and a sword from the suspect’s home after a family member called claiming he “was going to kill everyone.”
Crimo III is charged with seven counts of first-degree murder and more charges are expected, Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said. Prosecutors said that Crimo III confessed to Monday morning’s parade massacre. He did not enter a plea during a bond hearing on Wednesday.
“Making threats to the family … I think [that was] taken out of context,” Crimo said about authorities’ description of the 2019 incident. “It’s like just a child’s outburst, whatever he was upset about, and I think his sister called the police — I wasn’t living there.” Crimo said police removed his son’s knife collection from the home, after he was asked if there were any weapons in the house.
Authorities did not open a criminal investigation.
Later that same year, Crimo signed an affidavit allowing Crimo III to apply to obtain a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) Card — needed in the state of Illinois to purchase firearms or ammunition.
“I filled out the consent form to allow my son to go through the process that the Illinois State Police have in place for an individual to obtain a FOID card,” Crimo said. “They do background checks. Whatever that entails, I’m not exactly sure. And either you’re approved or denied, and he was approved.”
On Wednesday, Illinois State Police announced there will be a criminal investigation into Crimo’s culpability because he sponsored his son’s application for a firearm owner identification card in 2019.
“Do I regret that? No, not three years ago — signing a consent form to go through the process … that’s all it was,” said Crimo, adding that he is not worried about potential legal consequences. “Had I purchased guns throughout the years and given them to him in my name, that’s a different story. But he went through that whole process himself.” Crimo said his son purchased the weapons with his own money and registered them in his own name.
Crimo claims he had no involvement with him purchasing weapons and learned of his son’s firearm collection when he displayed a “Glock handgun” he purchased on his 21st birthday. “Oh, looks nice,” he says he told Crimo III.
Crimo III’s FOID card was renewed in 2021 without the involvement of his father, according to authorities.
Crimo says he does not know the motive behind his son’s actions. “That’s what I’d like to ask him when I see him,” said Crimo. “Whatever was going on in his head at the time … to go kill and hurt innocent people is just senseless.” Crimo says his “heart goes out to all of the families that were affected.”
Crimo III allegedly killed seven people and injured dozens of others in the attack.
“I think about them all the time,” his father told ABC News. “I even had some people that were injured that I personally know.”
Prior to the shooting, Crimo’s son left a trail of disturbing images online — including depictions of shootings. He was also an amateur rapper with a little over 16,000 monthly listeners on Spotify; his last music release featured an album cover of a cartoon character aiming a gun.
“The online content I’m not aware of till recently,” said Crimo, adding that he saw his son as an “artist,” but did not always understand his work. “Maybe I’ve seen a couple of them in the past, and I’d look at them and go ‘that’s not you,’ because I know it’s like an act.”
Crimo denied rumors of his son suffering abuse at home. “Never, never,” he said, and he added that he and his wife are “very much against it.”
“I kept hearing all this stuff about … horrible parenting,” Crimo said. “He wasn’t raised that way. He has good morals,” he added.
“This isn’t Bobby,” Crimo said of his son’s actions. “I guess that’s why it’s so hard to wrap yourself around it. It doesn’t add up.”
Crimo III is being held without bond and is set to return to court for a preliminary hearing on July 28.
Crimo said the whole system needs to be overhauled, to prevent tragedies like this from happening again. “We need to come together as a community here in the country to come up with something, whether it’s new laws, guidelines … this country is our problem right here.”
(CHICAGO) — The father of the alleged Highland Park parade shooter, Bobby Crimo Jr., has told ABC News that he is not culpable in the Independence Day attack, in spite of having signed a consent form for his son to apply for gun ownership.
“I had no — not an inkling, warning — that this was going to happen,” Crimo told ABC News about the Fourth of July attack his son, Robert “Bobby” Crimo III, carried out in Highland Park, Ill. “I am just shocked.”
Crimo claims both he and his wife asked their son just days before if he had any plans for the holiday. “He said ‘no.’ That was it,” Crimo recalled.
