No accountability - but a lot of questions - in Elizabeth City case

The district attorney for Pasquotank County deserves credit for taking questions from the media after announcing that sheriff’s deputies will not be charged in the killing of Andrew Brown Jr.

The problem is he gave the wrong answers.

Asked why he didn’t request a special prosecutor in the case, District Attorney Andrew Womble said he had to be accountable to the voters of Pasquotank County and a special prosecutor wouldn’t be. That reply underscored the deliberately myopic approach Womble has taken to this case and his failure to address the broader issues involved.

It is an unsatisfying result. The public still doesn’t fully know what happened. That’s not accountability, and that’s not justice.

Brown died April 21 in Elizabeth City after being shot in his car as he fled deputies trying to serve drug-related arrest and search warrants. The case drew national attention because it fits a pattern of police using excessive force against Black suspects. Brown wasn’t armed and was shot in the back of head as he drove away.

Those circumstances raised questions of whether the officers would be held accountable. Womble said they have nothing to account for. The law allows police to shoot when they feel seriously threatened or a fleeing person poses a threat to others.

Determining whether the officers were threatened – or just angry – largely depends on reviewing video footage from body cameras worn by the officers. But that footage has been withheld for nearly a month under a provision of North Carolina law that requires a judge’s order to release it.

Womble still has not sought the release of the videos, though he did offer what he called “a display” of them during his Tuesday morning news conference. The body-camera footage shows a SWAT team approaching and surrounding Brown as he sat in his car in front of his residence. Brown backed up and then drove forward to escape. Officers – two with handguns and one with an assault-style rifle – fired into his car as it passed and continued firing from behind. Brown was killed by a bullet to the back of his head.

Shooting at a suspect in a fleeing car generally violates police practices, but Womble leaned on statutes that allow police to shoot when they feel threatened. The district attorney said Brown’s car brushed an officer and could have hit an officer in an unmarked car nearby. He was not troubled by the threat the officers created by firing at a fleeing car in a residential neighborhood at 8:30 in the morning. One bullet was found in a nearby house. In all, 14 shots were fired.

Womble acknowledged that Brown was fleeing, not targeting the officers. “I think Mr. Brown’s intention was to get away,” he said, “but when he did that, he put those deputies in danger.”

Asked why deputies did not let Brown flee and seek to arrest him later, Womble said their duty was to take him into custody. He said, “They simply couldn’t let him go.”

But apparently in Pasquotank County a district attorney with close ties to local police can simply let the officers go.

The case needed a prompt and full disclosure of the body-camera footage and a review by a special prosecutor. That it got neither shows the need for changes in the state’s body camera law and laws regarding the assessment of whether police shootings are justified.

The case also illustrates how some law enforcement agencies have failed to learn any lessons from excessive use of force by police elsewhere. Sending a SWAT team to serve warrants and surrounding a suspect seated behind the wheel of a car all but invited the chaos that followed.

Womble’s decision likely ends the possibility of the officers facing prosecution at the state level. But an FBI review of the case and possible civil suits may produce a fuller version of how the situation evolved and whether the officers used excessive force.

Despite his failing to see the broader issues of the case, Womble did get one thing right. He said, “There will be folks who are not happy with this decision.”