Crawford police chief under fire for shooting
by Frank Graham (North Platte Bulletin) - 2/26/2008
Attorneys for the police chief of a small northwest Nebraska town say their client was acting in self-defense when he shot and killed a 16-year-old boy.
The police chief and game warden came upon the teen in an abandoned bar. The boy pointed a gun at them and they fired.
Now Chief Richard Thompson, 55, is charged with second-degree assault and could face up to five years in prison if convicted. He would also be fired from his job and would no longer be eligible to be a law enforcement officer in Nebraska.
A grand jury indicted Thompson in November on charges that he acted recklessly in Jesse Britton's death Oct. 3, 2007.
Attorneys for Thompson are now fighting that decision, saying mistakes were made in the grand jury deliberation process.
Britton, who had dropped out of Crawford High School just four days before the shooting, was a troubled teen who and a suspect in a series of burglaries. He had an extensive juvenile record.
Britton had been to juvenile court 16 times, according to court records. He had been convicted of numerous offenses including possession of alcohol and tobacco, being uncontrollable, criminal trespassing, criminal mischief and assault.
Britton lived in Crawford, population 1,150, in northwest Nebraska, just three miles east of Fort Robinson State Park.
Britton had been removed from his home by the Department of Health and Human Services and placed in various shelters. He had even been sent to youth detention at YRTC in Kearney in the past.
Britton was unhappy, according to friends, and was burglarizing homes because he wanted to be removed from his home. Britton lived with his mother, Pat Britton, but was not getting along with her.
Friends said Britton decided to commit a series of felony burglaries so he would be shipped back to YRTC in Kearney. He was eager to get caught, they said, and knew it would take felonies to insure his commitment at YRTC.
Britton had stopped attending school but was not staying at home the week before the shooting. Britton had also made threats to kill the Crawford school superintendent, a fellow student and Thompson. Those threats had caused the school to go into lockdown.
The pressure was on
Those 12 burglaries in the fall of 2007 were a problem for Thompson, the police chief. The victims and other Crawford residents wanted an arrest. They wanted the burglaries solved.
Thompson wanted to arrest Britton, his main suspect, but had not been able to locate him.
Thompson and Britton were well acquainted through all the boy’s brushes with the law.
On Oct. 3, 2007, Thompson received a tip that Britton was holed up in the abandoned Frontier Bar in downtown Crawford.
Thompson suspected that Britton might be armed since a handgun had been stolen in one of the burglaries just a few days before.
That morning Thompson was investigating a burglary at a local restaurant when Dan Kling of the Nebraska Game and Parks Division walked in to eat breakfast. Thompson asked Kling if he would help him search the abandoned bar for Britton. Kling agreed to help.
Thompson called for two of his three police officers to set a perimeter around the abandoned bar in case Britton ran for it.
Around 10 a.m., they were ready.
Thompson and Kling first noticed that the door had been kicked in. They entered.
The bar was dusty and dark and the electricity had been shut off. The bar had been closed for about a year.
The men began to search the first floor when they heard someone walking upstairs. They decided to investigate.
Up a narrow stairwell was the bar’s office and a storage area. There were no windows in the office so it was completely dark.
Thompson turned on his flashlight, drew his gun and walked up the stairs. Kling waited at the bottom of the stairs until Thompson reached the second floor office. Then he followed.
Shining his light around, Thompson located Britton crouching behind an old desk.
“Show me your hands, show me your hands,” Thompson yelled.
Britton slowly rose from his crouching position and pointed a .22-caliber Ruger pistol directly at Thompson. The gun later turned out to be the stolen gun from a recent burglary. It was not loaded.
“Drop it,” Thompson yelled, “Drop it.”
Then Thompson pulled the trigger on his own gun.
Kling, standing further away, was jolted by the shot and worried that Thompson might have been shot. He turned and began firing.
Thompson fired two more times and hit Britton with his third shot.
Both of Kling’s shots hit Britton.
Any of the three shots could have been fatal. The boy died at the scene.
Grand jury convened
Nebraska law requires any death in police custody or in the process of apprehension be investigated by a grand jury.
A grand jury is body of persons, in this case 16 members, sworn to inquire into crime and bring an accusation, or indictment, against the suspected criminal if warranted. Witnesses must appear before grand juries and are not allowed a defense lawyer. Grand juries are held in secret without a judge present, only the prosecutor who is seeking the indictment.
Grand jurors can question a witness themselves but prosecutors generally run the show, which leads to the old adage that most prosecutors can get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.”
Grand juries are uncommon in Nebraska but are convened whenever someone dies in police custody. Officers are almost never indicted unless the grand jury believes the officer was criminally liable.
Morrill County Attorney Jean Rhodes was appointed special prosecutor. She hired three special investigators - Scottsbluff Police Detective Mark Overman, Sheridan County Sgt. Scott DeCoste and retired Federal Bureau of Investigation Agent Ronald Rawalt of North Platte.
Shortly after the incident, Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said that since Britton had been shot after pointing a gun at the officers and ignoring their orders to drop the weapon, he fully expected the officers to be exonerated.
