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By James Brown, Jr., Nathan Collins and Taylor Stevens
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism

Sometimes second chances can prove deadly.

A police officer in Minnesota was suspended for threatening to shoot a passenger in the head after an unauthorized high-speed chase. In Paterson, New Jersey, an officer threw a handcuffed woman to the ground and strangled her. And in Little Rock, Arkansas, a patrol officer was allowed to rack up 36 sustained misconduct allegations and at least 65 days of suspension.

Each officer went on to be involved in a deadly encounter with the public. Not in shootings, but in cases where the force – whether physical restraints, blows or weapons such as a Taser – is often referred to as “less lethal.”

Experts believe there are certain past actions – multiple excessive use-of-force cases, domestic violence, mental health concerns – that agencies should not overlook when hiring or retaining officers. However, national disciplinary standards are haphazard and disparate, and early-warning systems meant to identify troubled officers often fail, putting communities at risk.

The Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism, in collaboration with The Associated Press, obtained and examined personnel and disciplinary records, citizen complaints and training and departmental commendations through thousands of public records requests of law enforcement officers from across the United States. These officers were involved in using physical force on a person who later died from 2012 through 2021.

Because disciplinary systems vary greatly from department to department, and not all records are publicly available, true statistical analysis is not possible. But a review of more than 350 officers involved in some 165 deaths during that decade revealed nearly three dozen examples of officers who had previously been disciplined for violent, criminal, or dangerously negligent offenses.

Officers who were disciplined for using stun guns on children, or threatening, strangling or beating handcuffed prisoners. Officers who had committed domestic and sexual assault and were found to have engaged in police cover-ups. Officers who had been previously disciplined for their involvement in other in-custody deaths. Rather than losing their badges, these officers returned to duty, with deadly consequences.

Reporters emailed every police department and officer named in this story, seeking an interview, but in most cases received no response. Two officers responded initially but decided not to speak.

“If you look at the Derek Chauvins of the world, and you look at their history, you will see that there were certain alerts that should have been triggered long before they got to the point where they were using deadly force,” said Vernon Herron, director of officer safety and wellness for the Baltimore Police Department.

Herron was referring to the former Minnesota police officer convicted of killing George Floyd, who died from the same kind of force this investigation studied.

Flagging troubled officers

Geoff Alpert, a professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina, is an internationally recognized criminal justice expert who has studied high-risk police activities for more than three decades. He said the use of early-warning systems – also referred to as early-intervention systems – could discourage bad behavior.

“You don’t want to give someone a gun, a badge, and a car and send them out there and hope they’ll be alright,” Alpert said.

Early-warning systems establish a process for tracking and reviewing performance indicators and incidents of risk. The Department of Justice and the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) both recommend their use to identify potential red flags in officer behavior.

Policing experts say such systems should be used as supervisory tools to support struggling officers, rather than for punishment. A 2021 study in the journal Criminology and Public Policy found the systems were most effective with “rigorous oversight and genuine accountability” and when designed as a deterrent for future behavior, rather than to remove officers with previously documented misconduct.

But while evaluating officer performance is a fundamental part of improving policing, oversight varies. The lack of mandatory national standards for accreditation or performance evaluation makes it a challenge to hold agencies and individual officers accountable. Many departments also fear that documented police errors could be used against them in litigation.

Paul Schultz, a retired police chief and former director of the Colorado Peace Officer Standards and Training unit, spent years educating smaller agencies on how to implement a warning system based on 18 different categories, including use of force incidents and allegations of misconduct. But, he said, there’s “no universal policy” that departments must follow, adding, “Many departments today will actually shred an officer’s personnel file after three years.”

Difficult decisions, recruiting crisis

With staff shortages and struggles to find new recruits, some departments may be more willing to risk hiring officers with a troubling record, officials said.

Jerry Burns was hired as a deputy in 2016 by Blount County Sheriff’s Office in eastern Tennessee despite having violated a “zero tolerance policy” while working as a jailer in Kentucky in 2010, according to his personnel record, which does not further elaborate.

Four months after joining Blount County, he used force in a struggle with Anthony Edwards, slamming Edwards’ head onto concrete pavement. The medical examiner ruled that Edwards’ death was a homicide due to blunt force trauma, and his family sued for $25 million. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount.

Burns’ partner in the struggle with Edwards, James Patty, Jr., was fired by Blount County in 2007 for reasons related to his conduct, including insubordination, his personnel records show. Although he was deemed ineligible for rehire, he was rehired in 2011. He was fired again in 2016 after being charged with solicitation of a minor and was sentenced in 2018 to nine years in prison for those charges.

Brandon Spillman was hired in 2017 by the Avoyelles Parish Sheriff’s office in Louisiana after previously being fired by the New Roads Police Department for reasons not specified in documents obtained and reviewed during The Associated Press’ investigation. Spillman later used force in what was ruled a homicide due to respiratory compromise after he attempted to place Armando Frank in a choke hold during a struggle, according to court documents. Frank’s brothers sued for damages, but the court dismissed the suit in June 2022, ruling the officers had immunity from prosecution.

In Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, Officer Alan Salvosa received a two-day suspension for joining a pursuit outside of his jurisdiction, running a red light while driving 70 mph, then pointing a rifle at a passenger, saying, “Don’t move or I’ll blow your head off.”

The unauthorized pursuit in 2016 occurred just 15 miles from where Floyd was murdered four years later. In 2021, Salvosa used his Taser on a man holding a crowbar who fell due to the jolt of electricity and cracked his head, later dying as a result of the blow.

In Paterson, New Jersey, Officer Michael Avila received a 90-day suspension and pleaded guilty to conduct unbecoming a public employee for his role in a 2011 incident in which he was processing a woman he had arrested. She was handcuffed to a bench when he grabbed her by the neck, strangled her and then threw her to the ground, according to records.

In 2019, Avila and another officer rode in an ambulance with Jameek Lowery, who had shown up at police headquarters amid a mental breakdown. When Lowery arrived at St. Joseph’s University Medical Center, he was unconscious and handcuffed to a gurney. He died two days later. Lowery’s family hired a former chief medical examiner for New York City who concluded that Lowery suffered “traumatic blunt force” injuries in the ambulance. The state medical examiner said Lowery’s death had been a cardiac arrest while under the influence of bath salts, a psychoactive stimulant.

Officer David Green of the Little Rock Police Department in Arkansas had been previously suspended 10 times for incidents including domestic violence and neglect of duty. In 2011, he bashed a handcuffed suspect’s face into the ground multiple times, according to his Internal Affairs file obtained by the Howard Center.

“I can’t, you know, count for accidents or something, but this type of incident will never happen again,” Green said, according to the file.

A week after Green returned from suspension for the 2011 incident, he struggled with and pepper sprayed a man in his house in July 2012; the man died and medical officials said the physical restraint and pepper spray contributed to the death. Ultimately, Green was fired in 2015 – records say for damaging a police station wall by throwing his cell phone after an upsetting conversation with his wife.

Reporters Elena Santa Cruz of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University and Hunter Savery and Josie Jack of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland contributed to this story. The Howard Centers are an initiative of the Scripps Howard Fund in honor of the late news industry executive and pioneer Roy W. Howard. Contact us at howardcenter@asu.edu or on X (formerly Twitter) @HowardCenterASU.