Daniel Shavers: The Video Doesn't Lie

Victim Daniel Shavers with his two daughters

Over the past few years, the rapid advancements in cell phone technology have led to an explosion in the number of people walking or driving around with video camera capability in their pockets.

Video footage from camera-equipped cell phones have brought some truly shocking examples of excessive use of force and overtly biased policing based on race by some members of law enforcement.

As have body-cams that are now required by a growing number of police departments in the U.S.

Unquestionably, two of the most egregious and chilling examples of deadly police overreaction caught on video in recent memory were the deaths of Eric Garner and Daniel Shavers (pictured above).

The victims in both cases were engaged in non-violent behavior that were minor low-level infractions at best, both men were married fathers, and neither of the officers who killed them (on videotape) faced any legal repercussions for taking the life of an innocent human being.

Let's review the facts of Shavers' death.

On Monday January 18, 2016, Shavers was on his stomach (per the orders of the police training guns on him) crying and pleading for officers not to kill him moments before he was shot and killed in the hallway of a hotel in Mesa, Arizona by former police officer Philip "Mitch" Brailsford.

A Granbury, Texas resident who worked for a pest control business, Shavers was in Mesa to kill some birds that had gotten inside a grocery store. After inviting two female acquaintances back to his room for drinks, at some point he showed them a pellet rifle with a scope mounted on it that he was planning to use to kill the birds for his job - which he was presumably going to do at night when customers weren't around.

Hotel guests hanging out at the pool below went to the front desk to report someone waving a gun in the window of a room up on the 5th floor of the hotel, and the Mesa PD were called.

Ex-Mesa police officer Philip "Mitch" Brailsford

When a group of tactical SWAT officers arrived and went to Shavers' room, he'd been drinking but told officers he wasn't intoxicated and willingly complied with their orders.

According to a detailed analysis of the incident by former FBI supervisory agent and St. John's University adjunct professor James Gagliano that was shared with CNN on Tuesday, a review of the full unedited body-cam footage that was released after Brailsford was acquitted (more on that in a moment) revealed that the commanding officer on the scene delivered a series of confusing and contradictory commands to Shavers.

Commands interlaced with needless threats that unnecessarily aggravated a tense situation.

Now the end is tough to watch, but I really want you to watch the body-cam footage for yourself; if you haven't already seen it - it's about five minutes in total.

Listen to the commanding officer's tone of voice and the way he talks to Shavers, watch how Shavers tries to comply with every command given to him; in fact he was complying with the officer's orders to crawl towards them when Brailsford suddenly opens fire with his AR-15 assault rifle and fatally shoots Shavers IN THE BACK five times.

As James Gagliano told CNN: "In a quarter-century of participating in and leading tactical resolution operations, I have never heard a law enforcement professional use such offensive -- almost taunting -- rhetoric. the vocal police officer tasked with directing the operation appeared hell-bent on baiting a confused but receptive and compliant subject into making a deadly mistake."

Click the link above to the right of Brailsford's photo to check out the full text of Gagliano's analysis of how the Mesa PD officer's actions led to the murder of a man in cold blood.

Eric Garner being choked to death on a Staten
Island sidewalk in 2014 - for selling loose cigarettes

And I don't use that term lightly.

To me there's no way to watch that unedited body cam footage, watch a terrified Shavers comply with everything the commanding officer asks him to do, listen to that officer repeatedly and intentionally goad Shavers - and then watch Brailsford fire five shots from an AR-15 assault rifle at point blank range - and not see it as murder.

An unarmed crying man crawling on his belly is a threat? Really?

By the way, two months after Shavers was killed the Mesa police department fired Brailsford for unsatisfactory performance and violations of department policy - including the fact that he had the words "YOU'RE FUCKED" etched into his AR-15.

While Brailsford is not the commanding officer heard yelling like a maniac on the body-cam footage, he was the one who pulled the trigger as a crying Shavers crawled toward the officers as he was told to do.

