VOL. 130 | NO. 203 | Monday, October 19, 2015
TBI Probe Of Fatal Police Shootings Becomes Policy
By Bill Dries
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has become the go-to agency for the Memphis Police Department in the last year when it comes to investigations of police conduct. And that’s a policy.
MPD director Toney Armstrong, Shelby County Sheriff Bill Oldham and District Attorney General Amy Weirich announced Thursday, Oct. 14, they have signed an agreement with the TBI to automatically turn all such investigations over to the TBI.
The TBI will turn over its findings to Weirich’s office without making any recommendations or drawing legal conclusions. Those conclusions will be up to her.
The agreement is something Mayor A C Wharton said he and Armstrong have sought as an automatic step in incidents in which a police officer or officers shoot and kill someone in the line of duty.
Wharton publicly called for the policy as Weirich turned over the investigation of the July police shooting of Darrius Stewart to the TBI. Stewart died in the encounter with Memphis police officer Connor Schilling.
The agreement expands the move to the TBI to cover deaths of those detained by sheriff’s deputies and police officers while in a city, county or private jail “when the death is surrounded by unusual or questionable circumstances, or if the death is sudden and the deceased had not been under immediate medical supervision.”
The agreement does not apply to Shelby County’s suburban police departments.
It requires Memphis police or sheriff’s deputies to “secure a crime scene perimeter with access limited to emergency medical personnel, medical examiner personnel and TBI personnel; detain and hold any arrested persons pending the arrival of TBI personnel, and identify and separate all eye witnesses for subsequent interview by TBI.”
The TBI is currently investigating the actions of two members of the Memphis Police Organized Crime Unit, Darryl Dotson and Timothy Goodwin. Armstrong suspended both officers last week with pay.
The TBI is investigating the actions of Dotson and Goodwin in the immediate aftermath of the 2012 fatal shooting of police officer Martoiya Lang as the OCU was serving a warrant. The investigation focuses on what happened when Dotson and Goodwin arrested Treveno Campbell at the scene.
Campbell was shot and wounded in the incident, and there are conflicting accounts of when police shot him. He goes on trial in November for Lang’s death.
Weirich requested the TBI investigation Oct. 6. It wasn’t made public for another week.
The TBI is not involved in the investigation into the Oct. 11 fatal shooting of police officer Terence Olridge.
Olridge died while he was off duty and about to report for work in a gunfire exchange with his Cordova neighbor, Lorenzo Clark.
Clark is charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.
The police investigation continues, but for now Armstrong said that will be the only charge Clark faces because there isn’t enough evidence to charge Clark with murder.
Closed book
Even as local leaders have talked about the need for transparency in investigations of these kinds of incidents, TBI remains a closed book when it comes to revealing how it reaches its conclusions. Tennessee law specifically forbids the TBI from releasing any information about its investigative work.
Despite that – and a recommendation from former county commissioner Mike Carpenter to Wharton earlier this year to avoid using the TBI because of the state law – Armstrong said in a written statement that he welcomes the use of the agency on a broader basis.
“This agreement is just another step in the right direction to ensure transparency for all parties involved,” he said.
Sheriff Bill Oldham described the terms of the agreement as a “fluid document.”
“As the agencies and the D.A. work together, the document may be modified to improve the process and maintain the transparency to solidify public confidence,” he added.
The TBI got the Stewart investigation from Weirich a week after his death. It turned over a 600-page report of its findings to Weirich in September.
Weirich has met with Stewart’s family, but her office has not commented on specifics of the review.
State Rep. Antonio Parkinson requested a legal opinion from the Tennessee Attorney General’s office on whether the Memphis City Council could use its subpoena power to get TBI records on the case.
Attorney General Herbert Slatery’s opinion held that the council could not because the state law says such records can be made public “only in compliance with a subpoena or an order of a court of record.”
Because there is no comma after the word subpoena, Slatery said the intent of the law requires that it be a subpoena from a court of record.