Crimo says he spent nearly an hour with his son in his yard the night before the attack talking about the planet. “Great mood,” he remembered. “I’m just shocked.”
Crimo says he never saw his son as a danger to anyone, but authorities recently disclosed past instances of violence. In 2019, police in Highland Park confiscated 16 knives, a dagger and a sword from the suspect’s home after a family member called claiming he “was going to kill everyone.”
“Making threats to the family … I think [that was] taken out of context,” Crimo said about authorities’ description of the 2019 incident. “It’s like just a child’s outburst, whatever he was upset about, and I think his sister called the police — I wasn’t living there.” Crimo said police removed his son’s knife collection from the home, after he was asked if there were any weapons in the house.
Authorities did not open a criminal investigation.
Later that same year, Crimo signed an affidavit allowing Crimo III to apply to obtain a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) Card — needed in the state of Illinois to purchase firearms or ammunition.
“I filled out the consent form to allow my son to go through the process that the Illinois State Police have in place for an individual to obtain a FOID card,” Crimo said. “They do background checks. Whatever that entails, I’m not exactly sure. And either you’re approved or denied, and he was approved.”
On Wednesday, Illinois State Police announced there will be a criminal investigation into Crimo’s culpability because he sponsored his son’s application for a firearm owner identification card in 2019.
“Do I regret that? No, not three years ago — signing a consent form to go through the process … that’s all it was,” said Crimo, adding that he is not worried about potential legal consequences. “Had I purchased guns throughout the years and given them to him in my name, that’s a different story. But he went through that whole process himself.” Crimo said his son purchased the weapons with his own money and registered them in his own name.
Crimo claims he had no involvement with him purchasing weapons and learned of his son’s firearm collection when he displayed a “Glock handgun” he purchased on his 21st birthday. “Oh, looks nice,” he says he told Crimo III.
Crimo III’s FOID card was renewed in 2021 without the involvement of his father, according to authorities.
Crimo says he does not know the motive behind his son’s actions. “That’s what I’d like to ask him when I see him,” said Crimo. “Whatever was going on in his head at the time … to go kill and hurt innocent people is just senseless.” Crimo says his “heart goes out to all of the families that were affected.”
Crimo III killed seven people and injured dozens of others in the attack.
“I think about them all the time,” his father told ABC News. “I even had some people that were injured that I personally know.”
Prior to the shooting, Crimo’s son left a trail of disturbing images online — including depictions of shootings. He was also an amateur rapper with a little over 16,000 monthly listeners on Spotify; his last music release featured an album cover of a cartoon character aiming a gun.
“The online content I’m not aware of till recently,” said Crimo, adding that he saw his son as an “artist,” but did not always understand his work. “Maybe I’ve seen a couple of them in the past, and I’d look at them and go ‘that’s not you,’ because I know it’s like an act.”
Crimo denied rumors of his son suffering abuse at home. “Never, never,” he said, and he added that he and his wife are “very much against it.”
“I kept hearing all this stuff about … horrible parenting,” Crimo said. “He wasn’t raised that way. He has good morals,” he added.
“This isn’t Bobby,” Crimo said of his son’s actions. “I guess that’s why it’s so hard to wrap yourself around it. It doesn’t add up.”
Crimo III is charged with seven counts of first-degree murder and more charges are expected, Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said. Prosecutors said that Crimo III confessed to Monday morning’s parade massacre. He did not enter a plea during a bond hearing on Wednesday. He is being held without bond and is set to return to court for a preliminary hearing on July 28.
Crimo said the whole system needs to be overhauled, to prevent tragedies like this from happening again. “We need to come together as a community here in the country to come up with something, whether it’s new laws, guidelines … this country is our problem right here.”
(MINNEAPOLIS) — Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin will be sentenced Thursday on federal civil rights charges in the death of George Floyd.
He had previously pleaded not guilty to the charges but in December 2021 he pleaded guilty to violating Floyd’s civil rights and admitted that he kept his knee on Floyd’s neck even after he became unresponsive.
