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Sugar Cookie

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A white police officer in Texas fatally shot a black woman inside her home after officers were called to do a welfare check, according to authorities.

Atatiana Koquice Jefferson, 28, of Fort Worth was killed by an unidentified police officer with the Fort Worth Police Department on Saturday morning.

62-year-old James Smith, Jefferson's neighbor, called the local non-emergency number after he noticed her front door was open and lights were on around 2.25am.

He knew Jefferson was supposed to be home with her 8-year-old nephew.

I'm shaken. I'm mad. I'm upset. And I feel it's partly my fault,' Smith told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

'If I had never dialed the police department, she'd still be alive.'

Fifteen minutes after authorities arrived to the scene, Smith her a gun shot and watched several officers rush Jefferson's home.

According to a statement from authorities, officers responded to Smith's call and arrived to the 1200 block of East Allen Avenue.

In police bodycam footage that has been released, the officer is seen walking around the perimeters of the home and looking through windows inside the residence.

At one point the officer pulls out a flashlight when he approaches a dark area of the house and appears to gain entrance into her backyard.

Seconds later the officer looks inside a dark window, draws his gun and yells, 'put your hands up! Show me your hands!'

He then shots at the victim almost immediately.

Authorities say the officer perceived a threat and after firing his weapon went inside the home to administer emergency care.

The statement says officers found a firearm, but it was not revealed if Jefferson was anywhere near the weapon at the time of the incident.

Jefferson succumbed to her injuries and died at the scene.
 
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Oh, DFW Metroplex - you'd think every LEA in Texas would have had better training to prevent this from happening, yet here we go again, just one county over and around 38 miles West from Dallas in Ft. Worth.

I'd have had at least one firearm too if some unknown person(s) were looking in my windows at 3 AMish with flashlights, and without announcing themselves as LEO's at night or attempting to knock on the door, which would normally be the first method of checking to see if one is home and okay at that hour of the morning in a drive by wellness check.
:banghead:
 
You found a weapon there, but I would tell you, if you showed up in my backyard at night shining a flashlight around, I would have my weapon too.

Not only that, this is Texas, where the right to own a gun is taken more seriously than pretty much anything else. If her gun was legally owned, she was just doing what Texas wants her to do: use her constitutional right to bear arms. But now it sounds like it’s being framed as a suspicious move on her part. It sounds like victim blaming, almost. Like, “Well, what did she expect? She had a gun!”

This whole case makes me so sick and sad. I fear there will be no justice here. Although you know that if the cop is female or a POC, prison most certainly awaits!
 
Yeah that cop has some explaining to do...

L I N K

(emphasis mine)
Woman killed in own home when Fort Worth officer shoots her, police and witness say

Firing through a window, a white Fort Worth officer fatally shot a black woman inside her home early Saturday after police were called to the house because its doors were open, according to police and the neighbor who summoned them.

Atatiana Jefferson, 28, died in a bedroom, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office.

...

Body-worn camera video police released shows two officers using flashlights to check the perimeter of the house, inspecting two doors that are open with closed screen doors. At the back of house, one officer appears to see a figure through a dark window, and he quickly twists his body to the left.

“Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” he shouts through the window, his gun drawn. He then fires a single shot through the window.

In the video, he does not identify himself as an officer.

Jefferson was playing video games with her nephew when they heard what they believed to be a prowler outside, her relatives’ attorney said. When she went to the window to see what was going on, she was shot, the attorney said.

Story continues...


 
Texas has a serious cops shooting people in their own house problem and Dallas ft worth seems to be the nucleus. The one in Katy where the cop lied and they busted in and shot the guy and his wife and they come back with well there was a small amount of cocaine and weed trying to use that as justification was twisted. They did the same with the cop shooting the guy in his apartment " thinking it was her apartment " saying he had a small amount of weed. So what they weren't caught dealing anything and the cops were at fault. It pisses me off.
 
I've seen the video. He gave about 2 seconds for the alledged "intruder" to comply. It would be humanly impossible for her to do so. Officer is new to Fort Worth PD, and I would certainly be interested in learning about his career history.

I feel really badly for the neighbor who called. He thought he was doing the right thing and it went off the rails so badly. We have some of our neighbors' phone numbers and we call them if we see something hinky.
 
I feel really badly for the neighbor who called. He thought he was doing the right thing and it went off the rails so badly. We have some of our neighbors' phone numbers and we call them if we see something hinky.

I have numbers for several of my neighbors and we text each other if we see something hinky. The guy across the street, one night I came home late and his garage door was wide open, full of tools, all the lights on. I messaged him, he fixed it. Happened twice more in the next week and he was puzzled. Finally, he figured out that his toddler had just grown big enough to reach the switch inside the house.
 
Officer has resigned ahead of being fired.

Breaking: The officer who fatally shot Atatiana Jefferson in her home Saturday morning has resigned, Fort Worth interim police chief Ed Kraus said Monday. The officer may face criminal charges, Kraus said.

Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price said the killing of Jefferson was unjustified.

“I’m so sorry. On behalf of the entire city of Fort Worth, I’m sorry,” Price told reporters Monday. “To Atatiana’s family, it’s unacceptable. There is nothing that can justify what happened on Saturday morning. Nothing.”
[....]

 
Officer has resigned ahead of being fired.




