The un-redacted report of the independent investigation into the shooting death of Nathaniel Sanders II by an officer from the Austin Police Department has been leaked.^† Having read the redacted report –and seeing how much was redacted– I felt certain that whatever the APD was trying to keep under wraps wasn’t going to be pretty.

It isn’t.

“We believe the actions taken by Officer Quintana were well beyond merely careless or negligent. We believe his actions, based on his knowledge of the circumstances [i.e., surrounding the incident], his training – particularly with his attendance in the SWAT course and Patrol Tactical course, his experience as a veteran police officer and his status as a field training officer were reckless to the point that he needlessly endangered himself, his fellow officers, the suspects and the onlookers.”

“We characterize Officer Quintana’s tactics as reckless mindful of the legal import of the term. Reckless conduct can be criminal if it involves taking actions knowing that they are likely to yield a particular result but the actor does so despite the risk.”

“[I]t is not within the scope of our review to render opinions regarding possible criminal conduct. We place our findings against [the legal] backdrop … to emphasize the gravity of this sustained allegation against Officer Quintana. It is not a long stretch between finding that Officer Quintana disregarded standardized Department training and tactics in confronting potentially armed suspects resulting in his killing one and wounding the other, and finding that he disregarded the substantial and unjustifiable risk that he would lose control of the volatile situation resulting in having to use deadly force.”

“[W]e believe that the Internal Affairs analysis is flawed by examining this allegation separate from the events that led up to Officer Quintana’s use of deadly force,” they wrote. “Indeed, the allegation itself contemplates the determination of the failure to follow training and tactics and whether Officer Quintana’s actions ‘employ[ed] sound judgment.’ As noted above, we believe that Officer Quintana’s tactics were reckless and that if Officer Quintana employed even the most basic officer safety tactics in this situation as he had been trained, the necessity to use deadly force may very well have been avoided.”

I find the disparity between what this investigation determined and what the Internal Affairs investigation determined^†† to be interesting. There’s been an official response to the leak. Well, it’s not so much of a response as a reiteration by Acevedo that the IA investigation and his own conclusions that Officer Quintana’s actions were “objectively reasonable and within Austin Police Department policy.”

I’d say this was two steps forward and one step back on the APD’s relationship with some quarters of this city, but actually it’s more like one step forward and jump backwards off the cliff. I can’t help but think this is going to cause some sort of backlash, and I’m not entirely certain how Acevedo, the APD, or the City Council is going to talk there way out of this one. I’m pretty angry about it myself, but I wouldn’t go throwing stones through the windows of police cars. There are those that will and worse. I’m just hoping no stones are thrown … or worse.

May cooler heads prevail while getting to the bottom of what looks like a really bottomless mess.

1. † There’s also a story in the Austin American Statesman with yet more details. [↩]
2. †† The IA investigation found the only thing the officer did wrong was to not turn on the camera in his car. They found everything else that happened during this event to be completely acceptable. [↩]