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Document Page: AN OFFICER'S RECORD: 6 YEARS, 9 SHOOTINGS 3 PEOPLE KILLED, REVIEW PENDING, BUT COP DEFENDS ALL OF HIS

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AN OFFICER'S RECORD: 6 YEARS, 9 SHOOTINGS 3 PEOPLE KILLED, REVIEW PENDING, BUT COP DEFENDS ALL OF HIS ACTIONS By DAVID ASHENFELTER and JOE SWICKARD FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS; Staff writers Suzette Hackney, Darci McConnell and Dennis NiemieDetroit Free Press; Detroit, Mich. 05-17-2000 AN OFFICER'S RECORD: 6 YEARS, 9 SHOOTINGS 3 PEOPLE KILLED, REVIEW PENDING, BUT COP DEFENDS ALL OF HIS ACTIONS Byline: By DAVID ASHENFELTER and JOE SWICKARD FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS; Staff writers Suzette Hackney, Darci McConnell and Dennis Niemiec contributed to this report. Edition: METRO FINAL Section: NWS Type: News Most Detroit police officers serve an entire career without taking the ultimate police action -- fatally shooting someone. But Officer Eugene Brown is no ordinary cop. In six years on the street, the former bodyguard for Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer has killed three people and wounded a fourth in nine shootings. Even off duty, Brown doesn't hesitate to fire his weapon. He chased down shoplifters who fled a Southfield toy store in January and opened fire on them after he said they tried to run him down. Though Brown has been cleared in all the fatal cases, the relatives of the dead, their lawyers and some law enforcement officials are shocked that Brown was allowed to rack up such a deadly record. Maybe they shouldn't be. Police officials, who recently took Brown off the streets pending a top-level review, weren't even sure what the record was. Until the Free Press told them, they were unaware of how many times Brown had fired his weapon.
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"Something's wrong with this picture," said Juan Mateo, who is suing Brown in the fatal shooting of a 33-year-old machinist at a motorcycle club in January 1999. "It's way beyond normal ...This is a guy with a lot of notches on his gun." Top police executives said Brown has been involved in more shootings, fatal and nonfatal, than anyone else on the force. "Quite frankly, I've never seen anything like this," one longtime executive said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions. The executive added that Brown's partners never felt threatened enough to use deadly force. Brown insists that every shooting was in self-defense. "My actions were justified," he said in an interview in late April. He also said he's baffled and disillusioned by what he sees as a betrayal by the department: "I'm getting to the point of asking why I'm out here busting my tail when it seems like no one is in my corner for doing a good job." The recent events differ from the city's previous staunch defense of Brown's actions. "Eugene Brown had a right and duty to meet deadly force with deadly force," a city lawyer argued in January in a lawsuit resulting from the 1996 fatal shooting of Lamar Grable. "He also had a right to continue shooting until the threat of serious injury and/or deadly force no longer existed." But relatives of people killed by Brown say he's a stark example of the department's failure to control trigger-happy cops, who lead their

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counterparts in other big cities in the rate of fatal police shootings. They say Brown should have been taken off the street long ago. "It seems like he's always in the wrong place at the wrong time where he has to draw his weapon," said Roosevelt Carrington Jr., whose brother, Roderick Carrington, was killed by Brown. "He's a loose cannon in this community, and he needs to be dealt with." Unlike the portrayal of cops on television and in movies, experts say, it is rare for an officer to kill someone. "The average Detroit cop could expect to be in a fatal shooting once in 300 years," said Temple University professor James Fyfe, a former New York City police officer who has studied police shootings in major cities. Background: Former Archer bodyguard Brown, 33, an imposing 6-foot-5, 200-plus pounder, is a teetotaling Baptist who grew up on Detroit's east side. After graduating from Kettering High School in 1985, he worked as a church janitor, then joined the Marines. During a 6-year tour, Brown was a tractor-trailer operator who hauled nuclear weapons and attained the rank of corporal. After his discharge in 1991, Brown worked briefly as a security guard at Eastland Mall before entering the Detroit Police Academy. After graduating in September 1993, he became a patrol officer at the 10th (Livernois) Precinct. The next year, he was transferred to the executive protection unit and guarded Archer while the mayor was still living in his private residence. Three months later, after Archer moved into Manoogian Mansion, Brown returned to 10th Precinct patrol. In May 1996, he worked for the harbor masters unit on

