-
Officer Bret Lampiris Tremba fatally shoots Iraq war veteran Kenneth Ellis III in the neck. The shooting spawns a highly contentious wrongful death lawsuit that is still pending, and Ellis’ father has become an outspoken APD critic.
-
A group of family members of men shot by APD officers and other community activists begin regularly staging protests of the department’s practices, calling for an outside investigation and the firing of Chief Ray Schultz.
-
During a struggle after a domestic violence incident, Officer Josh Brown fatally shoots Enrique Carrasco seven times. Police have said Carrasco broke out the window of Brown’s patrol car before the shooting began. An autopsy report showed that at least one bullet went through glass.
-
Officer Byron “Trey” Economidy shoots Jacob Mitschelen twice in the back and once in the buttocks after Mitschelen allegedly fled on foot after a traffic stop. Economidy says Mitschelen pointed a gun at him. A civil wrongful death lawsuit is pending. In the days after the shooting, media reports revealed that Economidy had described his job as “human waste disposal” on Facebook. He was suspended four days.
-
Officers go to arrest Christopher Torres, a mentally ill 27-year-old, on an outstanding warrant, and a struggle with Torres ensues. Torres allegedly disarms one of the officers, and the other officer fatally shoots him. A lawsuit is pending.
-
APD SWAT officer Sean Wallace shoots Alan Gomez, who was unarmed, as Gomez was walking back into a home. Gomez’s family members had called police to say he was holding them hostage. A civil lawsuit is pending.
-
Then-officer Pete Dwyer is fired in August for violating APD’s social media policy with offensive posts on MySpace and Twitter. At the time, Dwyer was the target of an unrelated criminal investigation that has not resulted in any charges.
-
In awarding a family a $4.5 million judgment in the fatal shooting of Andrew Lopez by an APD officer, state District Judge Theresa Baca writes that nearly all the city’s witnesses were “not credible,” and that the department’s training is “designed to result in the unreasonable use of deadly force.” The judgment is later reduced to about $400,000 due to legal caps.
-
City officials release a contracted study of APD use of force policies by the Police Executive Research Forum, or PERF. The study recommended nearly 40 policy tweaks, and Chief Schultz added another 19. Nearly all of the changes have since been implemented.
-
The city pays a $950,000 settlement to the family of Rodrick Jones, who was fatally shot by then-APD officer Brandon Carr in November 2009 during an alleged robbery. Carr was fired from APD in 2010.
-
On a 5-4 vote, the City Council passes a resolution to request a Justice Department investigation of APD. Mayor Richard Berry later vetoes the legislation.
-
After a public records request, the Journal obtains a copy of a video showing officer John Doyle kicking a suspect in the head while another officer holds the man on the ground. Both officers have been fired, and federal officials are investigating the incident.
-
Journal story reveals that police union officials have been giving officers involved in shootings up to $500 each. Union officials say the practice was intended to help officers get out of town and decompress after the stress of being involved in a shooting. Chief Ray Schultz denies knowledge of the practice, which is halted a week later.
-
District Attorney Kari Brandenburg agrees to suspend the decades-long practice of presenting police shooting cases to “investigative grand juries,” which didn’t have the power to indict and had never found that a police shooting was “unjustified.”
-
Journal story reveals that APD’s elite Repeat Offender Project, known as the ROP team, has for 20 years used a hangman’s noose as its symbol.
-
Journal story reveals that APD detectives launched a massive investigation in 2010 into an “Aryan Brotherhood cell” that involved electronic surveillance, undercover operations and other tactics. The investigation was based on the word of a lone jailhouse informant, and APD never developed any information to support the informant’s claim that the notorious white supremacist prison gang had ordered a blanket “
-
APD taps Joe Wolf, a former federal official, to lead the department’s academy and train new breed of police officers who emphasize cooperation and communication and rely less on force.
-
Officer Connor Rice is charged with misdemeanor counts of battery and aggravated battery after he and another officer Taser a man four times and Rice punches another man in the back while he’s being held down following a minor marijuana investigation.
