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Dallas Officer Amber Guyger's trial for the murder of Botham Shem Jean begins (FOUND GUILTY)

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/...fired-firedcops-dallas-dont-always-stay-fired

Amber Guyger should be fired. But fired cops in Dallas don't always stay fired


A month ago, before an innocent man was shot to death in his own apartment by a uniformed, off-duty Dallas police officer, the City Council had a different kind of police mess on their hands.

The council agreed to pay $615,000 to a handcuffed man beaten so badly by two cops in 2014 that "his face basically looked like it grew another face," one witness said. One of those officers resigned. The other rode out the Internal Affairs investigation, which eventually concluded he used excessive force against Jon McDonald.

In the August 26, 2016, letter terminating Senior Cpl. Mike Irwin, then-Chief David Brown told Irwin he violated the department's code of conduct "when you punched Mr. McDonald directly in the face ... after he had already been placed in handcuffs."

But Irwin's termination did not last.

On May 23, 2017, a quasi-judicial civil service trial board consisting of three civilians appointed by Dallas City Council members returned the officer to duty. It was the second time in Irwin's 22-year Dallas police career that he had had been fired for use of excessive force and then rehired —after he'd been suspended for a year. His personnel file shows 17 incidents for which he has been disciplined, including twice having engaged in "conduct discrediting department."

"Unbelievable," Mayor Mike Rawlings said this week. "Just unbelievable."

The mayor has been on a tear about this for weeks, long before Amber Guyger shot and killed Botham Jean and marchers descended on Dallas police headquarters demanding her firing. There is no equating these two cases. In the most recent one, a man was shot to death in his own home while watching a football game.

And yet, there are echoes. Marchers cannot believe Guyger still has her job. And I can't believe Irwin still has his.

Dallas Police Chief Renee Hall said Thursday she cannot yet fire Guyger — something about how an administrative investigation could interfere with and "potentially compromise" the Texas Rangers' criminal investigation. Yet Guyger has already been arrested and charged with manslaughter — the definition of a fireable offense. It is no wonder the chief's getting protesters at the department's front door.

If Guyger really wants to fight to keep this job, there's always that trial board. In just the last four years, it has given jobs back to officers fired for using excessive force, hiring prostitutes, tampering with evidence and drunk driving.

I'm waiting on a longer list of fires and rehires from Dallas police. For now, I'll go with what's in front of me: a list of the 17 fired officers who between 2014 and this year requested trial board hearings. Five got their jobs back.

You may not have heard about this because, unlike when they're publicly fired, the department never gives notice when cops are returned to the street. Termination is just a speed bump for some officers.

The Washington Post reported last year that departments all over the country are forced to take back fired officers all the time — more than 450 out of 1,880 terminated cops since 2006 alone. Several big-city police chiefs told the paper it was demoralizing, especially to good cops who didn't want their badges tarnished by bad cops whose union lawyers got them back their jobs.

Another recent Dallas rehire was Officer Henry Duetsch, who was indicted by a grand jury in 2010 for moving a dash cam during a motorcyclist's savage beating. That case made national news and led to a press conference during which Brown appealed to "the calmer voices of the community" during the police investigation. The council paid the victim in that case $500,000.

But then-District Attorney Susan Hawk dismissed Duetsch's indictment in 2015 — "in the interest of justice," is all it says in the case jacket. He got his job back in March 2016. His attorney, George Milner III, told me this week that prosecutors "didn't have a case, because everything was over before he turned [the dash cam]."

Senior Cpl. Adam Conway also got his job back after he'd been fired on suspicion of having driven drunk and causing a three-car accident in Rockwall County in May 2013. Prosecutors there claimed they couldn't make a case because of a "potential procedural error with the blood test." But internal affairs concluded that Conway — who slurred his words during his arrest and told investigators he'd had four to five beers within an hour — had been driving drunk. By November 2014, he was back at work.

Senior Cpl. Marqueon Skinner also got his job back after his arrest and firing made headlines: In August 2015, he told police he was robbed at gunpoint after he paid $60 to have sex with an Arlington prostitute. The arrest report said he "ran from the apartment naked and called the police." Brown fired him in September; the board reinstated Skinner, who I could not reach, 13 months later.

Not all firings are equal. The most-high profile rehiring was Jesus Martinez, the Deep Ellum cop fired and charged with official oppression after a videotaped scuffle with a panhandler with a long criminal history. The neighborhood and council member Adam Medrano made Martinez a hero. He was cleared of any wrongdoing and given back his job in 2015.

