Akron police face questions after officer fatally shoots teenager

Newly released video of the fatal November police shooting of Jazmir Tucker, a 15-year-old high school student in Akron, Ohio, has led to pointed questions from the city’s mayor and the teenager’s family about how officers handled the incident.

The footage published by the city Thursday provided a limited view of the shooting, and it gave little context about the events leading up to it. Akron officials said officers had heard shots fired near them on Thanksgiving night, Nov. 28, and had exited their vehicle to investigate when they encountered the teenager. One of the officers then shot the teenager with a rifle. Mayor Shammas Malik said a gun was recovered from inside a zipped pocket on Tucker’s clothing.

“Given that, why did the officer decide to use his weapon?” Malik asked in a statement that also expressed concerns about other aspects of the police response, including the amount of time that passed before officers appeared to provide medical aid to Tucker.

The president of the local police union, Brian Lucey, defended the actions of the officers, who he said were “forced to make a split-second decision.” He said he believed the ongoing investigation, which is being conducted by Ohio’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, would find that the officers had been justified.

The shooting was the latest in a series of incidents in Akron, a city of about 190,000 people in northeast Ohio, to bring questions about how police officers there use force and treat Black men and boys.

In perhaps the most widely known of those cases, a grand jury decided last year not to indict eight Akron officers involved in the 2022 death of Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Black man who was shot dozens of times after an attempted traffic stop and chase. The city recently reached a $4.8 million settlement with Walker’s family.

Stanley Jackson, a lawyer for Tucker’s family, criticized the city’s leaders Friday for not doing more before the latest shooting to change police practices. He described the teenager’s death as part of an alarming pattern in Akron, and accused the Police Department of weaponizing “Jaz’s skin and his youth.”

“You give someone a high-powered rifle, and then they’re not properly trained, and there’s a culture to assault and kill Black males — that’s the tragedy,” Jackson said.

Though much about the shooting remains unclear, a rough outline of events emerged from descriptions by city officials, as well as by Tucker’s family and their lawyers.

Ashley Green, Tucker’s mother, told local reporters that her son, a high school freshman who loved basketball, had celebrated Thanksgiving with his family — laughing, eating, enjoying their company. That night, Jackson said, Tucker was walking to his brother’s house when he encountered police.

Akron officials said officers were parked and working on an incident report around 11 p.m. when they heard gunshots, left their cruiser to investigate and saw Tucker. Malik said the officers did not activate their body cameras, and that those cameras did not turn on until they were automatically triggered by another police car approaching the scene. There is no audio footage from the body cameras of the events before the shots were fired, though officials described a brief foot pursuit taking place.

Two shell casings were later found nearby, officials said, though it was not clear if those rounds were fired from the gun found in Tucker’s pocket.

After the shooting, the videos show, officers kept their guns drawn and for several minutes shouted commands for Tucker to move his hands. The officers voiced concerns to one another about a possible weapon in the teenager’s possession. They eventually approached Tucker, searched him and appeared to provide aid.

Malik and the family’s lawyers said officers should have moved in and helped more quickly.

“In hindsight, the amount of time that expired between the shooting and the initiation of physical aid to Jazmir is deeply troubling to me,” Malik said. “I want to be clear that any unreasonable delay in the rendering of aid by police officers is unacceptable and has no place in Akron.”

Lucey, the police union leader, said the mayor was wrong to question the officers’ actions.

“We all know gun violence has been a problem here in the city of Akron, and these officers are out doing their job,” Lucey said in a video published on social media. He added: “And the mayor’s first actions were to criticize them. That’s not acceptable.”

Akron’s police chief, Brian Harding, said he understood the concerns about Tucker’s death and supported a call by the mayor to review his department’s use-of-force policy.

“Even after viewing the videos, there are many things we do not know,” Harding said in a statement. “I know that there are many in our community who will have questions and concerns related to the timeliness of the body-worn camera activation, the delay in rendering aid and the shooting itself. I hear those concerns, and my hope is that the investigation will provide more clarity.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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