BOISE — The Idaho Attorney General’s Office will not file charges against four Pocatello police officers who shot a teenager with developmental disabilities this spring.
The officers fired 14 times in fewer than two seconds, with 12 of the bullets hitting 17-year-old Victor Perez. The police were called to his home on April 5 for a report of a disturbance. The teenager died a week later after doctors amputated his leg and he was clinically declared brain dead.
The shooting garnered attention from around the world. Cell phone video of the incident has been viewed millions of times, and protests have been held across the state with participants demanding justice for Perez. Members of the community expressed outrage at City Council meetings and demanded the officers be arrested and charged.
The Eastern Idaho Critical Incident Task Force investigated the shooting, and Bannock County Prosecuting Attorney Ian Johnson asked the office of Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador to determine whether criminal charges should be filed.
In a 12-page letter sent to Johnson on Wednesday morning, Idaho Deputy Attorney General Jeff Nye acknowledged the shooting was a tragedy and explained why the officers will not be charged.
“The State would be unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the four officers who discharged their weapons were not justified in using deadly force,” Nye wrote. “We will thus not file criminal charges against the officers.”
“Following the Eastern Idaho Critical Incident Task Force investigation, the Attorney General’s Office conducted 15 additional interviews. The officers involved in the shooting spoke with the task force but declined to be interviewed by AG investigators.
“Instead, they provided audio recordings and transcripts of interviews they completed with a third party,” Nye wrote.”
Well I hope if I’m ever involved in a controversial shooting and the AG asks to interview me I can just be like “no thanks bro, here’s a tape of my friend asking me about it” and that’s the end of it
Fun Fact:
As soon as there is any incident, LEOs are immediately cloistered with their union reps who carefully craft and modify every word of their reports.
Cops dont have unions, those are just gangs
Crazy how cops are the only workforce left that’s still allowed to unionize.
Really makes you think
Especially since it’s the only job that shouldn’t be allowed to organize, since cops are enforcers for the owner class, not labor.
I mean, we’re currently embracing militarization of the police. ICE and the National Guard don’t have unions. This isn’t improving anything.
I would say the problem isn’t that cops have a union. It’s that the rest of the labor force is blind to the very obvious benefits the police reap from the system.
Tbf, police unions are mostly union in name only. It’s more akin to an organized crime syndicate
Organized Crime is, in many respects, a labor response to organized segregated capital.
The Crooked Ladder: Gangsters, Ethnicity, and the American Dream is a 2002 book by James M. O’Kane that argues ethnic organized crime was a significant, though often ignored, path to upward social mobility for various immigrant groups in the United States.
Not a coincidence that ethic minorities would also use law enforcement as a path into middle class comfort and normalcy.