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Belle Isle, then moved in mid-1998 to the tactical services section to patrol the entire city. Brown's shooting history was compiled from interviews, court records and his testimony in lawsuits. The records show Brown has been sued six times for aggressive actions. Three were for the fatal shootings. The others were for alleged assaults, including one in which an off-duty Detroit cop accused Brown pulling a gun and assaulting him in 1996 for refusing to move his car from a blocked intersection as Brown was on a run. When served with a complaint in one suit, Brown threatened to arrest the process server for littering. "I'm not some dog," he told the server, according to records in the suit. "You don't treat me like that." Brown has been reprimanded for wrecking police cars, hanging up on an irate citizen and failing to keep accurate records. Brown said most of the complaints didn't stand up on appeal. He said he has never been disciplined in any fatal shooting. Brown couldn't remember how many citizens have filed complaints against him because, as he explained in a 1998 deposition, "I lock up a lot of people." And his memory about the number and details of his shootings has gotten fuzzy over time. First shooting deadly; lawsuit later tossed His first shooting happened about 2:10 a.m. on Feb. 8, 1995, a cold and windy Thursday.

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Brown's version goes like this: He and his partner, Craig Stewart, spotted a car without a license plate entering a gas station at West Grand Boulevard and Grand River. Brown said it appeared that the man was casing the station for a robbery in a stolen car. The driver, Roderick Carrington, a 30-year-old security guard, circled the gas pumps and drove to a pay phone at the rear of the station. The officers decided to investigate. When they pulled up and asked him about the missing plate, they said Carrington told them he had just bought the car and had left the temporary tag and paperwork at home. The car, in fact, was not stolen. Brown said Carrington thrust his hands into his pockets and started backing away when asked to step up to the scout car. "He was digging for something," Brown said in a deposition. "I told him to take his hand out of his pocket. He didn't. He still was edging toward the Grand River side and at that point, I drew out my weapon." Brown said Carrington pulled out a knife and refused to drop it. "No, I'm not putting it down, and no, I'm not going anywhere," Brown quoted Carrington as saying. Carrington lunged, Brown said, so he fired. The .40-caliber bullet was stopped by a Bible Carrington had in his breast pocket. After lurching backward, Brown said, Carrington regained his balance, pulled a second knife and resumed the attack. Brown fired two more shots, and Carrington crumpled in the street. During an investigation of the shooting, Brown was put behind a desk, which is

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routine. A psychiatrist interviewed him and pronounced Brown fit for duty. Homicide investigators, a police trial board and the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office all agreed that Brown shot in self-defense, and he returned to the street. But Carrington's brother sued Brown in Wayne County Circuit Court, accusing him of an unlawful use of deadly force. The suit was dismissed in 1998 after Roosevelt Carrington's lawyer, Ernest Jarrett of Detroit, was unable to produce witnesses to dispute the officers' version. Although a video camera at a gas station across the street recorded the shooting, Jarrett said, the owner told Jarrett he inadvertantly recorded over the tape months afterward. Jarrett said a station attendant who initially acknowledged witnessing the shooting later recanted. Jarrett said another witness demanded money for her testimony, but Jarrett refused to pay. The witness told police that Carrington was yelling and waving his hands at the officers, but made no mention of any knives. Roosevelt Carrington said there is no way his brother's body could have wound up in the second lane of Grand River if he was charging Brown in the parking lot, as Brown described. Carrington can't imagine his brother making a suicidal knife attack on a cop with a drawn gun. Neither could Brown. "It was bizarre that someone with a knife would challenge someone with a gun,

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yet this is what he did," Brown said during the lengthy interview with the Free Press at his home. He said he accepted a psychologist's assessment that the shooting was a case of "suicide-by-cop." Carrington's brother says police didn't conduct a thorough investigation. Brown agreed on that point, too. In a deposition in 1996, he said he was surprised homicide investigators had so few questions. The questioning wasn't "a real interview," Brown testified, not "like anything that I would expect." In fact, Brown said he was barely questioned by homicide investigators in any of the fatal shootings because Brown filled out such complete reports. He also said he had put Carrington's name out of his mind: "I chose not to remember it." Four more shootings-- in 16-month span Three months after the Carrington shooting, Brown fired his Glock semiautomatic again, this time by accident, he said. He said it happened while chasing a suspected car thief over a fence. Brown said the fence broke under his weight, and the gun went off when he hit the ground. No one was hurt. The officers found the suspect hiding in a pickup truck. That summer or fall, Brown fired again, this time at another suspected car thief who turned on him with an object in his hand after a car and foot chase, Brown said in a deposition. The shot missed. Brown's partner caught the suspect. His fourth shooting happened in January 1996, when Brown exchanged shots with a fleeing suspect after a car and foot chase on Detroit's west side, according to police reports. The suspect, who dropped a pager and jacket, was never