Chief Brown didn't respond when I tried to talk to him about this, but his predecessor, David Kunkle, did. Kunkle was known to fire officers quickly — among them officers with long histories of disciplinary action. His record suggests he would have fired Guyger by now — though he won't talk about this case on the record.

Kunkle knows those chiefs quoted in The Post piece. I thought for sure he would agree with them — that the system was broken. But, no. Quite the opposite.

"I am glad there's a third-party review not caught up in the politics, the intensity of any given situation," he said. "They were decent people and used their best judgement and tried to be responsible."

There's still politics: These people are appointed by council members — though five have unfilled vacancies — and don't need many qualifications outside of having been part of the working world for at least five years.

Anita Childress chaired the Civil Service Board during all of these hearings and rehirings, and said maybe the system can be fine-tuned, as the mayor has suggested. For instance, maybe the council should interview would-be board members in public and and then vote on them. Childress also said the board should be stocked with employment attorneys.

"Right now, you have two sets of lawyers making their cases and then laypeople making decisions," she said. Childress said those proceedings allow for mistakes — "things that if they had been said in a courtroom might not have been admitted" if a judge was present.

But if he was such a bad cop, says Dallas Police Association attorney Robert Rogers, then why was Irwin promoted to a senior corporal and allowed to train other officers?

He said this week that Irwin did nothing wrong when he took down McDonald in that northwest Dallas motel, even though taxpayers have 615,000 reasons to believe otherwise.

"The system is the system," Rogers said of the civil service process. "It's as fair as it gets. We win some, we lose some. And it's citizens who are making the decision."

Maybe so. But those decisions do little to build confidence in police when we must deal with officers like Amber Guyger and victims like Botham Jean.
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/dallas-police-fires-officer-amber-guyger

Dallas Police Fires White Cop Accused Of Fatally Shooting Her Black Neighbor


DALLAS (AP) — A white police officer accused of fatally shooting her black neighbor inside his own apartment has been dismissed, the police department announced Monday.

The Dallas Police Department fired Officer Amber Guyger on Monday, weeks after she fatally shot 26-year-old Botham Jean inside his own apartment on Sept. 6. Court records show Guyger said she thought she had encountered a burglar inside her own home.

Guyger was arrested on a preliminary charge of manslaughter days after the shooting. She is out on bond.

Jean family attorneys and protesters have called for her firing following the shooting.

Guyger was a four-year veteran of the police force. She told investigators that she had just ended a shift when she returned in uniform to the South Side Flats apartment complex.

When she put her key in the apartment door, which was unlocked and slightly ajar, it opened, the affidavit said. Inside, the lights were off, and she saw a figure in the darkness that cast a large silhouette across the room, according to the officer’s account.

She called 911. When asked where she was, she returned to the front door to see she was in the wrong unit, according to the affidavit. The 911 tapes have not been released.
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https://www.dallasnews.com/news/dal...after-manslaughter-charge-killing-botham-jean

Dallas Police Officer Amber Guyger, who fatally shot 26-year-old Botham Jean in his Cedars apartment, was fired Monday — days after Police Chief Renee Hall said doing so would compromise the criminal investigation.

Police said in a news release that Hall fired Guyger after an internal investigation found the officer had engaged in "adverse conduct" when she was charged with manslaughter three days after the shooting.

Guyger's firing was lauded by the mayor — who called it "the right decision in the interest of justice" — and others who have been calling for her termination for weeks. Guyger has been on administrative leave since the shooting and is free, as she awaits trial, on a $300,000 bond.

Guyger shot Jean, her upstairs neighbor, the night of Sept. 6. She told authorities she mistook his apartment for her own and believed Jean, who was unarmed, was a burglar. Lee Merritt, an attorney for Jean's family, has cast doubt on Guyger's version of events.

Hall's decision to fire Guyger came after widespread calls for action. Protesters had called for her to be fired for weeks. Her employment status even became an issue in the U.S. Senate race between Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Beto O'Rourke. The latter, a Democrat, had called for her firing, while Cruz had said O'Rourke was rushing to judgment.

Guyger is allowed to appeal the decision under civil service rules, police said.

The announcement of Guyger's firing came shortly before Hall stepped into a City Council Public Safety & Criminal Justice Committee hearing. The only discussion of the firing during the meeting came when council member Kevin Felder said he had heard Guyger had been fired and asked the chief to confirm.

