Experts, activists weigh in on the video of Raleigh police shooting of Daniel Turcios
Did the Raleigh police officers who tased and then shot Daniel Turcios after a crash on Interstate 440 last month use excessive force as they tried to restrain him?
Family members and activists believe officers used unreasonable force and want a criminal investigation into the shooting.
The 43-year-old native of El Salvador was killed, according to police, when he failed to comply with commands to drop a knife he was holding.
Officers responding to the Jan. 11 wreck involving at least two vehicles on the Beltline found Turcios, his wife, and their two sons. Body camera footage shows officers speaking with witnesses when they are alerted that Turcios has a knife in his hand.
Activists from Emancipate NC who had been seeking the release of the footage, which a judge granted Feb. 2 after the Raleigh Police Department requested the release, have said the shooting was avoidable.
In a statement, Dawn Blagrove, the organization’s executive director, said the use of the taser “was completely unwarranted,” and that officers “took a calm situation and turned it violent and deadly.”
The Raleigh Police Protective Association, meanwhile, defended the officers’ actions, saying in a Facebook post that de-escalation requires “the full participation of those involved,” and if that process fails, then “quick decisive action is required to protect officers and citizens.”
The News & Observer spoke with Emancipate NC and the police union, as well as two experts with backgrounds in law enforcement, about what the footage shows. The N&O also reached out to multiple experts with non-law enforcement backgrounds but did not hear from them in time for publication.
Thursday evening, activists from Emancipate NC, El Pueblo and other local groups gathered in Moore Square in downtown Raleigh to demand justice for Turcios, according to the groups’ news release.
Activists: police escalated situation
In an interview Friday, Kerwin Pittman of Emancipate NC said the footage answered some questions but raised many more.
The main concern, he said, is whether the fatal outcome could have been avoided altogether. “Could RPD not have escalated the situation by tasing him?” he asked.
In the footage, officers repeatedly tell Turcios to drop his knife, while a nearby bystander urges Turcios in Spanish to “sit down.” One officer, appearing to hear the bystander’s commands, tries repeating it to Turcios in Spanish as well.
Turcios says something to an officer and shakes his head. He tries to walk away with his younger son, age 7, but his wife intervenes. She takes the child away from Turcios, who continues to walk away from officers, the knife still in his hand.
Almost immediately, Sgt. W.B. Tapscott, tases Turcios in the back, causing him to fall face first onto the ground.
Pittman said the fall, on top of injuries from the crash which activists have said already made Turcios disoriented, could have left him even more dazed.
Pittman also noted that throughout the incident, Turcios was only speaking in Spanish, which he said suggests that there was a language barrier when officers were telling him to drop the knife. Activists and family members have said Turcios had a limited understanding of English.
After he is tased, multiple officers move in to try to pin Turcios down, but he springs to his feet. The footage shows him spinning around and lunging toward another officer with the knife, missing him narrowly.
All of the officers fall back as another, A.A. Smith, fires two shots at Turcios, causing him to fall. When Turcios tries to get up once more, Smith fires at him three more times.
After reviewing the footage himself, Pittman asked if Smith needed to fire three more shots when Turcios tried to get up the final time.
At that moment, Smith was close enough to use a taser to restrain Turcios, but was far enough that he wasn’t in immediate danger, Pittman said.
Union: officer faced ‘imminent threat’
Rick Armstrong, a spokesperson for the Raleigh Police Protective Association, disputed the notion that Smith could have acted differently in that moment.
Officers are trained to stop the “imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury,” Armstrong said, adding that once Smith has taken out his gun and is facing a subject trying to get back up, it’s “almost impossible to holster the firearm, take out the taser and tase him.”
Armstrong also challenged the notion that Smith should have aimed for Turcios’ legs or feet, to avoid striking him somewhere that might cause more severe injuries.
Police haven’t said how many bullets hit Turcios or where, but Armstrong said officers are trained to shoot center mass in situations involving an “imminent threat.” It would have been more dangerous for Smith to try to shoot Turcios anywhere else, Armstrong said, because of a greater chance he would not stop Turcios or that he would accidentally strike someone else.
Armstrong also defended Tapscott’s decision to use his taser, which he said was the most appropriate form of restraint when Turcios was walking away with the knife in his hand. It could be argued, Armstrong said, that Tapscott should have used even more force.
He noted that Tapscott and other officers gave Turcios multiple commands to drop the knife. Police previously said approximately 12 commands were given in total. Armstrong also noted that at least one of the officers tried to give a command in Spanish, and the bystander in the background repeatedly told Turcios to stop what he was doing.
“I don’t know what society we live in when we let those people do whatever they want without listening to the commands of a police officer,” Armstrong said. “You cannot let the subject just walk away, particularly with a deadly weapon. That is not acceptable.”
Experts: Reasonable use of force
Lorenzo Boyd, a professor of criminal justice and community policing at the University of New Haven, watched the footage twice at the request of the N&O.
He said he believed both Tapscott’s decision to use his taser and Smith’s decision to shoot at Turcios were reasonable.
Asked if he thought the officers could have let Turcios walk away from them with the knife, Boyd said, “absolutely not.”
“There are so many other bystanders and other drivers around. You notice the firefighters and everyone else started moving back out of the way, trying to get away from the guy,” Boyd said in an interview. “You don’t know what’s going to happen.”
The number one priority for officers in situations like these is to “stop the threat no matter what,” he said. “That’s always the main protocol. And as long as there is a threat, then levels of force will continue to be escalated.”
The shooting also appeared to be reasonable, Boyd said, since Turcios swung his knife at one of the officers, coming “really close” to them.
“I got a visceral reaction when I saw that,” Boyd said.
A 14-year veteran of the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department in Massachusetts, Boyd said he tends “to be very critical of police use of force.”
“But this time I thought that from what I saw — based on just the video — it seems like reasonable action done by reasonable officers who showed restraint early on,” he said.
Another expert who watched the body camera video at the N&O’s request was Shamus Smith, a professor of criminal justice at John Jay College in New York. He is a retired New York police officer and military veteran.
Like Boyd, Smith also found the officers’ level of force used was reasonable.
Officers actually showed a great amount of restraint by choosing to tase Turcios first instead of resorting to their firearms, he said, given the man’s lack of compliance with the officers commands and him pointing a knife at officers.
“He has a deadly physical weapon,” he said, referencing the moments Turcios wields the knife at the officers in the video. “No matter how small it is, you know, that’s a deadly physical weapon.”
A knife or sharp object can be more dangerous than a firearm, Smith says.
“People generally do not know how to shoot, but a knife is something that is generally done in close combat,” he said.
As for any language barriers, Smith argues that the officers made an attempt to connect with him in Spanish. He references his time as an officer in New York’s 44th precinct in the South Bronx where the population is 60% Latino.
“I heard “siéntate” (sit down), you know, in a very English accent,” Smith said. “When the decedent shakes his head ‘no’ after being told to sit down, you know, that to me is blatant that you are being non compliant.”
This story was originally published February 10, 2022 at 6:30 PM with the headline "Experts, activists weigh in on the video of Raleigh police shooting of Daniel Turcios."