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found. The fifth shooting, a fatal, happened on a rainy Saturday night in September 1996, while Brown and his partner, Vicki Yost, were driving to the Harbor Master station on Belle Isle. Through the nighttime rain, Brown noticed a man walking down the street with a gun in his hand, he says. When the officers stopped, the man, Lamar Grable, 20, ran, according to police reports. Brown chased Grable on foot while Yost headed him off in the patrol car. When Grable doubled back across a vacant lot near Field and Kercheval, Brown said, Grable fired two shots at him. Brown returned fire. Brown said Grable darted around a dirt mound. Brown said he ran around the other side and they collided and locked in a life-and-death struggle. Brown said Grable, at 6-feet and 142 pounds, refused to drop his gun and fired twice more. "Gunpowder rushed up between us, and at that point I started shooting Mr. Grable," Brown said. Grable fell, Brown said, but Grable tried to raise his gun. "At that point, I think I shot two more times," Brown said. "His hand dropped to the ground, and the gun dropped out of his hand." Police later found two slugs in Brown's bulletproof vest, and he was treated for minor injuries. Grable was shot eight times -- in the chest, arms and back. The shots to the chest and back ripped through his trachea, aorta, right lung and heart.

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The department, a police trial board and the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office concluded that Brown shot in self-defense. In 1997, Brown received the Walter Scott Distinguished Service Medal for bravery. "He executed my son," Arnetta Grable said of the shooting. She said her son, a stocker at a suburban Kmart, "just didn't have a violent nature." She is suing Brown in Wayne County Circuit Court. Her lawyers, Sheldon Miller and Victor Bowman of Southfield, contend Brown planted a five- shot, .38-caliber revolver. They doubt that the officers could see such a small weapon at night through a wet car window. "And you thought Superman had good vision," Miller said. Brown said street lights illuminated the area. There were no fingerprints on the gun. Tests showed gunshot residue on Grable, but Bowman said it could have come from Brown's gun. "I find all of these things to be more than just a coincidence," Bowman said. "Knowing what we know about this officer, you have to consider the possibility that Brown executed Lamar and threw down the gun." Police said Grable's girlfriend, Nikisha Johnson, identified the gun as one Grable had been carrying for a month to protect himself from gangs. But later she recanted, saying police made her sign a statement so she could see Grable at the hospital. When she signed the statement, she wasn't aware that he was dead. Mediators have twice recommended the city settle the case for $750,000. Both sides rejected the proposal. The case is set for trial in late May. Arnetta Grable and her former husband, Herman Vallery, who helped organize the

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the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality after Brown killed their son, are circulating handbills around the city to pressure police officials to do something about Brown. "I want him off of the police department," Grable said. "I want that gun out of his hand and that badge off his chest. The streets will be much safer without him." Brown said Arnetta Grable and Vallery didn't know their son. "This person is bold enough to walk down street with a gun in his hand, bold enough to shoot at the police, and bold enough to wait on me to come into that alley and try to kill me," Brown said. "All because I saw him walking with a gun. I never did anything to this man and never saw him before. So that told me how much of a threat he posed to the community." Brown said the incident still gives him nightmares because he came so close to being gravely wounded. Killing outside club is a tangled tale In the summer of 1998, Brown recalled, he accidentally fired into the ground after chasing a fleeing motorist who had run a stop sign and traffic lights near Joseph Campau and Davison. When the suspect hit a tree, Brown got out of his car, tripped and his gun went off. Brown said he has appealed a suspension resulting from the incident. Brown's seventh shooting was another fatal. About 1 a.m. on Jan. 22, 1999, Brown and partner Jason Tonti said they saw a

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man and woman outside the Free Wheelers Motorcycle Club on Lynch Road near Detroit City Airport. The officers said they asked the woman, Sandra Miller, 44, if she was all right. By then, her husband, Darren Miller, 33, had walked back into the club. She said she was OK, and the officers left. A half block later, Brown told Tonti that he had just seen the man walk out of the club and hit the woman in the stomach, according to police reports. Tonti made a U-turn. They said they rushed to the building as Miller dragged his screaming wife into the club vestibule and tried to shut a heavy steel grated door. Brown said he pushed against the door, trying to rescue the woman. Tonti said Miller bent down and picked up what Tonti thought was a shotgun. "Gene, he's got a gun," Tonti yelled. Brown stepped back and shot. Tonti looked inside. Miller was lying in a corner with blood everywhere. "You killed my husband," Sandra Miller screamed and ran from the vestibule into the club. When backup units arrived, police said Sandra Miller, blood- soaked, came out of the building carrying a large black purse. They searched it and found a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Brown handcuffed her and took her into custody for carrying a concealed weapon. Brown said in reports that he shot Miller because Miller swung on him with a 10-pound sledgehammer, the object Tonti thought was a gun. The sledge was

