Tasers can't stop man after assaulting woman holding child, officers then use deadly force
Officers were called about 11:20 p.m. on July 15 to assist fire-rescue personnel in the 12500 block of Brahma Bull Circle near New Berlin Road. The family members who called 911 were already out of the house, but the officers could hear loud, frantic screaming from a man and woman inside. They kicked in a bedroom door and saw the room all disheveled and the man on top of the woman pulling her hair with the child in her arms, the Sheriff's Office said.
He refused several commands to release her and back away, but continued to aggressively attack her, the Sheriff's Office said.
"From behind the lady, he's holding her by the hair, just yelling and screaming ... not letting her go," Chief Alan Parker said. "She's holding onto a young child. We find out later that she is currently pregnant with that gentleman's baby it sounds like. Meanwhile, they're trying to separate them, so they end up tasing him. They're able to get her separated at that point."
The officers backed off and began communicating with the suspect for about 30 minutes to get him to come out and surrender. When he finally came out, he remained combative. The Sheriff's Office noted he was a large man and had to be tased several more times. He fought through the tasings and attacked the officers.
"He knocks one over and into a table and drives the other one all the way into the kitchen," Parker said.
Three officers then shoot him. He died and one of the officers was treated for minor injuries while another "was a little banged up." The Sheriff's Office didn't say whether the woman suffered any injuries.
The suspect has been identified as 26-year-old Amir Bradsher. He has no local criminal history, according to Duval County court records, and appears to be from North Carolina.
"Throughout this whole thing ... whatever he was saying they couldn't really make sense of, he's continuing to eat this lady's hair that he had ripped out during the fight inside the room. So there's this whole interaction and he's chewing on her hair and everything, so we don't know what he was going through."
Sheriff T.K. Waters said it's a difficult situation.
"You're there, you're trying to bring the situation to a close safely," Waters said. "But you walk in, you see a lady on the ground, he's literally pulling her hair and not letting her go."
The Sheriff's Office identified the officers involved as Lucas Robinson, Kamau Richardson and Harold Taylor Jr. For Officers Robinson and Richardson, it was the first police shooting in two and five yeas with the force, respectively. For Sgt. Taylor a 16-year-veteran, it was his second.
This marks the 11th police shooting this year in Jacksonville and seventh fatal. For all of last year there were eight with three fatal, according to Times-Union records.
(This story has been updated with the officers' full names.)
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Police shoot, kill man chewing woman's hair during domestic assault
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As his administration faces mounting pressure to release Justice Department files related the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case, President Donald Trump is highlighting a different criminal justice issue — cashless bail. He suggested in a Truth Social post this week that eliminating cash bail as a condition of pretrial release from jail has led to rising crime in U.S. cities that have enacted these reforms. However, studies have shown no clear link. Here's a closer look at the facts. TRUMP: 'Crime in American Cities started to significantly rise when they went to CASHLESS BAIL. The WORST criminals are flooding our streets and endangering even our great law enforcement officers. It is a complete disaster, and must be ended, IMMEDIATELY!' THE FACTS: Data has not determined the impact of cashless bail on crime rates. But experts say it is incorrect to claim that there is an adverse connection. 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A number of other jurisdictions, including New Jersey, New Mexico and Washington, D.C., have nearly eliminated cash bail or limited its use. Many include exceptions for high-level crimes. Proponents of eliminating cash bail describe it as a penalty on poverty, suggesting that the wealthy can pay their way out of jail to await trial while those with fewer financial resources have to sit it out behind bars. Critics have argued that bail is a time-honored way to ensure defendants released from jail show up for court proceedings. They warn that violent criminals will be released pending trial, giving them license to commit other crimes. A lack of consensus Studies have shown mixed results regarding the impact of cashless bail on crime. Many focus on the recidivism of individual defendants rather than overall crime rates. A 2024 report published by the Brennan Center for Justice saw 'no statistically significant relationship' between bail reform and crime rates. 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The latest report from the monitoring team responsible for tracking the impact of this decision, released in 2024, notes that the number of people arrested for misdemeanors has declined by more than 15% since 2015. The number of those rearrested within one year has similarly declined, with rearrest rates remaining stable in recent years. Asked what data Trump was using to support his claim, the White House pointed to a 2022 report from the district attorney's office in Yolo County, California, that looked at how a temporary cashless bail system implemented across the state to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks in courts and jails impacted recidivism. It found that out of 595 individuals released between April 2020 and May 2021 under this system, 70.6% were arrested again after they were released. A little more than half were rearrested more than once. A more recent paper, published in February by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, also explored the effects of California's decision to suspend most bail during the COVID-19 pandemic. It reports that implementation of this policy 'caused notable increases in both the likelihood and number of rearrests within 30 days.' However, a return to cash bail did not impact the number of rearrests for any type of offense. The paper acknowledges that other factors, such as societal disruption from the pandemic, could have contributed to the initial increase. Many contributing factors It is difficult to pinpoint specific explanations for why crime rises and falls. The American Bail Coalition's Clayton noted that other policies that have had a negative impact on crime, implemented concurrently with bail reforms, make it 'difficult to isolate or elevate one or more causes over the others.' Paul Heaton, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies criminal justice interventions, had a similar outlook. 'Certainly there are some policy levers that people look at — the size of the police force and certain policies around sentencing,' he said. 'But there's a lot of variation in crime that I think even criminologists don't necessarily fully understand.' ___ Find AP Fact Checks here:
