Jeremy Dear was fired because his body camera wasn’t turned on when he fatally shot suspected car thief Mary Hawkes in 2014. His case comes as police departments nationwide struggle with implementing the camera technology.
Jeremy Dear
Albuquerque Police Department
Mary Hawkes
Last year, Albuquerque police officer Jeremy Dear became the city's first law enforcement official fired for failing to activate his on-body camera during a fatal shooting incident. In April, Dear had shot Mary Hawkes, a 19-year-old suspected car thief, in the line of duty.
Albuquerque Police Chief Gordon Eden fired the six-year veteran in December, following a months-long internal investigation, for "insubordination," "untruthfulness," and for violating department policy.
Dear wants his job back. Starting Wednesday, he will plead his case before the City of Albuquerque Personnel Board. A decision won't be made for at least 90 days, Dear's lawyer Tom Grover told BuzzFeed News.
At his hearing, Dear will argue that he did not break the department's policy of recording every incident with a body camera, because it simply didn't exist at the time of the shooting. (BuzzFeed News has asked the Albuquerque Police for a copy of this policy and when it went into effect and is waiting to hear back.)
Dear will also argue that it was the department, not him, who has been untruthful and misleading with the public. In the wake of the Hawkes incident, video surfaced that showed Dear telling department investigators that his body camera came unplugged before the shooting. Yet the department withheld Dear's side of the story and maintained that it was still unclear why Dear's camera didn't record the incident.
Dear's hearing is more than one former officer's plea to get back his badge, gun, and uniform. Inside the proceedings, witnesses will rehash one of the department's most mysterious killings to date.
Outside, the Albuquerque police are still reeling from the U.S. Department of Justice's scathing April 2014 report that detailed a pattern of excessive force by the department.
The case could also have implications for police departments around the country. Many departments have outfitted their patrol officers with body cameras and are struggling to create and enforce policies for the new devices in the wake of outrage provoked by police shootings of unarmed black men across the country, in which few officers have been indicted, let alone punished.
In a statement following Dear's firing, Grover said, "What this department has done today is made it clear to every officer out there that you will record every encounter all the time or you will be fired and that is not good police policy."
Grover, a former APD cop, says Dear's case is "ground zero" for investigations into police using body cameras around the country.
"It's a flawed policy," he said. "There are simply some places you can't record people."
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1EQjvxT
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