Latest news with #deadlyforce
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Michigan City officer's shooting of South Bend man ruled justified due to 'deadly threat'
The actions of a Michigan City officer who fatally shot a South Bend man during a pursuit in April 2025 were ruled justified. On May 29, the Jasper County Prosecuting Attorney's office, acting as special prosecutor, found that the officer who shot a man on April 4 was legally justified in using deadly force to defend himself. Michigan City Police identified the officer who fired his gun as Sgt. Michael Oberle — a 15-year veteran of the department, The Tribune's reporting partners at WNDU-TV said — however a report from the prosecutor's office does not identify the officer by name. A Michigan City officer conducted a traffic stop around 5:30 p.m. at the 5800 block of South Franklin Street, near Walmart, for driving without headlights in reduced visibility, a Michigan City Police Department press release said. The driver and passenger in the car gave the officer their names. However, the passenger's name, who identified himself as 'Jose Martinez,' was associated with several active warrants, the prosecutor's office said. The officer began to investigate if the passenger was the same man, the prosecutor's press release said, but at this time, the passenger, who was later identified as Jose Meza, fled from the vehicle. Multiple officers, including Oberle, pursued Meza — a 21-year-old from South Bend — and observed Meza pull a firearm from his waistband and point it at the officers, the prosecutor's office said. Oberle was backing up the officer that initially conducted the traffic stop, Michigan City Police Chief Marty Corley told The Tribune. Meza fled across parking lots and hedges at a business before pointing his gun at Oberle, the prosecutor said. 'Believing that Meza posed a deadly threat, (Oberle) fired multiple shots, striking Meza,' the prosecutor's office report said. Meza fell to the ground, began to reach for his gun and Oberle fired two more shots, the prosecutor said. Meza was rendered first aid and transported to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the press release said. Indiana State Police District 13 Criminal Investigations Division investigated the shooting, finding evidence that showed Meza attempted to fire multiple times, but his gun malfunctioned, the prosecutor's office said. Oberle was placed on paid administrative leave during the investigation, a press release from Michigan City Police Department said. Indiana State Police presented the investigation to the county prosecutor's office for further review on May 21. The investigation is now closed, Jasper County Prosecuting Attorney Jacob R. Taulman said in a news release, and no charges were filed against Oberle. Email Tribune staff writer Camille Sarabia at csarabia@ This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Michigan City cop faces no charges as fatal shooting ruled 'justified'
CBS News
22-05-2025
- CBS News
Colorado mountain sheriff says agency has made strides in the right direction for community policing
Deputies for some of Colorado's mountain communities found out in April they wouldn't be charged after using deadly force earlier this year. Their boss believes the ruling in the favor of his deputies is a sign of his agency's long-term steps in the right direction of community policing. This comes after one of his deputies did ultimately face consequences for his actions. Deputies ended up firing multiple times on Christine Lewis before killing her back in March. This happened, according to reports, after a felony traffic stop, where Lewis, 36, pointed a gun at deputies and officers for a combined 17 minutes. After utilizing less-lethal options, including beanbag rounds, deputies opened fire on her. In the April report from Colorado's 5th Judicial District, District Attorney Heidi McCollum clears the law enforcement officers of any wrongdoing, and explained that deputies exercised, "great restraint in not firing lethal rounds at her sooner than they did." Clear Creek County Sheriff Matthew Harris. CBS Clear Creek County Sheriff Matthew Harris told CBS Colorado this is exactly the kind of change that's come from training, culture changes and personal changes at CCCSO. All these changes have come in the wake of the 2022 shooting and killing of Christian Glass by a deputy. "Every single one (of our employees) will think about the Christian Glass case for a long time," Harris explained. "As I've said before, what happened to Christian Glass was a tragedy, and it was an organizational failure." Harris said he sees the operation to subdue Lewis as unfortunate, but one where his deputies did what they were trained to do, and worked to protect the public in a lawful way. He believes, when the DA references "restraint," she's talking about his employees' efforts to create an ending without taking a life. "It means doing everything possible to ensure that the outcome ends as safe to the community, and to the individual, and to the officers as possible," Harris said. In dashboard camera