Chauvin’s plea agreement calls for a 20 to 25-year sentence.
In April 2021, Chauvin was found guilty on three counts in Floyd’s death — second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter — for pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes.
He has already been sentenced to 270 months, minus time served, which equals about 22-and-a-half years in prison.
Former officers J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao were also charged for their role in Floyd’s death.
The three of them had pleaded not guilty but were convicted by a jury.
The four former officers were attempting to place Floyd under arrest on suspicion of using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes at a convenience store.
During the encounter, Chauvin held his knee on the back of Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes. Floyd, who was handcuffed and in a prone position on the pavement, repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe before falling unconscious and losing a pulse, according to evidence presented at Chauvin’s state trial. Floyd was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Thao and Kueng now await a state trial for charges of aiding and abetting in murder and aiding and abetting in manslaughter in Floyd’s death. The two have pleaded not guilty.
The trial has been delayed until Jan. 5, 2023.
Thomas Lane pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in exchange for the dismissal of the top charge against him of aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder.
Under the agreement, a sentence of 36 months, or three years in prison, will be recommended by both prosecutors and Lane’s legal team. If he went to trial and was convicted on both counts, he could have faced a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, according to the plea agreement.
(HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.) — Lorena Rebollar Sedano has attended the Highland Park, Illinois, Fourth of July parade for 28 years, but this year’s festivities turned to terror when Sedano and her family were caught in the crossfire after a gunman opened fire during Monday’s celebration.
Sedano told ABC News that she and her family immediately rushed to a nearby store for safety. When she got inside and collected herself, Sedano soon realized that she was hit.
“A lady told me ‘Are you OK?’ I told her, ‘Yes.’ She goes ‘But you’re hurt, you’re bleeding,'” Sedano told ABC News. “That’s when I looked at my foot and my shoe was full of blood.”
Sedano was at the parade with her nieces and their three children, ages 1, 3 and 9 years old. Sedano called her daughter, who was en route to the parade, and told her not to come once the shooting began.
“I kept saying, ‘I’m OK, I’m OK,'” she said.
Four other family members who were with Sedano were also hurt, she said. While she waited for first responders to arrive, Sedano said other people who were hiding out in the store helped her.
She was hospitalized, treated for her wounds and released. But Sedano’s recovery is only just beginning.
Sedano said doctors told her bullet fragments are still lodged on the side of her ankle and would go away eventually.
Sedano said it was a miracle that she and her family survived the shooting. She said her family was right next to Nicholas Toledo, one of the seven victims killed in the shooting, who they knew.
Sedano will not go back to the parade and likely won’t attend large events for a very long time.
“We were like the target for the gunshots,” she said.
(RICHMOND, Va.) — News of the thwarted attack comes after seven people were killed and dozens more injured in a mass shooting at a July Fourth parade in a Chicago suburb on Monday.
“There is no telling how many lives this hero citizen saved from one phone call,” Richmond Police Chief Gerald Smith told reporters Wednesday.
Richmond police received a tip from a citizen on July 1 who “overheard a conversation that there was a mass shooting being planned here,” Smith said.
Acting on the tip that day, police began an investigation along with Homeland Security, Smith said. Officers responding to an apartment in Richmond “saw evidence in plain view that corroborated the hero witness’ statement,” Smith said.
Officers seized two assault rifles, one handgun and 223 rounds of ammunition, Smith said. The suspect, Julio Alvarado-Dubon, 52, was taken into custody and charged with possessing a firearm as a non-U.S. citizen.
Police surveilled Alvardo’s roommate, identified as Rolman Balacarcel, 38, for several days before he was arrested on Tuesday in Albemarle County, Virginia, on the same charge. Additional charges could be possible for both suspects, Smith said.
Authorities allege the two were plotting a mass shooting at a Fourth of July celebration at the Dogwood Dell Amphitheater. The Diamond baseball stadium was another area of concern, Smith said.
“They were planning to actually shoot up our Fourth of July celebration,” the chief said. “We know what their intent is, but we don’t have their motive.”