"That is a true statement," Hall said, without elaboration.

Hall's decision to fire the officer seemed to contradict statements she had made in recent days about why she wouldn't fire Guyger yet.

The chief said at a town-hall meeting Tuesday that she couldn't fire Guyger before an internal investigation was completed because of federal, state and local laws. She didn't specify to which laws she was referring. Hall's chief of staff, Thomas Taylor, had said the internal investigation was on hold until a criminal investigation into Guyger was complete.

On Thursday, Hall released a statement saying she didn't want to risk interfering with a criminal investigation by making a decision about Guyger's employment.

"As an employer, DPD can compel Officer Guyger to provide a statement during a DPD administrative investigation and those statements given to DPD could potentially compromise the criminal investigation," Hall said in a written statement.

The Dallas Police Department turned over the investigation to the Texas Rangers shortly after the shooting. The Dallas County District Attorney's office is also conducting its own investigation.

Those investigations aren't complete, but Hall said Monday police were notified that a "critical portion" of the criminal investigation — the part that she said could've been compromised by an internal investigation — had concluded over the weekend.

"As a police chief, my job is to ensure the highest level of integrity in this investigation, and that is what I did," she said. "I waited until the critical portion of this investigation was complete."

Michael Mata, president of the Dallas Police Association, said Monday he had no idea Guyger was going to be fired until Hall's statement was released. He said he was "perturbed" by the news, and confused by what he called "short-sightedness and short cuts" leading to her firing.

"Four days ago she said she couldn't fire her because of the investigation, and now, four days, later you can?" Mata said. "Just be honest with the public. There is a process in place that not only afford an office due process but allows the department to have security if and when an officer attempts to get their job back."

But Mayor Mike Rawlings said in a statement that Hall "made the right call" in firing Guyger.

"I have heard the calls for this action from many, including the Jean family, and I agree that this is right decision in the interest of justice for Botham Jean and the citizens of Dallas," he said in the statement. "The swift termination of any officer who engages in misconduct that leads to the loss of innocent life is essential if the Dallas Police Department is to gain and maintain the public trust."

Attorneys for the Jean family said Jean's parents got a call from Hall on Sunday, in which she told them she intended to fire Guyger and explained the delay.

Merritt, one of the family's attorneys, said that while the delay was frustrating, he's glad the chief waited until all the statements made about Jean's killing had been thoroughly investigated.

He said the trial of former Balch Springs officer Roy Oliver was complicated by complaints that the officer's Fifth Amendment rights had been violated by his department's decision to fire him just days after he shot into a car and killed 15-year-old Jordan Edwards.

The Jean family was satisfied with both the termination and explanation, the attorneys said, but they will continue to fight for a murder charge and appropriate sentencing.

"When you fire someone, it's an implicit admission that what they did is wrongful," Merritt said. "The inference is hard to miss."

Next Generation Action Network's Dominique Alexander said Guyger's firing was a positive step. But he said he was "not a fan of" what he perceived to be special treatment for Guyger during the investigation.

"The community cannot start to heal until this officer is held and justice is served," Alexander said. "The first step in the process of it is making sure she's off taxpayer dollars."

Jean's body will be buried Monday in his home country of Saint Lucia.
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I wonder if there is anything in place that would prevent her from ever working for law enforcement again.

Sure it's good that she got fired... what's stopping her from moving and applying to be a cop elsewhere?
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/us/botham-jean-mother-dallas-police-shooting.html

Her Son Was Careful to Avoid Police Officers. Then He Was Killed by One.

He drove the speed limit. He kept his car in good repair. Instead of shorts or T-shirts, he wore Ralph Lauren dress shirts.

For years before he was fatally shot by a Dallas police officer who says she mistook him for a burglar in his own home, Botham Shem Jean had gone out of his way to avoid even routine encounters with the police, his mother, Allison Jean, said during a visit to New York City on Thursday with her lawyer, Lee Merritt.

Ms. Jean said her son had to explain life in America — where for black men in particular, a minor traffic stop can turn deadly — to his family back home on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

“I always told him, ‘Why do you have to be so dressy?’” Ms. Jean recalled in an interview. “He said ‘Mom, I don’t want to be stopped. I don’t want for them to think I’m somebody I’m not.’”

In 2016, when Mr. Jean moved to Dallas to take an internship with the accounting firm PwC, formerly known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, he made sure to transfer his car registration within the 30-day limit.

