With renewed attention on the now widely-known Ricky Ball case, community leaders and public officials examined Columbus Police Department protocols and pushed for department policy improvements and further systemic changes during a town hall meeting Tuesday night, a livestreamed event that garnered about 5,700 views on Facebook.
The town hall, spearheaded by District Attorney Scott Colom, featured a panel of public officials and community leaders, including Colom, Columbus Mayor Robert Smith, Police Chief Fred Shelton, City Attorney Jeff Turnage and Lowndes County NAACP President Lavonne Latham Harris and Dispatch Publisher Peter Imes. David Horton and Jermaine Shanklin, representing the “Justice for Ricky Ball” organization, also attended.
The discussion took place weeks after Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch dropped the manslaughter charge against Canyon Boykin, a white former Columbus police officer who fatally shot black resident Ricky Ball on Northside after he ran from a traffic stop in October 2015. Boykin was indicted by a grand jury for the fatal shooting in 2016 even though he claimed he shot Ball in self-defense.
After her decision stirred up multiple citizen-led protests and drew criticism from local officials, Fitch released all evidence on Saturday to Colom, who has promised he will release as much of the case file as possible on his website next week.
“A family lost a loved one the day that Ricky Ball was killed,” Colom said. “The community is rightfully questioning.”
CPD policies
The police department has an established policy in place to guide officers on the use of force, Shelton said Tuesday.
When responding to an incident, Shelton said, officers should first identify themselves with uniforms, ID and badges and use verbal direction. As the situation escalates, officers can use empty-hand control, intermediate weapons, less lethal force (such as pepper sprays and tasers) and eventually lethal force.
The use of force should be minimized, he said, and officers should leave the use of lethal force as their “last resort.”
“If a person is not resisting their arrest, there’s no need to use force,” Shelton said. “As an officer, unless that person is posing an imminent threat to me, I cannot shoot him. The force has to stop.”
In light of recent violence against blacks nationwide, especially after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis spurred protests against police brutality, Shelton said his department will revise its policies on the use of excessive force and present it at the city council meeting Tuesday.
For example, the policies will articulate the ban on use of chokeholds, a method used by white police officer Derek Chauvin when he knelt on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes.
“It has not been part of our policy, and never will be, to use chokeholds on people,” he said. “In the revision of the policy, we are going to specifically say that our officers will not use chokeholds, neck restraint, or put their knee on anybody to subdue them.”
Additionally, police officers who witness use of excessive force should intervene, he said.
“If our officer saw a situation like that, he would be bound by our policy and subject to disciplinary action if he did not intervene,” he said.
Locally, Ball’s death in 2015 led to a change in the department body camera policies, Shelton said. Officers who fail to activate their cameras — as Boykin and two other officers did during the traffic stop when Ball was killed — face a 10-day suspension without pay for their first offense, a 30-day suspension for their second, and could face termination for a third offense.
The body camera system now is automatically activated when an officer is within 50 yards of a squad vehicle with its police light on, he said, and the sound of gunfire also triggers the body camera recording.
Jason Delgado, lead pastor at Vibrant Church who attended the meeting in person, said he thinks during a traffic stop, citizens should have the right to ask the police officers to activate their body camera.
“It protects the driver in the situation, (who) can feel very vulnerable and very unprotected and unsafe and therefore unwilling to cooperate,” he said. “I think it’s entirely appropriate to request the body camera be turned on before we continue the conversation.”
Harris, who made several recommendations, said she hopes the police department can also help educate the community on how to react during a traffic stop, such as keeping their hands up, turning on interior lights and avoiding sudden moves.
She advocated for establishing a report system for use of force and recommended setting up an accountability system where officers who received multiple complaints would be examined.
Call for closer examination of Ball case, further systemic changes
Harris said the Mississippi NAACP has sent a letter to Michelle Sutphin, special agent in charge at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to request for a federal examination of the Ball case.
Fitch dismissed the case with prejudice, which means Boykin cannot be legally charged in the case again even if new evidence emerges.
Colom, who transferred the Ball case in 2016 to then-Attorney General Jim Hood for an independent investigation, also said his office will handle local officer-involved shooting cases itself from now on.
“It’s because I can no longer allow a situation that happened here to happen again with me being DA,” Colom said. “If a police officer is not justified in using force, particularly deadly force, I’m going to uphold the right of the citizen.”
The dismissal of the Ball case, coinciding with national outcry against racism, spurred a demand for further change.
Horton and Shanklin, advocating for Ball, spoke against racial injustice during the discussion and called for local officials to implement community policing programs and youth advisory boards to mend the relationship between Columbus residents and the police force.
They also called for officials to support removing local Confederate monuments and replacing the state flag, which contains the Confederate emblem. Mississippi lawmakers, led by Republican House Speaker Phillip Gunn, began drafting a resolution to remove the emblem this week.
“We ask that elected officials and the administrators of this city to match our efforts to promote unity and equality,” Horton said. “This is a statewide issue, but we believe the city of Columbus can not only join in the efforts but be a leader in disvalue and disapproval of the flag and everything it stands for.”
Yue Stella Yu was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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