The two suspects were not previously known to Richmond police. They are being held in jail on no bond, Smith said. It is unclear if the suspects have an attorney.
Investigators are working to trace the weapons seized, Smith said. The FBI is also involved in the investigation, he said.
The chief did not provide any further details about the tip, though lauded the man who contacted the police.
“We owe several lives to that one person,” Smith said.
News of the alleged mass shooting comes after the 21-year-old suspect in Monday’s Highland Park shooting confessed to the massacre, prosecutors said Wednesday. The suspect allegedly contemplated another attack that day in Madison, Wisconsin, authorities said.
“The success of this particular investigation can only be juxtaposed against the horrors in which the rest of the country has seen,” Smith said.
Richmond also experienced a mass shooting early on July Fourth at an after-hours club, where six people were wounded.
Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney called gun violence in the city and nationwide an “epidemic” and urged state and federal lawmakers to change U.S. gun policies.
“We need more — more policies that will keep people safe, so that these firearms and weapons of war don’t get into the hands of the wrong people,” Stoney told reporters Wednesday.
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — When Sara Kruzan was 16 years old, she shot and killed the man who she says had abused her and trafficked her for sex since she was 13. Almost 30 years later, she has been pardoned by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
In 1995, Kruzan was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder plus a four-year consecutive firearm enhancement after being tried as an adult. She later had her sentence commuted twice until she was released after almost two decades in prison.
Since then, Kruzan has become an advocate for policy reform, protecting sex trafficking victims and ending juvenile life without parole sentencing nationwide.
“Having experienced layers of trauma, I know there is deep value and appreciation in healing, and having the desire and courage to heal,” she wrote, according to the legal advocacy group Uncommon Law where she has worked as a parole justice advocate.
Newsom issued the pardon due to her work in advocacy and her journey toward healing.
“She has provided evidence that she is living an upright life and has demonstrated her fitness for restoration of civic rights and responsibilities,” Newsom said in a statement. “Ms. Kruzan committed a crime that took the life of the victim. Since then, Ms. Kruzan has transformed her life and dedicated herself to community service.”
A pardon does not expunge or erase a conviction, the governor’s office stated in a press release, and is intended to remove “counterproductive barriers to employment and public service, restore civic rights and responsibilities, and prevent unjust collateral consequences of conviction.”
It is also intended to correct unjust results in the legal system, according to the governor’s office, as well as address the health needs of incarcerated people.
Newsom said he has granted 16 other pardons, 15 commutations and one medical reprieve.
(LOS ANGELES) — Helen Jones has been searching for answers since her son died in 2009 while in custody at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles.
Jones said she was initially told by law enforcement that her 22-year-old son, John Horton, had died by suicide, but a forensic pathologist from the medical examiner’s office showed her that Horton’s medical report included evidence of physical trauma.
Jones filed a wrongful death lawsuit in 2015. The case was settled in 2016, and Jones was paid $2 million by Los Angeles County. She is currently trying to get a murder case reopened, according to her lawyer Dennis Wilson.
Horton’s autopsy report currently states suicide as well as “undetermined factors” for cause of death, following an additional investigation by the coroner performing the autopsy.
“He didn’t die from natural causes,” Jones told ABC News Prime’s Morgan Norwood. “He didn’t take his own life. His life was stolen.”
The death of George Floyd in May 2020, which was eventually ruled a homicide, has cast the profession of medical examiners into the spotlight as differing autopsy reports and allegations of racial bias prompted a prolonged debate among members of the profession.
Researchers say there are long-standing flaws in the “science of death,” that disproportionately impact Black and Latinx inmates.
In a report published earlier last month by two labs at UCLA, the Carceral Ecologies Lab and the BioCritical Studies Lab, researchers reviewed the autopsies in 59 cases of death in Los Angeles County jails between 2009 and 2019. Of those, 26 “natural death” cases that were reviewed, 65% were Black and 23% were Latinx.
