Activist, attorney reacts to police shooting ruled justified
SOUTH BEND, Ind.—While watching a press conference by the South Bend police Wednesday, Jorden Giger, co-founder of Black Lives Matter South Bend, kept alternating between the live stream and the South Bend Police Department policy manual.
“As you read through the policy, it seems to give the police more latitude to be creative in the kind of way that the community members would like,” Giger said.
Wednesday’s press conference addressed the July 29th police shooting of 51-year-old Dante Kittrell near Coquillard Elementary School. SBPD showed body-worn and dashcam footage of the shooting, played the 911 call, and presented still images from the scene.
The public conference followed a prosecutor ruling that the use of deadly force in this instance is a justifiable homicide.
There are still those, like Giger, who believe Kittrell’s life could have been saved.
“Even in their policy manual, it calls for the police to use specialized resources, including backup officers,” Giger said. “I think that his mother and a pastor that was known to him could have served as those specialized resources.”
The pastor Giger referred to is J.B. Williams, who witnessed the shooting after attempting to talk to Kittrell and de-escalate the apparently obvious mental health episode. Kittrell’s mother, Marcia, who also witnessed her son shot and killed, said Kittrell was off his medication and suffers from schizophrenia.
Kittrell’s family and the attorney that represents them, Sean Drew, found out about the prosecutor’s ruling in a meeting Wednesday afternoon, preceding the public press conference.
“Profoundly sad, and not really disappointing,” Drew said, “because I had briefed Dante’s mother that the likelihood of the prosecutor finding any criminality would be very slight.”
Drew said the police narrative of events paints Kittrell as a danger to a school of children, but argues he was only a danger to himself.
“The overall sense was: this was suicidal, not homicidal,” he said. “So, there are two different techniques to diffuse the situation, and I just would have hoped more time and energy would have been spent in diffusing it.”
Drew said next steps for the family include requesting the FBI look into the case.
The prosecutor’s ruling, saying the shooting is a justifiable homicide, is the result of just one of two investigations. South Bend Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski said there is still an ongoing investigation to see if department protocol was followed.
In another attempt to encourage public discourse, Black Lives Matter South Bend will host a community town hall to discuss a better way to respond to mental health crises. That will be Tuesday, Aug. 30 at 6 p.m. in the Downtown Library Ballroom at 305 S. Michigan St. in South Bend.