New Recording Paints Damning Picture of Cops Who Shot Charles Kinsey
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/charles-kinsey-was-shot-after-a-north-miami-cop-called-halt-it-is-a-toy-9254204
Moments before North Miami police officer Jonathan Aledda shot unarmed behavioral therapist Charles Kinsey this past July 18, another cop on the scene warned there was no gun, only a toy.
After the shooting, an assistant chief repeatedly lied to the chief, and the city manager Larry Spring ignored vital evidence.
Moreover, the crime scene was mismanaged, and the police department and city government were in disarray and plagued by infighting
Those are among the stunning revelations in an hour-long audio recording of North Miami Police Chief Gary Eugene's interview with Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigators, which was obtained by New Times Tuesday.
The shooting in the leg of Kinsey, who was caring for an autistic man, became a national flashpoint in the Black Lives Matter movement thanks to cell phone footage that showed him with his arms in the air, lying on the ground and begging police not to shoot just before he was hit.
The revelations in Eugene's interview raise a burning question: Eight months after the shooting and four months after state investigators closed their probe, why has Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle still not charged anyone involved?
"We are very close to coming to a decision," says Ed Griffith, a spokesperson for Rundle's office.
"It's pretty damning, what’s in that tape," says Michael Joseph, an attorney representing Emile Hollant, a North Miami Police commander suspended after the shooting who is suing the city over his discipline. "The police chief outlines rogue officers in that department and other rogue officials. Something has to be done about this. The city has to do the right thing here and clean house."
After the shooting, union officials justified Aledda's actions by saying he thought the autistic man with Kinsey had a gun — not a toy truck. But Eugene's interview with FDLE directly contradicts that claim. (On Tuesday, North Miami police public information officer declined comment on behalf of the city manager, Spring.)
"I heard the shooter, Officer Aledda, make a statement to the nature of, 'Be advised, I have clear shot [at] subject,'" Eugene says, describing the audio of the police radio just before the shooting. "Later on, a sergeant ... got on the air and said, 'I have a visual, it is a toy. Is it a toy? QRX.' That means, 'Stand by, don't do anything.' Then there is a conversation back and forth. The next transmission was by [another officer saying] 'Shot fired!'"
Eugene's description comes in an hour-long interview that centers on the bizarre aftermath of the case. He doesn't pull punches about the state of the department. Eugene, a veteran City of Miami cop who had been sworn in as chief only six days before the Kinsey shooting, says training was lax and infighting rampant.
"The scene was a mess, to be honest with you," he tells investigators of the Kinsey shooting. "People were walking all over the place. Thank God [Kinsey] did not die. I realized I have a problem with the training of my staff. We're talking about some 15 or 16-year veterans, but in North Miami, a 15 or 16-year veteran may have less experience than a two-year cop in Miami."
Fights in the department were so bad, Eugene said, that he worried his own cops wouldn't even be willing to protect each other, much less the community.
"I'm afraid one of them will get shot for God's sake, and someone will call for backup and they'll say, 'I'm not going,' just to tell you how much the animosity is," he said.
Much of Eugene's interview centers around the suspension of Hollant, a commander who was present at the shooting. The chief paints a dark picture of department infighting, collusion, and incompetence on the part of city officials.
Three days after Kinsey's shooting, North Miami city officials held a press conference announcing that, in addition to Aledda, they had suspended Hollant. In fact, they were suspending Hollant without pay, while Aledda would be on paid leave. Why? According to City Manager Larry Spring, Hollant had lied to Eugene at the scene by telling him he hadn't witnessed the shooting; in fact, Spring claimed, audio showed the Hollant was there.
But Eugene tells a very different story in his interview. He says that Hollant was actually suspended as part of a plot by Assistant Chief Larry Juriga, who had an ongoing feud with Hollant.
Eugene says the trouble started on July 21, three days after the shooting. That's when Juriga came to his office to tell him that Hollant had lied. Juriga said that "we found out he had a radio transmission that (Hollant) actually gave the order, that he made a statement that caused the shooter to open fire," Eugene said. "I was fuming when I heard that ... I made a comment, 'Fuck ... I'm going to suspend him.'"
Eugene says he immediately went to Spring and City Attorney Jeff Cazeau and filled them in. They all agreed to suspend Hollant. But on the drive home, Eugene had second thoughts. He recalled that Juriga and Hollant didn't get along, and decided to listen to the audio from the shooting himself. That's when he says he realized Juriga had lied.
The audio tape, indeed, showed Hollant had warned that the autistic man was loading a gun. But that warning didn't spark Aledda to shoot. In fact, several moments pass until another sergeant on the scene warns that the man is only holding a toy. Only after that warning did the shooting take place, contends Eugene, who could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
"I heard the sergeant, who advised earlier that it was a toy, say, 'Hold fire! Hold fire! It was a toy,' trying to stop whoever was doing the shooting," Eugene says. "I said, 'Oh lord.'"
The next morning, Eugene says, he went to Spring's office with the tape to ask the city manager not to suspend Hollant after all. But he says the city manager refused to listen to the audio or to the chief's warnings.
"I said, 'City manager, I'm telling you, listen to this CD and make a decision based on this CD,'" Eugene says. "[Spring] slapped his hand on the desk and said, 'You don't understand what I'm telling you. Get control of your people!'"
Eugene says he nearly quit on the spot. "To be honest, I came close, I nearly let him know that I was about to resign," Eugene says.
Instead, he reviewed department rules and realized that Spring could suspend Hollant on his own. So, the chief says, he backed off and let the city manager do as he pleased. But Eugene says he was so disturbed by Jiruga's conduct that he moved him from his post leading investigations to another position heading up city code enforcement.
That wasn't the only disturbing thing he learned. Eugene says he soon found out that before Hollant had been suspended, the commander in charge of the scene during the shooting had tried to intimate him into changing his story. That commander urged Hollant to say he had seen the shooting and that the autistic man did seem to be loading a gun. "He talked to Emile prior to the suspension and told him ... '[By] not saying you saw the guy loading the gun, do you realize that information could have helped my officer?' They were more concerned about clearing the officer of any wrongdoing than actually getting any impartial investigation."
Eugene says the whole incident was a wake-up call to him about bad training in the department. He reiterated that the Kinsey crime scene was one of the worst-managed he'd ever seen. "The scene wasn't well prepared. There was no inner perimeter, no outer perimeter, no media staging area, nothing," he says. When he got to the scene, no one briefed him about what had occurred.
Joseph says the police recording shows his client, Hollant, was wronged by the city manager. Hollant was cleared by the Miami-Dade State Attorney's office, which found that he didn't mislead anyone at the scene. But he remains on paid suspension as the department finishes its own investigation of the case.
"I would say this brings a lot of light on how the city manager and city attorney dealt with the situation. This was political, about PR, rather than finding out what happened," Joseph says. "The chief is in a very precarious spot. There’s some bad apples there. And he knows my client was done wrong. He's caught in the middle."