Last Thursday a jury acquitted Brailsford of all charges including second-degree manslaughter and what confuses me is the fact that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Meyers granted a motion to seal the body-cam footage in spring of 2016 before the trial started.

To me the hardest part is that, like Eric Garner, Shavers is literally posing no threat whatsoever to the multiple officers who are around him - and like Garner, Shavers is pleading for his life.

It was just three years ago that Garner's death gained worldwide attention after NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo (who's still on active duty by the way) placed him in an illegal choke hold after the Staten Island father was confronted by a group of officers for selling loose cigarettes on the street.

NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo right after
choking Eric Garner on July 17, 2014

The disturbing video of Pantaleo calmly choking the life out of Garner as he repeatedly rasps, "I can't breathe, I can't breathe!" as three other officers hover over him is horrifying.

According to statements from eyewitnesses at the scene that were detailed in a recent book by journalist Matt Taibbi about Garner, his death and the failure to indict Pantaleo titled "I Can't Breathe: A Killing On Bay Street", as Garner struggled to breathe a woman ran up to Pantaleo and begged him to stop choking Garner.

He gestured to his gun and kept on choking the man.

The conduct of men like Mitch Brailsford and Daniel Pantaleo does not typify the professionalism demonstrated by thousands of law enforcement personnel who face difficult decisions every day.

But when the law is applied selectively and unevenly, whether it's a traffic stop or a chokehold, it undermines trust in the very institutions empowered to enforce those laws for the public good - and that, ironically, makes "good policing" harder for the thousands of cops who do it the right way.

Ultimately it's a sad statement of America's justice system that when the actions of men like Brailsford and Pantaleo do result in the unjustified deaths of innocent people, and municipal courts fail to hold them legally accountable for taking a human life - too often there is no remedy.

Time will tell though.

Even though Mitch Brailsford walked on second-degree manslaughter charges last week, he may very well still face federal charges for a flagrant violation of Daniel Shavers' civil rights - the same charges that resulted in former North Charleston PD officer Michael Slager being sentenced to 20 years for  fatally shooting unarmed U.S. Navy veteran Walter Scott in the back as he was running away from Slager on April 4, 2015.

Maybe that legal route will eventually lead to justice for Eric Garner and Daniel Shavers.

And some small measure of comfort for Garner's wife and their four children, and Shavers' wife and their two daughters.

After all, as I blogged about last Friday, sometimes the wheels of justice turn slowly - and in the end, the video doesn't lie.

In the Name of the Law?

NYPD Lt. Luis D. Machado

Based on some of the headlines in the media over the past couple weeks, if there were a single publicist responsible for the image and brand of American law enforcement, he or she would would likely be sitting in an office scratching their head.

Particularly after lieutenant Luis D. Machado (pictured left) and three other members of the NYPD's 71st precinct's Conditions Unit arrested black postal worker Glen Grays in broad daylight on a busy street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn back on March 17th.

As a guy who personally knows current and former police officers from at least five different police departments in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia, I realize that there are literally thousands of men and women in blue around the nation who are dedicated law enforcement professionals going out of their way to be "good police".

Doing their jobs the right way, treating people with respect and trying to have a positive impact on the communities they serve.

They'll do a thousand positive things that won't get reported by the media, so I have to wonder what goes through the minds of those police officers when they read about the actions of someone like Luis D. Machado and the three other NYPD officers involved in the incident; Lazo Lluka, Miguel I Rodriguez and David G. Savella.

The cynic in me, the one who's seen so many instances of excessive use of police force used against unarmed and innocent people in this nation, looked with a suspicion at the timing of the NYPD's recent trumpeting of the warnings they sent to Belgian authorities a week before the bombing attacks in the Brussels airport and train station.

It's certainly admirable that the department passed on critical intelligence on terrorists to a foreign city, but it struck me as a bit self-congratulatory given that the bombers killed over thirty innocent civilians.