Unlike many mothers of African-American boys, Ms. Jean, who headed several government agencies on St. Lucia, never gave her son, a risk assurance associate, a talk about avoiding the police.

“We are predominantly black in St. Lucia,” she said as she prepared to return to the island for her son’s burial. “I never had to face any racial issues.” But now Mr. Jean’s death is being held up as evidence that blacks in America are not safe, even in their own homes.

How much his race played a role in what happened when Amber R. Guyger, a white off-duty Dallas police officer, arrived at Mr. Jean’s door on the night of Sept. 6 is unclear, as are many of the details of what led to the shooting. Even if it was a tragic error, Ms. Jean wonders if Officer Guyger would have fired as quickly had her son not been black.

A police affidavit says that Officer Guyger, who lived in the apartment directly below Mr. Jean’s, said she had parked on the wrong floor in the adjacent parking garage, and mistakenly believed she was entering her own home. When she saw Mr. Jean, she believed she was encountering a burglar, which the affidavit said she “described as a large silhouette.”

After drawing her gun and issuing verbal commands, with which Mr. Jean did not comply, the affidavit says, she fired the gun twice, striking Mr. Jean once in the torso.

On Thursday, Ms. Jean suggested that Officer Guyger had invoked the term “silhouette” to imply that she did not know Mr. Jean’s race.

“She would have been able to see his complexion,” Ms. Jean said. “I think the word silhouette was deliberately used to erase the racial issue.”

Robert L. Rogers, a lawyer representing Officer Guyger, declined to comment.

In another interview on Thursday, a neighbor who lives on the same floor as Mr. Jean said that she, too, questioned Officer Guyger’s contention that it was too dark to see into the apartment. The neighbor, who requested anonymity because she is also a city employee, said that the lighting in the hallway is bright and illuminates the inside of the apartments when the door is open.

“Even if all the lights are off, I can see what my furniture looks like, I can see everything in the apartment,” said the neighbor, who said she heard a woman yelling in what she said sounded like “a one-sided argument’’ before gunshots went off on the night of the episode, after which she heard another voice, which she presumed was Mr. Jean’s. Some of this account might comport with Officer Guyger’s statement that she gave verbal commands.

But the neighbor said that the door could not have been ajar, as Officer Guyger told the police, according to the affidavit. “The doors are made so when you walk in they slam behind you,” she said. “They’re heavy.”

Accounts from other neighbors in local news reports have not been entirely consistent. At least one has said that Officer Guyger could be heard pounding on the door asking to be allowed in, Mr. Merritt said, contrary to her account that she let herself in.

In the affidavit, Officer Guyger said that after the shooting she immediately called 911. That was around 10 p.m.

Ms. Jean, who spoke to her son every day, had last spoken to him the night before at 9:30, she said. That night, “I looked at my watch and I said, ‘He may be calling soon,’” she said. “When it was 10, I found it strange he didn’t call.”
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https://ktla.com/2018/09/25/lawyer-...ce-officer-who-killed-neighbor-was-premature/

Lawyer Says Firing of Dallas Police Officer Who Killed Neighbor Was Premature


The firing of a white Dallas police officer who is charged with manslaughter in the fatal shooting of her black neighbor inside his own apartment was premature and unfair, an attorney for the officer said.

Robert Rogers, who represents the former officer, Amber Guyger, said Monday night that Police Chief U. Renee Hall “bowed to pressure from anti-police groups and took action before all of the facts had been gathered and due process was afforded.”

“That’s not the way our system of justice should work,” Rogers said in his first statement since the shooting.

He called the Sept. 6 shooting that left 26-year-old Botham Jean dead “a tragic mistake” and said “words can never express our sorrow for the pain suffered by those who knew and loved” Jean. Rogers added that Guyger “is completely devastated by what happened.”

Court records show Guyger said she thought she had encountered a burglar inside her own home. She was arrested three days later and is currently out on bond.

Guyger’s firing came the same day that Jean was being buried in his Caribbean homeland, St. Lucia. Hall dismissed the four-year veteran of the force during a hearing Monday, according to the Police Department.

A statement from police said an internal investigation concluded that on Sept. 9, Guyger “engaged in adverse conduct when she was arrested for Manslaughter.” Dallas police spokesman Sgt. Warren Mitchell later said that when an officer has been arrested for a crime, “adverse conduct” is often cited in the officer’s termination.

Mitchell said adverse conduct is “conduct which adversely affects the (morale) or efficiency of the Department or which has a tendency to adversely affect, lower, destroy public respect and confidence in the Department or officer.”