They found that 85% of the “natural death” cases involved inmates with an alleged history of mental illness and more than half included evidence of “physical violence on the body.”
The alleged mental illness ranged from medical histories of depression or schizophrenia to officials noting that the inmate demonstrated mental confusion or aggressive behavior, according to lead researcher on the study Dr. Terence Keel.
The study, the researchers write, “shows that the majority of Black and Latinx men are not dying from “natural causes,” but from the actions of jail deputies and carceral staff.”
They draw this conclusion based on the presence of evidence of physical violence on the body, as well as the fact that the inmates’ alleged mental illness could have been a precipitating event or factor.
In John Horton’s case, it was the evidence of physical violence on his body that led his mother to file the lawsuit.
Yet another factor researchers assert is the intertwinement of law enforcement and forensic science.
The UCLA researchers found that law enforcement officials were present during the autopsies of 51 of the 59 cases they reviewed. (The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner disputed in a statement that it withheld other autopsies requested by the researchers.)
“These are either detectives from the sheriff’s department or officers themselves that are in the room during the effort to actually do the autopsy and we see this as a conflict of interest,” Keel told ABC News.
The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner also disputed this allegation in their statement, writing that “the allegation that DMEC and its personnel are unduly influenced by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is false.”
“The DMEC is separate from any law enforcement agency in the county and exercises its own independent judgment when conducting death investigations and concluding the cause and manner of death without any influence from other agencies.”
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement to ABC News that “LASD does not make determinations on manner and cause of death but does conduct extensive internal inquiries into every death which happens within one of its jail facilities.”
Los Angeles is one of 10 counties in California in which the coroner’s office and sheriff’s office are separate. A new bill waiting to be considered by the California State Senate would separate the medical examiner’s office from the sheriff’s office in the remaining 48 counties.
“The best system of death investigation is one in which medical examiners and coroners are independent from law enforcement,” Dr. Kathryn Pinneri, the president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, told ABC News.”I personally would support the separation of medical examiners/coroners from law enforcement in any jurisdiction.”
Another bill, AB-2761, waiting to be considered by the California State Senate would require a death certificate to state whether the person died in law enforcement custody and whether it was at the hands of law enforcement officials.
“California is one of the few states that allow the coroner’s duties to be combined with the sheriff’s duties,” the fact sheet for AB-2761 states. “This presents a potential conflict of interest, particularly when a coroner is tasked with investigating a death that occurred at the hands of law enforcement in custody.”
A study released last year in the scientific journal The Lancet found that 55% of fatal encounters with the police between 1980 and 2018 were misclassified in the U.S. National Vital Statistics System. Misclassified in this context means the cause of death was recorded incorrectly. The study cross-referenced the National Vital Statistics System with three crowd-sourced databases which record police violence.
The margins were noticeably higher in deaths of non-Hispanic Black people, with a misclassification rate of 59.5%.
“AB 2761 would ensure greater transparency in the recording of death when it occurs at the hands of public safety officials,” the bill’s fact-sheet states.
Some researchers have also found racial bias among medical examiners which may impact the results of autopsy reports.
A study published last year examined the question of racial bias in medical examiners by evaluating two sets of data. First, they looked at 10 years of death certificates for children under 12 in Nevada, in which the cause of death was “unnatural“ and characterized as either accidental or homicide. They found that forensic pathologists, which in some states are interchangeable with medical examiners, more frequently ruled in those cases that the cause of death was “homicide” versus “accident” in Black children compared to white children.
The researchers, who published the study in the peer-reviewed publication Journal of Forensic Sciences, also conducted an “experimental” survey of more than 100 medical examiners. They found that examiners, who were given identical medical information about a child’s death yet different contextual clues to their race, were five times more likely to rule the cause of death as a “homicide” versus an “accident” when told the child was African-American and that the primary caretaker was the mother’s boyfriend.
“Even highly trained professional scientists can be biased in their decisions” and the cognitive bias can emerge from context such as the race of the child, the researchers concluded from evaluating both the death certificate and experimental survey data.