The grand jury met for seven days, many times into the evening hours. It indicted Thompson for second-degree assault, defined as “recklessly causing bodily injury to another person with a dangerous instrument.”
Thompson was suspended without pay after the incident. After Thompson was charged with the crime, he was released after posting 10 percent of $50,000 and was ordered not to enter the city limits of Crawford without court permission. He was also prohibited him from having any guns in his house.
Thompson lives on a farmstead about two miles out of town. He has not been able to watch his teenage daughter play basketball in Crawford this year.
Meanwhile Pat Britton, the teenager's mother, filed a $1 million claim against the City of Crawford, saying Thompson deprived her son of his rights to due process and fair treatment under the law. The claim said Thompson “failed to follow reasonable procedures, protocols and standards which should have been expected from a reasonable police officer under the circumstances.”
The claim seeking $1 million in damages from Crawford will also be filed in federal court, according Bob Chaloupka, Pat Britton's attorney.
The city has six months to respond to the claim by state statute. If the city takes no action, Pat Britton could file a lawsuit against the City of Crawford.
Chief claims shooting justified
Thompson maintains that he acted in self-defense.
Thompson’s attorneys say the indictment is not supported by facts.
During a court hearing last week, Thompson's attorney Michael Javoronok cited irregularities in the grand jury proceedings that resulted in Thompson’s indictment.
In a motion to dismiss the charge, the defense also questioned the involvement of special investigators Overman, DeCoste and Rawalt in the grand jury proceedings.
The investigators were all present during the grand jury proceedings and even questioned the witnesses, which the defense contends is a violation of the grand jury statutes.
None of the investigators are attorneys and Thompson’s lawyers wonder if Nebraska statutes didn’t prohibit that.
The defense says the presence of the special investigators, questioning of witnesses by special investigators and the special investigators offering their opinions of Thompson's actions resulted in prejudice against his client.
The motion referred to the "antics of at least one of the special investigators before the grand jury" but does not detail what those actions were.
The defense sought transcripts of the grand jury proceedings but Dawes County District Court Judge Brian Silverman declined to turn them over.
According to the motion filed by the defense to dismiss the charges against Thompson, the defense said it needed transcripts of the grand jury proceedings. They say that they know some irregularities that occurred but believe there are many more.
The defense only has a hint of what transpired in that grand jury – the sworn testimony of Thompson and Kling and another one of Thompson’s defense lawyers, Chadron attorney Marty Connealy.
Silverman said he would not rule on the defense's motions to dismiss until he has reviewed transcripts of the grand jury proceedings and all filings. He said he would preserve the secrecy of the grand jury and review the transcripts himself. He will give the defense copies of those sections covering direct questions to Thompson and the defendant's responses.
The defense also questions Rawalt's status as a peace officer. Rawalt was deputized as a Morrill County sheriff's deputy during the investigation. It was also Rawalt who did most of the problematic witness questioning.
“The state admitted irrelevant evidence that so inflamed and excited the passions of the grand jury against the defendant (Thompson) that its decision to indict was not made fairly or impartially,” the defense motion read. “The grand jury’s inconsistent decision to indict the defendant but no Officer Kling is evidence of its bias toward the defendant.”
Rhodes has until Feb. 27 to submit a brief countering the defense's arguments. The defense will then have until March 3 to answer Rhodes' brief.
Terry Waite of North Platte is assisting in the defense.
A community divided
Thompson has served 23 years in law enforcement. He was a Lincoln County sheriff’s deputy from November 1979 to April 1980. He also worked as a police officer in Gothenburg and was the sheriff of Garden County. He also worked in Colorado and Wyoming. He had been police chief in Crawford since 1999. He ran unsuccessfully for Dawes County sheriff in the Republican primary in 2002.
An impromptu vigil for Britton on the evening of the shooting attracted as many as 200 people, local residents said. Some people placed signs on the building where Britton died and wrote messages on the windows.
Other residents complained of police brutality and misconduct.
Dennis Lyons, a Crawford resident who was an outspoken critic of Thompson in the past, said he was not surprised that Thompson had been charged.
Earlier, Patricia Britton had criticized Thompson for singling out her son as a suspect in the string of burglaries without considering other suspects. She believed the chief had a vendetta against her family.
Waite, Thompson’s attorney, said Thompson has children himself and felt sorry for Britton.
The issue has divided the community.
Some residents believe that Thompson was left with little choice when Britton pointed the gun at him. They support the chief and believe he acted in self-defense.
But critics say Thompson was in a hurry to arrest Britton and rushed in without the proper number of men. They say he should have waited and called the Nebraska State Patrol to assist. They believe Thompson could have taken several different courses of action to force Britton to give up.
Critics also charge Thompson didn’t identify himself as an officer as he walked up the stairs and entered the room and that Britton might not have known who it was, especially with a flashlight pointed in his eyes.
Source:
http://www.northplattebulletin.com/index.asp?show=news&action=readStory&storyID=14080&pageID=3Based on the above story, idiot kid commits breaking & entering, then points a weapon at the person tasked by law to deal with such.
Smells like a Darwin Award candidate to me.