The Jean family’s attorneys, along with protesters, had been calling for Guyger to be fired since the shooting. In a statement, the attorneys said the termination is an initial victory.

“However, we are committed to seeing through the next steps of the process of a proper murder indictment, conviction and appropriate sentencing,” they said in the statement.

Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson has said the case will be presented to a grand jury, which could decide a more serious charge than manslaughter.

During a conference call with Jean’s parents and their lawyers on Sunday, Hall reported she intended to fire Guyger and explained the delay in the action, according to the family’s attorneys in their statement.

Days before the firing, Hall said in a statement that she had not taken action against Guyger because she did not want to interfere with the ongoing criminal investigation.

There are conflicting narratives over what led up to the shooting.

Guyger told investigators that she had just ended a shift when she returned in uniform to the South Side Flats apartment complex where she lived.

She said when she put her key in the apartment door, which was unlocked and slightly ajar, it opened, according to the affidavit. Inside, the lights were off, and she saw a figure in the darkness that cast a large silhouette across the room, according to the officer’s account.

Guyger said she concluded her apartment was being burglarized and gave verbal commands to the person, who ignored them. The affidavit said she then drew her weapon and fired twice.

She called 911. Asked where she was, she returned to the front door to see she was in the wrong unit, according to the affidavit. The 911 tapes have not been released.

But according to an affidavit for a search warrant Jean “confronted the officer at the door.”

After the shooting, Guyger’s blood was drawn to be tested for alcohol and drugs, according to Hall. Authorities have not released results.

Merritt has called into question Guyger’s narrative. The lawyer has said that two independent witnesses have told him they heard knocking on the door in the hallway before the shooting.

He said one witness reported hearing a woman’s voice saying, “Let me in! Let me in!”

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said he agrees with the decision to fire Guyger.

“The swift termination of any officer who engages in misconduct that leads to the loss of innocent life is essential if the Dallas Police Department is to gain and maintain the public trust,” Rawlings said in a statement.

Guyger graduated from Sam Houston High School in 2008, according to an official at the Arlington Independent School District. She also attended Tarrant County College, according to an official there, although it is not clear when she went to the school.

Guyger also attended the University of Texas at Arlington in fall of 2012 and spring of 2013, said university spokeswoman Sana Syed. Guyger’s intended major was criminology and criminal justice, Syed said.

Dallas police say Guyger was hired in November 2013 and state law enforcement records show she was appointed as a peace officer in May 2014.

Sgt. Michael Mata, president of the Dallas Police Association, said Guyger more recently worked on a team tasked with arresting some of the city’s most violent offenders. He said the association — Dallas’ largest police employee organization — will be paying Guyger’s legal fees.
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https://www.dallasnews.com/news/dal...f-questions-after-sons-slaying-dallas-officer

Botham Jean's family feared he could die in the U.S. — but not in his own home

CASTRIES, St. Lucia — Botham Jean used to live here in a two-story peach home overlooking the sea.

The home atop a hill in the capital city is where he played soccer inside and broke his mother’s knickknacks. Where he used to climb from the balcony onto the neighbor’s house. And where he once stood on a chair trying to cook eggs in the middle of the night, not yet understanding that he had to crack them, toss out the shell and turn on the heat.

He still has clothes — a yellow dress shirt, a brown suit, pants he never wore — in the closet of a room he hasn’t lived in since he moved to the U.S. to pursue an education and a career.

“I guess I’ll have to give them away now,” said his father, Bertrum Jean, as he placed some items over a chair and put others back in the closet.

As Bertrum, 54, and Allison, 51, sort through memories and their son’s belongings, they’re processing grief and seeking answers about the night Botham, 26, was killed by an off-duty Dallas police officer in his own apartment.

At home in St. Lucia, Botham never so much as broke a bone. Now, Allison, a former government official in St. Lucia, is questioning if the U.S. is as safe as she once thought. She makes the trip several times a year and used to feel safer in the U.S. than in St. Lucia. But since the Sept. 6 shooting, she’s worried about her three grandsons growing up in America — and whether her youngest son should scrap his plans for college there.

She thinks not just of her son, but of people like Trayvon Martin, the hoodie-wearing black Florida teen who was shot and killed in a confrontation with a neighborhood watch coordinator who mistook him for someone up to no good.

“My oldest grandson loves his hoodies,” she said as pain flashed across her face. “I’m just very concerned.”

