Andrew Brown Jr. Shooting: Videos Cast Doubt on Police Use of Force
A New York Times review of bodycam footage showing the fatal police shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. in April raises questions about whether officers were in imminent danger when they used lethal force as he drove away to avoid arrest.
The officers have not been charged in the shooting. R. Andrew Womble, the district attorney for North Carolina’s First Judicial District, determined that they were justified in their actions because Mr. Brown was using his car as a “deadly weapon.” He said police body-camera videos “clearly illustrate the officers who used deadly force on Andrew Brown Jr. did so reasonably” and only when their lives were in danger.
Mr. Brown’s family members and their lawyers have described the shooting as an “execution.”
A review of slowed-down bodycam footage by The Times shows that 13 of the 14 gunshots — including the fatal one — were fired as Mr. Brown was driving away from officers, not at them. The footage was presented by the district attorney at a press conference and is from four officers’ cameras.
Sheriff Tommy Wooten II of Pasquotank County said that “while the deputies did not break the law, we all wish things could have gone differently. Much differently.”
Here’s what the videos of the 20-second interaction show.
Roanoke Ave.
Residence of
Michael Anthony
Gordon Sr.
Unmarked
police car
Perry St.
Brown’s car
hits tree
Sheriff’s
pick-up truck
Brown’s
car
Residence of
Andrew Brown Jr.
Roanoke Ave.
Residence of
Michael Anthony
Gordon Sr.
Unmarked
police car
Perry St.
Brown’s car
hits tree
Sheriff’s
pick-up truck
Brown’s
car
Residence of
Andrew Brown Jr.
Roanoke Ave.
Residence of
Michael Anthony
Gordon Sr.
Unmarked
police car
Perry St.
Brown’s car
hits tree
Sheriff’s
pick-up truck
Brown’s
car
Residence of
Andrew Brown Jr.
The police officers arrive in a Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office pickup truck at Mr. Brown’s house at 8:23 a.m. on Wednesday, April 21, to execute search and arrest warrants. According to the prosecutor, the police team had been briefed that morning that Mr. Brown, 42, had previous convictions and a history of resisting arrest.
Mr. Brown is sitting in his vehicle outside his house after returning from a drive that morning, the prosecutor added. The officers approach him with their weapons drawn, shouting orders at him.
Mr. Brown does not comply with officers’ orders. The situation escalates.
As two officers reach the driver’s-side door, Mr. Brown backs up the vehicle, and grazes but does not injure an officer.
Mr. Brown ignores officers’ repeated commands to stop the car, and lurches the vehicle forward while steering it sharply to the left, putting officers at risk.
The car initially moves toward the same officer who had been grazed moments earlier. This officer does not move away from the vehicle, but takes a step into Mr. Brown’s path. It’s unclear if the officer is trying to obstruct Mr. Brown’s escape, or trying to evade the car.
The officer briefly places his left hand on the hood of the car, and this is when another officer fires a shot that Mr. Womble said “entered the front windshield” of the car and was not fatal. That contradicts a preliminary internal investigation report, which found that no bullet went through the windshield.
The video shows that there is a brief pause in shooting while Mr. Brown steers his car between two officers. At this point, as Mr. Brown accelerates and drives away, three officers fire 13 more shots into the side and rear of Mr. Brown’s car. One of the shots is fatal, hitting Mr. Brown in the back of his head. His car crashes into a tree 50 yards from his home.
In justifying the police's use of lethal force, Mr. Womble said Mr. Brown “drove recklessly and endangered the officers." He also argued that “they could not simply let him go.”
But the legalities around this can get complicated. “The Supreme Court has never authorized the use of deadly force simply because someone is resisting arrest or fleeing,” Paul Butler, a law professor at Georgetown University and former federal prosecutor, said in an interview about the footage. He also said that “sometimes the best policing is to let the suspect go.”
The officers’ actions may have violated their department’s guidelines. The Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office’s use-of-force policy states that shooting at a moving vehicle is “rarely effective,” and that officers should fire at a moving vehicle only “when the deputy reasonably believes there are no other reasonable means available to avert the imminent threat of the vehicle.”
Seth Stoughton, a law professor and policing expert at the University of South Carolina, questioned the officers’ actions at the time Mr. Brown was speeding away. “Deadly force is only justified while there is an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm,” he said. “Once the vehicle has driven past the officers and they are now to the side of it, or behind it, as it's going away from them, there is no more imminent threat.”
Beyond the shooting of Mr. Brown, the videos show that officers may have placed some of their colleagues and others at risk. In their line of fire was a neighbor’s house and an unmarked white police minivan.
Mr. Womble said that while the white minivan was in the path of the bullets, there was no danger to the officers inside.
Michael Anthony Gordon Sr., whose house was in the line of fire, told The Times that a bullet from the shooting entered his kitchen, and that no one was home at the time. Mr. Womble stated that one shot fired by the police was believed to have ricocheted, and hit the house.
The district attorney’s decision not to press charges closes a state-level criminal case, though a federal civil rights case is ongoing.
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