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found outside the building. Sandra Miller said that's not what happened. She said she and her husband were getting ready to drive home when the police initially pulled up. She told officers everything was fine, but they wanted to talk to her husband, who had returned to the club. While the officers stood outside, she said she entered the vestibule and started to ask her husband to step outside. Her husband, she said, glanced over her shoulder with "a look of terror in his eyes." "It happened so fast," she told homicide investigators. "I heard a shot, and he was just laying there." She ran into the club to call friends: "I mean, I couldn't call 911." Miller came outside and saw police holding her purse and the .380- caliber pistol, which she said they took out of her car. She said there was no reason for the shooting, saying her husband had done nothing to harm her or provoke the officers. For the next 17 1/2 hours, she was in police custody, smearing tables and everything else she touched with her husband's blood. At one point, she said, a female officer tossed her a towel and told her to wipe her face. She said she was taken to the hospital after complaining of an asthma attack, was hancuffed to a hospital bed and forced to move her hospital gown so police could photograph her tattoos. The weapons charge was dropped when police failed to appear in court.

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In December, Miller sued Brown and the city in Wayne County Circuit Court. Her lawyer, Juan Mateo, said the department's decision to clear Brown in every shooting "sends a message: 'Shoot first and don't worry about the consequences.' " He said police ignored several problems with the officers' version. The sledgehammer was found outside the clubhouse and had no blood on it, Mateo said, proof that Miller never had it in the vestibule. Mateo asks how Miller could be shoving the door closed, picking up the sledge and swinging it with his wife between himself and Brown in a cramped vestible. There also was no blood on her purse, proving that she never had it with her in the club. Mateo said he believes police illegally took it out of her car, found the gun and were planning to plant it on Miller's body to justify the killing. Mateo said the officers' stories don't add up: "Why is Miller going to attack a fully armed police officer with a sledgehammer when there's nothing going on?" Another big revelation came in April, when the lead homicide investigator who reviewed the case for police admitted in a deposition that he never interviewed Brown and that the sledge was never tested for fingerprints or blood. "I want him gone -- not to be a cop," Miller said. "I would like to see him charged. That probably will never happen." Brown said the thing that bothers him most about the shooting is that Sandra Miller was carrying a gun and had the means to defend herself from being

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assaulted by her husband. He said he got involved only to protect her. "I wonder if I helped the situation or made it worse," Brown said. "Why was she letting him beat on her to the extent that I thought her life was in danger?" He said she, like the other families, wants to cash in on their relatives' deaths. Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Javier Villegas wrote in a memo in May 1999 that Miller had cocaine in his system. Villegas also said "the physical evidence in the case does not sufficiently support either side's version of the event." But the office said it was "apparently justified." During a deposition last month, Mateo stunned the lead investigator in the shooting with Brown's record of nine shootings. "I had no idea it was that many," Sgt. James Hawthorne said. "Honest to God. Nine shootings?" Hawthorne also was unaware that Brown had killed two other people and said Brown's record never came up when he met with the three-member Board of Review that oversaw the investigation of Miller's shooting. Action in shoplifting prompts look at record Since his encounter with Miller, Brown has been involved in two other shootings. Brown said he fired in November at a vehicle driven by a motorist who tried to run him down after a high-speed chase on the east side. The chase started when the suspect ran a red light. Brown, on foot, fired three shots at the car, one

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of which wounded the suspect in the leg. The suspect was arrested and recovered from his wound, Brown said. The final shooting -- and the one that prompted the department to take a look at his record -- happened this Jan. 12, when Brown shot at shoplifters who stole video games from a Toys-R-Us and Media Play store near Tel- Twelve Mall in Southfield. Brown, who was on a date, saw the shoplifters running out of the store and being chased by an employee. According to police, Brown sprang into action: He tried to block the driveway to prevent the shoplifters' escape. They drove over the curb and fled. He followed them in his car, called 911 from his cell phone and cornered them on a dead-end residential street. When he got out of his car with his gun and badge, Brown said the suspects tried to run him down, prompting him to fire. No one was hurt. The suspects were caught and charged with shoplifting. The driver also was charged with assault. After the shooting, one of Brown's supervisors at tactical services asked his superiors to review Brown's record. He felt Brown should not have gotten involved. The investigation is being handled by Deputy Chief Walter Shoulders of eastern operations, who will appoint two commanders to help him with the inquiry. Shoulders, who has been involved in one shooting in 31 years on the force, expressed surprise that Brown has been involved in so many shootings. But he said it's too early to say whether there's a problem. He said he plans to