Botham didn't talk much with his parents about what it was like to leave his home where nearly everyone has black skin. Sometimes in the U.S., Botham, an accountant for PricewaterhouseCoopers, was the only black man in the room.

His mother said he'd make passing references to experiences where people looked at him differently in the U.S. because of his skin color. She said he told her, "I enter an elevator and a little white lady pulls her bag closer to her because she thinks I'm going to rob her."

Because of moments like these, Botham always made sure his headlights worked and his car was in good condition so he wouldn't be pulled over, his parents said. And he always dressed nicely.

He only dressed down at home, worried that some people might think he was a vagabond if he didn't look sharp.

Botham’s parents said he had a deep concern for social justice. He talked with them about Martin’s death, the shooting of Michael Brown by a white officer and the unrest that followed the black teen’s slaying in Ferguson, Mo., and San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem to protest the shooting of unarmed black men by police officers. He passed out water to those in Dallas protesting President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

“Why are you in another man’s country and you’re the one protesting,” Allison said she asked her son.

It was an injustice, he told her.

Despite those conversations, the Jeans never worried about their son getting shot in the U.S. They were more worried about receiving a phone call that he had been killed in a car crash.

They say their son wasn’t a bad driver. They feared when he drove on St. Lucia's sharp and winding roads with hairpin turns. But they also just dreaded Dallas’ highways and the drives he took to Houston and San Antonio.

Last year, in Dallas, a driver whose brakes failed hit Botham’s car, they said. He wasn’t hurt. Only rattled.

“He told me that when he walked out of the car, he had to touch himself to see whether he was really alive,” Allison said as she rubbed her own arms. “I was always very, very concerned he would have been in a fatal accident.”

Amber Guyger’s account of the shooting at the Cedars apartment was that it was a fatal accident of sorts. She told authorities she believed that she was entering her own apartment and that Botham was an intruder. Guyger lived one floor below Botham.

Her attorney, Robert Rogers, said Guyger is “completely devastated by what happened” and described the shooting as “a tragic mistake.”

This week, the Jeans' attorney signaled the family's intention to sue the city of Dallas and Guyger in federal court, alleging excessive use of force.

The night Guyger killed Botham, Allison watched a St. Lucian television show called Can I Help You? on her iPad. The show, on which a former government official criticizes those now in power, is appointment television for her on Thursday nights.

At 9 p.m. Dallas time, she thought about calling her son from New York, where she was visiting her daughter, Alissa Findley. She’d spoken to him the night before and thought he might be out with friends.

Before going to bed, she saw the news about a teenage boy who was stabbed to death.

“I thought, ‘How can a mother go through the loss of her 17-year-old’,” Allison said. “I fell asleep with that on my mind.”

Then, at 12:40 a.m., her daughter and son-in-law woke her.

“Mommy, I got a call from Dallas,” Findley said at her mother’s bedside. “They said Botham was shot and he died.”

After she cried and cried, Allison asked question after question.

“Shot how?”

“I don’t know Botham to be involved in bad company. Could he have been in the company of friends and got shot?”

“Was he robbed?”

“Was it a stray bullet?”

She jumped on Facebook to search for people who knew Botham, thinking the social worker who called had the wrong person. She eventually got a message from someone in the apartment building, who was able to tell her what happened.

But Allison still feels like she doesn’t know what really happened that night.

Nearly three weeks later, Allison and Bertrum, a water and sewer department manager, talk of their son in a mix of past and present tenses.

“I didn’t realize God used me to produce an angel,” Allison said. “God lent him to me for 26 years. I didn’t realize that it was a gift for just a short period of time.”

It hasn’t really sunk in that he won’t one day return to this Caribbean island to fulfill his dream of becoming its prime minister. But his parents are determined that their son’s name will stay alive — “until we get justice,” Allison said.

“We want to see that there is a different reaction by the police departments in the United States toward black men,” she said.

The day after they buried their son in a service focused on justice, the Jeans wore flip-flops and dressed in black. Allison wore a T-shirt with her son’s smiling face on the front. Bertrum’s shirt said “BOTHAM’S ARMY.”

“I’m really grateful for the life that he lived,” Allison said. “I feel it’s unfair in the way that he died at such a young age. But, on the other hand, I’m thankful for the impact he made on people’s lives.”
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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...-shooting-victim-botham-jean-will-sue-n913386

Family of Dallas police shooting victim Botham Jean will sue

The victim's family will name Amber Guyger and the city of Dallas as defendants in the lawsuit.


