Private Security, Law Enforcement Officers Arrested in Old UOF Cases
December 25 2020
Martin Rivera was a security officer in California in 2019 when he shot a man at an apartment complex after he said the man was threatening him with a wooden club.
Police, brought no charges, saying that it was a case of self-defense.
In November 2020, Rivera was charged with aggravated assault after the shooting was given a second look by an assistant district attorney who had previously questioned the decision of the police.
Had the man died, the security officer could have faced a more severe charge of manslaughter or even murder.
Each year, private security officers fatally wound between 150-300 persons and are involved in more than 3000 use of force incidents according to Private Officer International, a private security and law enforcement association.
Police officers too are having their use of force cases scrutinized and re-reviewed from as far back as five years ago.
An officer with the upstate New York village of Elmira has just been charged with second-degree assault after being involved with a response to a combative suspect who died in an altercation with police in August 2019.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who acts as a special prosecutor in many police use-of-force cases in the state, announced the indictment Wednesday morning:
“Last week, the grand jury voted, and returned an indictment against Elmira Police Officer Eduardo Oropallo on charges of Assault in the Second Degree.”
The series of events that led up to the death of 47-year-old Gary Strobridge began on August 22, 2019, when Elmira police received a report that a man was behaving erratically on the roof of a two-story home on Horner Street.
When officers arrived at the scene, the emotionally disturbed suspect climbed off the roof, was “acting unusual” and started yelling and chasing his neighbor, according to the original police report.
Police said Strobridge “was clearly a danger to himself and/or others” so they attempted to take him into custody under the Mental Hygiene law. The suspect resisted their efforts and allegedly punched one of the officers in the face, resulting in a physical altercation between him and police.
One officer deployed a stun gun before Strobridge was finally subdued and transported to a hospital.
Police brawled with the combative suspect yet again, at which point Strobridge suddenly fell limp and unresponsive.
Oropallo, a U.S. Army veteran, faces up to seven years in prison if convicted.
Oropallo is a Notre Dame graduate, served with the New York City Police Department and the Corning Police Department before joining the EPD in March 2014, WENY reported.
A San Francisco officer was also recently indicted over the year-old, nonfatal shooting of a home-invasion suspect while defending a woman and her infant.
The suspect, Jamaica Hampton, 25, was also indicted, though San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin did not say what charges the men face over the Dec. 7 incident in the city’s Mission district.
In a brief statement, Boudin said the indictment was returned Friday. He said he would provide more information when an arraignment is scheduled, and he encouraged Hampton and the officer, Christopher Flores, to turn themselves in.
In a statement last December, police said the shooting occurred after authorities were alerted to multiple attempted break-ins at an apartment.
After two officers, Flores and Sterling Hayes, identified Hampton as a potential suspect, Hampton allegedly struck Flores in the head with a vodka bottle repeatedly. The alleged assault injured Flores and caused him to lose his baton, police said.
Hampton’s lawyer, Danielle Harris, said Monday that he was experiencing a “crisis state due to a pre-existing behavioral health condition” when he encountered the officers.
Body camera video appears to show Hampton running away from Flores and Hayes while they order him to the ground. The statement said officers also used pepper spray, which had no effect.
After Hampton allegedly charged Hayes with a bottle, the officer opened fire, striking Hampton, who fell to the ground, police said.
The video shows that several seconds later, after Hayes announced, “shots fired,” Flores fires again at Hampton.
In the statement, police said the final bullet was fired after Hampton “rose to his knees and then began to move” in the officer’s direction.
In Nashville, a police officer who was hired after fatally shooting someone as a security guard two years ago was charged with second-degree murder in the shooting outside the restaurant where he worked.
Nathan Glass, the 26-year-old white officer, faces an indictment in the October 2018 death of Deangelo Knox, a 25-year-old Black man who was engaged in a shootout with another car outside the Nashville restaurant, named The Pharmacy. The indictment was filed in Davidson County Criminal Court on Thursday.
In the months ahead of the shooting, Glass had been admitted to the police academy and his entry into the program was paused due to the investigation into the incident, the police department said.
He was allowed to attend the academy in March 2019 after an assistant district attorney the month before determined prosecutors couldn’t overcome Glass’s claim of self-defense and defense of others because, among other things, surveillance video was “of insufficient quality” to confirm or contradict Glass’s statement that Knox’s gun was pointed in his direction.
“Every case is subject to review,” District Attorney Glenn Funk’s spokesperson Steve Hayslip said.
Glass, meanwhile, was decommissioned of his policing authority on Oct. 27 by Interim Police Chief John Drake, pending an investigation by the Office of Professional Accountability into social media posts by Glass in 2013 brought up in a prior NAACP news conference on Oct. 20.
“The shooting was unjustifiable,” NAACP of Nashville President Sheryl Guinn said during the news conference Thursday. “He had no reason to be in that situation at all. Nathan Glass was in a restaurant and all he needed to do was secure the restaurant and call the police.”
“The District Attorney’s Office had earlier conducted an extensive review of this case and concluded that ‘the video does corroborate that Mr. Glass had a reasonable belief that his life and the lives of others were at risk,’” Raybin wrote in a statement. “We agree with that assessment.”
As community activists continue to voice concerns and demand justice, many district attorney offices across the country have begun reviewing use of force cases involving private security and law enforcement even after they have been originally cleared of all wrongdoing.
In some cases, charges are now being filed against the officers.
An emphasis on re-evaluations of officer-involved shootings and other use-of-force scenarios could have a crippling impact on the law enforcement career field, according to many in police union leadership.