recorded from an Idaho Springs Police Department cruiser, Lewis swings her arm, pointing a handgun at deputies and officers multiple times while law enforcement takes cover behind vehicles. Eventually, Lewis walked closer and closer to the side of the vehicle many officers were using for cover, giving her a better line of sight and clearer shot, and that's when a captain with the CCCSO fired his duty rifle at Lewis, alongside other officers and deputies, and Lewis fell to the ground. Law enforcement advances on her, and Lewis rolls from her side toward officers and again points her handgun directly at officers, who are now only a few feet away. Law enforcement officers open fire once again, killing Lewis. Clear Creek also had it's Community Crisis and Health Assistance Team (CCHAT) on standby. It's a program put in place after the death of Glass to help end conflicts like this without a loss of life. But because it was an armed and dangerous criminal situation regarding a felony warrant, volunteers were not safely able to make it on scene to negotiate with Lewis. Harris said, while there's many different aspects of the office that have been corrected, it's not a time to become complacent. "When you are happy with your success, that will lead to your failure," Harris said. "So this has to be a department where we look for continuous improvements. We we have to celebrate our victories. We don't spike the football. We continue to get better, and my mantra has been, 'We get a little bit better every day.'" As for backsliding, Harris said he can make a promise that CCCSO will not fall back into it's old ways, where the community cannot trust them with their own safety. "If (our) people make critical mistakes, they will not be here any longer," Harris said. "People make minor mistakes, of course, and we correct, we fix them, and we go back to training, and we make them better. But you come here and you make critical mistake, we can't have you."
New York Times
15-05-2025
- New York Times
Supreme Court Reject's ‘Moment of Threat' Limit in Excessive Force Suits
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a legal theory that put tight limits on lawsuits seeking to hold police officers accountable for using deadly force. The case arose, an appeals court judge wrote, from a commonplace occurrence. 'A routine traffic stop,' the judge wrote, 'has again ended in the death of an unarmed Black man.' The question for the justices was how closely courts should confine their consideration of whether deadly force was justified to 'the moment of threat' — the seconds preceding a police shooting — rather than the larger context of the encounter. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for a unanimous court, said that considering only the moment of threat was too limited. 'To assess whether an officer acted reasonably in using force,' she wrote, 'a court must consider all the relevant circumstances, including facts and events leading up to the climactic moment.' The case started on an April afternoon in 2016, when Ashtian Barnes, 24, was driving on a highway outside Houston in a car his girlfriend had rented. He was on his way to pick up her daughter from day care. Though Mr. Barnes did not know it, the car's license plate was linked to unpaid tolls that had been incurred by another driver. Officer Roberto Felix Jr. of the Harris County Constable's Office pulled the car over based on those unpaid tolls. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Yahoo
Officer-involved shooting on Ocean Boulevard deemed ‘justifiable homicide,' police report shows
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WBTW) — A Myrtle Beach police officer's use of deadly force to stop a man from shooting into a large crowd along Ocean Boulevard last month was ruled a 'justifiable homicide' by the agency. The Myrtle Beach Police Department on Friday released incident reports stemming from the April 16 incident at 913 S. Ocean Blvd. that left 18-year-old Jerrius Davis of Bennettsville dead and 11 others injured. 'During the altercation, one of the individuals began firing a weapon. At that time, based on the immediate threat, an officer responded by discharging their firearm,' the incident report states. 'The individual shot during the officer's response has passed away as a result of his injuries.' The report doesn't name which officer fired at Davis. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is investigating, as is standard procedure in any officer-involved shooting. The confrontation was at least the 25th instance of gun violence along Ocean Boulevard since 2020, according to a News13 analysis. Officials said days after the shooting that three officers are on paid leave. * * * Adam Benson joined the News13 digital team in January 2024. He is a veteran South Carolina reporter with previous stops at the Greenwood Index-Journal, Post & Courier and The Sun News in Myrtle Beach. Adam is a Boston native and University of Utah graduate. Follow Adam on X, formerly Twitter, at @AdamNewshound12. See more of his work here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