DALLAS — The family of a 26-year-old black man who authorities say was fatally shot by a white Dallas police officer after she mistook his apartment for her own intends to file a federal lawsuit claiming excessive use of force.

Attorney Lee Merritt said Wednesday that Botham Jean's family will name Amber Guyger and the city of Dallas as defendants in the lawsuit.

Merritt didn't say when the lawsuit will be filed.

Guyger told investigators she had just ended her shift on Sept. 6 when she returned to her apartment complex, but she went to the wrong unit.

The door was ajar and swung open to reveal a figure in the dark apartment. Investigators say Guyger drew her service weapon moments later and fired twice, striking Jean.

Guyger was fired Monday.
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https://www.dallasnews.com/news/dal...ns-sue-city-dallas-amber-guyger-attorney-says

Botham Jean's family to sue city of Dallas and Amber Guyger, attorney says

The parents of 26-year-old Botham Jean plan to sue the city of Dallas and the former Dallas police officer who fatally shot him in his own apartment earlier this month.

Attorney Lee Merritt said Allison and Bertrum Jean plan to file a federal lawsuit claiming Amber Guyger used excessive force.

The city will be named as a defendant because Guyger was operating "under the color of state authority" even though she was off the clock, Merritt said.

"She is in uniform, she was wearing a badge, she purports to give commands, which he allegedly failed to comply to," he said. "Clocking in or clocking out has no bearing on that analysis."

Merritt said he didn't know when the lawsuit would be filed.

Through a spokesman, the mayor declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Legal experts have said Dallas could be held liable for Jean's death if lawyers can convince a court that Guyger was acting in the scope of her employment when she killed Jean.

The Dallas Police Department fired Guyger on Monday, more than two weeks after the Sept. 6 shooting at the South Side Flats apartment complex in the Cedars. She was charged with manslaughter three days after the shooting and turned herself in at the Kaufman County Jail. She posted bail within an hour and is free awaiting trial.

Guyger told investigators she had unknowingly parked on the wrong floor of the parking garage and then walked into the apartment directly above hers thinking it was her own.

She said she saw a silhouette in the apartment and mistook Jean for a burglar. She fired her service weapon twice, striking him in the torso.

Before the shooting, Jean was watching football in his apartment. He had been eating cereal and texting a friend.

Jean's family and their attorneys have said they don't believe the former officer's version of events, pointing to differences in Guyger's account of the shooting according to police documents, including the arrest warrant and search warrant affidavits.

Merritt previously said that he didn't think Guyger went to Jean's apartment accidentally but that he didn't have a theory of what happened.

Jean was buried Monday in his home country of St. Lucia, where mourners gathered demanding justice for his death
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https://www.dallasnews.com/news/cou...r-petition-seeking-murder-charge-amber-guyger

Botham Jean's girlfriend joins Dallas protest seeking murder charge against Amber Guyger

Protesters led by Botham Jean's girlfriend on Friday delivered a petition with thousands of signatures urging the Dallas County district attorney to charge a former police officer with murder in his death.

A crowd of about 50 chanting "murder, murder, murder" punctuated the petition drive, organized by several nonprofits, with a visit to Faith Johnson's office at Dallas' criminal courthouse.

"This is a show of national support," said Clarise McCants, criminal justice campaign director for Color of Change, one of the rally's organizers. "People across the country are seeing this isn't right."

Amber Guyger, 30, was charged with manslaughter by the Texas Rangers three days after Jean was shot to death in his Dallas apartment.

The 26-year-old was killed Sept. 6 by the former officer, who was off duty but in uniform when she entered Jean's unit, directly above hers by a floor at the South Side Flats in the Cedars.

She said she mistook his home for her own and believed Jean to be a burglar.

Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall fired Guyger this week.

Johnson, who wasn't immediately available for comment Friday, has said her office's investigation will be thorough and could lead to a range of charges, depending on a grand jury's decision.

"We will make certain that justice is done in this case," Johnson said shortly after Guyger's arrest. "The grand jury will be able to look at all aspects of this case, which will include anything from murder, manslaughter or what have you."

Participants in Friday's rally, including two wearing masks, held signs along Riverfront Boulevard and drew honks from cars and school buses. Their signs read "DA Faith Johnson charge Amber Guyger with murder" on one side and "Justice for Botham Jean" on the other.

