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September 13th, 2020 
Awake Goy 
Recorded on police body cam footage
fatally shooting a man on his knees who “did not pose an imminent threat,” four
Houston police officers were recently fired for using deadly force when it was
not objectively reasonable.
On April 21, Houston police
officers responded to a 911 call reporting a man walking into traffic and
appearing to suffer from a mental breakdown. According to police body cam videos, Nicolas Chavez
was screaming in a parking lot while brandishing a piece of metal rebar that
the officers mistook for a knife.
As Chavez began running towards the
officers, they shot him repeatedly with nonlethal bean bag rounds and
discharged their Tasers. At one point, Chavez started moving towards Officer
Nancy Leija and Harris County Deputy Art Garduno when Sgt. Benjamin Leblanc
shot him twice with his service weapon.
After firing her Taser at Chavez,
Officer Leija placed it on the ground to prevent other officers from tripping
over the wires from the discharged weapon. Over the next ten minutes, Chavez
remained in a ditch while bleeding out from his wounds and continuing to shout
obscenities at the officers.
Crawling on his knees, Chavez threw
the piece of rebar at the officers before grabbing the wires from the
discharged Taser and pulling it closer to him. Despite the fact that the weapon
was clearly empty and the officers were standing out of range, four of the
officers opened fire as Chavez placed his hands on the Taser.
Chavez died of his wounds before
reaching the hospital.
“You don’t get to shoot somebody 21
times, because at that time, when we discharged those 21 rounds, Mr. Chavez was
at his greatest level of incapacitation,” Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said
at a recent news conference. “I cannot defend that.”
On Thursday, Chief Acevedo
announced the indefinite
suspension of Sgt. Benjamin Leblanc and Officers Omar Tapia, Luis Alvarado,
and Patrick Rubio for fatally shooting Chavez despite the fact that he was not
posing an imminent threat at the time. Acevedo noted that the deployed Taser
was not a threat to them, the officers were standing out of range even if the
Taser had been a threat to them, and Chavez had already been shot ten minutes
earlier and could not even stand.
In a statement,
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said, “The video is difficult to watch without
questioning why the shooting happened and wishing the encounter could have
ended differently and knowing that it should have had a different outcome.
“No one should conclude that the
dismissal of these officers is an indictment on HPD, of the 5,300 police
officers. But when you are wrong, there are consequences. And for the good of
every police officer who serves, for the good of everyone that followed the
rules, that protect this city, it is important for us to call a ball a ball,
and a strike, a strike.
“And police officers, when they do
their job, I will stand by you. But when you fire, like in this case at the
end, when there was no imminent threat, then accountability must take place in
order for our city to move forward. And that’s what’s happening here today.
It’s not an easy matter, and it’s difficult for all of us. But you can’t bring
back Mr. Chavez, and you can’t fill the hole in this family’s life. But we can
move forward, in spite of our pain, to work together, to heal our city. And
that’s what we’re doing here today.”
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