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review Brown's entire record with the department, including the shootings, citizen complaints and discipline. "He could be 100-percent right and have 100-percent bad circumstances," Shoulders said. If he thinks Brown has a problem, Shoulders said he will not hesitate to say so. Shoulders plans to complete the report within several weeks. Brown is perplexed by the controversy. He attributes the shootings to a combination of bad luck and his determination to be a hard- working cop. "It's not like I'm out here taking a lot of chances to lock somebody up," he said. He doesn't like all the attention: "I tell my bosses I don't like it. I'd rather just go ahead and do my job. I don't look for recognition when I do something right. But boy, I tell you, as soon as you make a mistake or someone accuses you of making a mistake, it seems like everything is scrutinized, and everything else you've done is thrown away." But the family members of the men Brown killed said they can't believe it took the department so long to reckon with him. Contact DAVID ASHENFELTER at 313-223-4490 or ashenf@freepress.com, or JOE SWICKARD at 313-223-4557. Staff writers Suzette Hackney, Darci McConnell and Dennis Niemiec contributed to this report. DEPARTMENT RULES ON FIREARM USE The Detroit Police Department has rules governing firearm use by officers. Here are excerpts from Chapter 10 of the department's General Procedures:

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Members must always bear in mind that the use of firearms shall be confined to life-threatening situations. The laws of this state and the rules of the department demand that members use only the minimum degree of force necessary to effect an arrest. Members must also consider that the maximum sentence imposed by our court system would result in neither death nor injury. A member shall not discharge a firearm in an attempt to apprehend a person on mere suspicion that a crime, no matter how serious, was committed or on mere suspicion that the person being pursued committed the crime. A member shall either have witnessed the crime or have probable cause to believe that the person committed an offense for which the use of deadly force is permissible in accordance with department directives. ILLUSTRATION: Photo Detroit Police Department Photo;Photo GABRIEL B. TAIT/Detroit Free Press CAPTION: in 1996. Detroit Police Officer Eugene Brown receives the Walter Scott Distinguished Service Award from Don Johnson, president of the Detroit Police Officers Association, in 1997. He won the award, for bravery, as a result of a fatal shooting involving Lamar Grable in 1996. SAD MEMORY: Roosevelt Carrington Jr., above, discusses the Feb. 8, 1995, fatal shooting of his brother Roderick Carrington, right, by Detroit Police Officer Eugene Brown. Roosevelt Carrington says he can't imagine his brother making a knife attack on an officer with a drawn gun, as Brown claims. WIFE'S ANGUISH: Above: Sandra Miller hugs the urn containing the ashes of her husband, Darren Miller, right. He was killed by Officer Eugene Brown in

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1999."I want him gone -- not to be a cop," Sandra Miller said. PARENTS FIGHTING BACK: Arnetta Grable and her former husband, Herman Vallery, helped organize the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality after Detroit Police Officer Eugene Brown shot and killed their son Lamar Grable in 1996. Grable, 20, was shot eight times in the chest, arms and back. CAPTIONWRITER: Lamar Grable was fatally shot by Detroit Police Officer Eugene Brown MEMO: DETROIT POLICE: LETHAL FORCE, LASTING QUESTIONS; SERIES; SEE RELATED;ARTICLES, PAGES 1A, 8A, 9A; SIDEBAR ATTACHED DISCLAIMER: THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION MAY DIFFER SLIGHTLY FROM THE PRINTED ARTICLE. Copyright 2000 - Detroit Free Press - All Rights Reverved

Citation for your reference:

By, Staff writers Suzette Hackney, Darci McConnell and Dennis Niemie.. "AN OFFICER'S RECORD: 6 YEARS, 9 SHOOTINGS 3 PEOPLE KILLED, REVIEW PENDING, BUT COP DEFENDS ALL OF HIS ACTIONS." Detroit Free Press; Detroit, Mich.. 17 May. 2000: A1. eLibrary. Web. 11 Aug. 2013.

By, Staff writers Suzette Hackney, D. "AN OFFICER'S RECORD: 6 YEARS, 9 SHOOTINGS 3 PEOPLE KILLED, REVIEW PENDING, BUT COP DEFENDS ALL OF HIS ACTIONS." Detroit Free Press; Detroit, Mich.. 2000, May 17: A1.

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