They wore T-shirts representing various left-leaning political causes, including one that read "Abolish ICE" and another pledging support to the American Civil Liberties Union. One protester carried a sign that read, "Black and Brown Lives Matter."

Surrounded by supporters, Jean's girlfriend, Cynthia Johnson, led the way up the stairs to the Frank Crowley Courts Building, carrying box of signed petitions.

She declined to speak to the news media, but others spoke for her, including Joe Estelle of the Texas Organizing Project.

"We want Amber Guyger to be charged with murder," said Estelle, whose nonprofit advocates for black, Hispanic and poor communities. "We also want greater transparency surrounding police officers as they relate to people of color."

Estelle said Guyger deserved greater scrutiny from the Dallas Police Department after she shot 47-year-old Uvaldo Perez, who tried to take her Taser from her in 2017.

Protesters also criticized Dallas police for taking so long to arrest and fire Guyger.

"Anyone, whether they were black or brown, would have been arrested immediately," McCants said. "They would have been fired from their job immediately."

The signatures delivered Friday came from all over the country, McCants said. In all, organizers turned in a little over 170,000 names.

"This is a clear-cut case," Estelle said. "When someone can come into your own home and commit murder, that should alarm everyone, regardless of what color you are."
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https://www.dallasnews.com/news/dal...n-hall-addressing-justice-botham-jean-killing

Activists demanding justice for Botham Jean won't let leaders off the hook at Dallas panel

A torrent of anger threatened to derail a town hall forum Saturday that was designed as a call to action and discussion on justice for Botham Jean, the man slain in his own apartment by an off-duty Dallas police officer.

"This matter is bigger than any one of us," said the Rev. Richie Butler of Dallas' St. Paul United Methodist Church, where people gathered for the contentious and ultimately chaotic event Saturday, which would have been Jean's 27th birthday.

The Caribbean native was fatally shot Sept. 6 by an off-duty police officer who said she mistook his apartment for her own.

Amber Guyger was charged with manslaughter several days after the shooting and has been fired from the Police Department.

But activists say that the department was too slow to act and that Guyger should be facing a murder charge. As the panelists on Saturday urged patience to let the judicial process play out, the crowd's anger intensified.

The tenor of the event might have been most accurately summarized in the way it ended, with Butler's closing prayer drowned out by the chants of others: "'What do we want?' 'Justice!' 'When do we want it?' 'Now!'"

Things hadn't started that way. Early on, the crowd of about 200 heard from Jean's soft-spoken mother, Allison Jean, who called from St. Lucia to thank the community for its support and to declare her commitment to ensuring justice was done.

"This is a difficult time for our family," she said, noting that vigils in her son's name were also being held in such cities as Atlanta, New York, London and Toronto. "Let us not rest until justice prevails. This is an international affair. The entire world is watching."

Pastor George Mason of Dallas' Wilshire Baptist Church said Jean's killing, and the wave of emotions that followed, have unveiled the depths of division and distrust between law enforcement agencies and the community.

"It didn't create something," Mason said. "It revealed something. And we will not have change until those who are unaffected by crime are as outraged as those who are."

As the panel of five — Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson; State Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas; activist Dominique Alexander; attorney Justin Moore; and McKinney City Council member La'Shadion Shemwell — began to take questions, the brewing anger began to boil over the lack of a murder charge and the failure of the Dallas Police Department to field a representative at the meeting.

Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall had been scheduled to appear Saturday but canceled because of a family illness, organizers said. Instead, many in the crowd took out their wrath on Johnson, the district attorney.

"Are you going to take that to a murder charge or not?" some shouted. Her attempt to explain the intricacies of the judicial process was met with skepticism and impatience — and Shemwell himself described it as "10 wasted minutes."

"We don't trust the Texas Rangers' investigation," he said, revving up big portions of the crowd. "We don't trust the Dallas Police Department's investigation."

Overall, it was not a group that wanted to be told to direct its outrage toward civic duties such as jury service or voting, as West and attorney Ben Crump had urged. Eventually, many who had been shouting objections from the rear of the church approached the panelists to confront them directly as moderator Roland Martin, a broadcast journalist, tried to keep them back.

"Y'all can back up, please," Martin said. "There are way too many folks up here."

And so it went. Calls to extend the session an extra hour were denied, and Butler called for a closing prayer, only to be outshouted by protesters as he began.

As attorney Daryl Washington had said earlier, "We want justice. But if we're not willing to step out of our comfort zone, we're not going to have any change."
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