On the one hand, I get the no lights and sirens because the neighbor did report that the door was open. Had it been a real home invasion, I personally would not want lights and sirens. The intruders may decide its better to kill the witness and run. That being said, I think he was too jumpy and he made a horrible mistake. From his perspective, giving the benefit of the doubt, he may have thought she was an intruder harming a family. It was dark the door was open and he saw a person with a gun pointed at him. I don’t think it was racially motivated in anyway. I do think it’s awful and was likely a horrible mistake with heartbreaking consequences.
 
I think the cop handled it wrong from the get go. The neighbor called to ask for a welfare check due to an open front door. He did not say he saw an intruder. The cop apparently never did the welfare check (where you talk to the person), either by knocking, ringing the bell, or going inside. Instead he started looking around the outside, and when he noticed a person inside, he instantly killed them.

The cop was wrong every step of the way. I'm not positive race was a factor, possibly just stupidity and fear.
 
Fort Worth Officer Charged With Murder for Shooting Woman in Her Home

FORT WORTH — A former Fort Worth police officer who fatally shot a woman while she was at home playing video games over the weekend was arrested and charged with murder on Monday, the latest development in a case that has sparked national outrage and renewed demands for police accountability.

The officer, Aaron Y. Dean, who is white, resigned earlier on Monday, hours before the police chief had planned to fire him, amid growing anger and frustration in the community that the woman, Atatiana Jefferson, had become yet another black person killed by the police, this time in the safety of her own home.

Police officers were responding to a call from a concerned neighbor when Ms. Jefferson, 28, was shot through her bedroom window.
 
Amazing things those body cams are.

Part of me wants to give kudos to the Chief. By all accounts so far he's not one of those 'Blue Line' types.

But my cynical side tells me that if it wasn't for the body cam they would have just circled the wagons and waited for the criticism to die out.

The police arrested and charged him with generic murder. Good start.

Let's see what the D.A. or the Grand Jury charge him with.
 
[....]
According to the arrest warrant affidavit, Jefferson had been playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew when police responded to her home early Saturday morning.

To this point, Dean has not provided his account of the fatal shooting, written or otherwise. But, investigators did interview Jefferson’s nephew about what happened.
[....]
Jefferson’s nephew said his aunt “heard noises coming from outside and she took her handgun from her purse.” She raised her handgun and pointed it toward the window. Then she was shot and fell to the ground, the affidavit states.

Chief Kraus said a possible breakdown in communication about the neighbor’s initial call for a wellness check is being examined.

“They believed they were responding to an open structure call, and not just the welfare check,” he said. “We are looking at bringing in an independent third party group to come in and evaluate our policies, our practices and our training to make sure that we are above best practice standards.”

Chief Kraus says they are looking into several aspects being called into question internally. Including the early decision to release a photo of the weapon found inside Jefferson's home near her body without providing context.

The chief on Monday said Jefferson was a licensed gun owner, and from the affidavit, it appears possible she was holding it in self-defense.

"The gun was found just inside the room,” Kraus said. “And it would make sense that she would have a gun if she felt threatened."
[....]
Jefferson’s siblings also addressed the media Tuesday morning. While they think the arrest and murder charge are appropriate, they want the investigation to go deeper and believe a change in police training is crucial.

“Yes he’s going to take his punishment but the system failed him. Whoever senior was with him, who was out with him failed him. Whoever sent him out failed him. The training failed him,” said Adarius Carr, Jefferson’s brother. “There’s a lot that has to get fixed. The city failed him. So, when training is inadequate you have to fix the training.”

Jefferson’s family has reviewed the body camera video and they’re calling for other images from the release of other images from the scene, including the body camera video from Dean's partner at the scene.

Attorney Jim Lane is said to be representing Dean, but he declined to comment on the case.

 
A white Fort Worth police officer who shot and killed a black woman in her home last month disclosed during his police department job interview in that he was attracted to what he perceived to be the action and adventure of working in law enforcement, that he was charged with simple assault in 2004 and would have "no problem" taking a life.

Aaron Dean, 35, acknowledged during the 2017 hiring process that he touched a female friend inappropriately in a library at the University of Texas at Arlington, and said he pleaded no-contest to the misdemeanor charge, according to a video of the interview first obtained by NBC 5 Investigates.
[....]
In the interview, Dean told the panel, "There was a young lady at the school flirting with me. I wanted to respond to see where it would go. It escalated a bit. I touched her inappropriately. It was an inappropriate action. And she, of course, took exception to it and rightfully so."

Dean told the panel he pleaded no contest to a charge of simple assault, paid a fine, and learned from his mistake.

"What's changed since then is being careful about my actions and how they're perceived by others," he said.

Dean graduated from UTA in 2011 with a bachelor's degree in physics and joined the Fort Worth police force in April 2018. The charge from more than a decade earlier wouldn't prevent Dean from becoming an officer under Fort Worth's civil service regulations.

In a police evaluation in April, Dean's supervisor commended him for working at the level of more experienced officers, exhorting him to "keep up the good work." But in a May 2018 performance review, the supervisor wrote that Dean had poor communication skills, sometimes suffered from tunnel vision and had missed calls for help over the radio. Another review accused him of being evasive rather than owing up to doing wrong.

Dean's attorney, Jim Lane, has not commented on his client's state of mind or his response to the murder charge, and the judge overseeing Dean's case last week issued a gag order barring the parties from discussing it publicly.

During his job interview, Dean reportedly said he had aspired to join the military and saw becoming a police officer as a "way to do some of those same things without having to deploy overseas." Dean said he wanted to serve the public and liked "the action and adventure" that he believed came with being an officer. He also said he would have "no problem" using lethal force if necessary.

 
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