Frankly the timing of the announcement seemed like an emergency PR move given that it came on the heels of millions of people around the world having watched the cell phone video recording of those four NYPD officers in plain clothes confronting and arresting Glen Grays because he yelled at them after they almost side-swiped him with their car while he was exiting his truck with some packages to deliver.

Glen Grays being arrested by NYPD on March 17th 

The wisdom of four cops confronting a federal employee wearing a postal uniform who'd just exited a clearly-marked USPS truck in broad daylight is perhaps best left to the experts at the NYPD whose job it is to investigate such matters.

As has since been reported, Grays has never been arrested in his life and has no police record.

During a recent segment of the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams (himself a former NYPD officer)  and Grays were both interviewed.

They talked about the fact that Gray used to get up at 3am and take multiple busses and subways to travel almost two hours to be on time for a morning shift working in a low-paying warehouse position up in the Bronx before he got his current job with the USPS.

If Machado and the other four members of the Conditions Unit stopped, harassed a hard-working guy like Grays, (a uniformed federal employee doing his job), think about how they treat other young men of color in Crown Heights who might've been doing nothing illegal or inappropriate - other than having dark skin.

The absurd litany of other shaky excuses that some police officers around this nation use to arrest people of color now includes virtually anything, walking, driving, running, sitting, waiting, biking, shopping, speaking, refusing to speak...do we now add "Working While Black" to the list?

Eric Adams (center) with Glen Grays & Grays mom to his left

During the interview with Brian Lehrer, Adams discussed the importance of the postman as a symbol of local community stability and the numerous witnesses who were on the street watching the undercover NYPD officers surround and arrest Grays.

As a former NYPD officer, he talked about the kind of damage seeing cops treat someone seen as a respected civil servant does to the psyche of the community.

After personally viewing the footage and other video of the incident, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton expressed "serious concerns" about the incident.

All four members of the NYPD who arrested Grays have been relegated back to patrol duty pending the outcome of an internal investigation.

By no means would it be fair to judge the conduct and character of the 50,000 NYPD officers based on a remarkably arrogant and stupid decision by four undercover guys with really crappy driving skills, but the incident that took place on March 17th offers a revealing glimpse of the extent of racial bias embedded within the ranks of the New York Police Department.

According to an article on the incident by Ginia Bellafante in the New York Times, Grays returned to the same precinct station where he had been held for several hours after being detained in order to retrieve a copy of the accident report that was filed by the four officers after their four-door unmarked cruiser struck another vehicle from behind.

NYPD officer Lazo Lluka

Bellafante's NY Times article reports that three of the four officers including Lazo Lluka (pictured left) have been the subject of federal civil rights suits before.

Charges which include false arrest and the unjustified use of excessive physical force.

The Grays incident is one of many in recent weeks that reveal the extent of racial bias within the ranks of law enforcement around the nation.

As Conor Friedersdorf reported in an article for The Atlantic on Friday, the San Francisco Police Department is currently investigating the recent discovery of hundreds of virulently racist and homophobic text messages being shared amongst at least 14 members of the SFPD.

This comes after five veteran SFPD cops were discovered to have been exchanging overtly racist, sexist and homophobic text messages back in 2015.

To me this isn't about free speech or political correctness, these aren't guys working in some factory somewhere - it's about the level of bigotry ingrained in the minds of members of law enforcement who carry guns and badges (and who are held to  much higher standard of personal conduct) who are tasked with policing one of the most diverse urban populations in America.

The San Francisco DA's office is now having to spend the time and resources of taxpayers to go back and re-examine dozens of cases in which these officers who were found to have been exchanging these text messages were involved in to see if bias based on race, sex, sexual preference or ethnicity played a role in arrests.

The thing is, this behavior isn't simply related to false arrests, violation of individuals rights or officers openly sharing text messages which reveal internal bias against members of the populations they're sworn to serve and protect.

It's about unchecked police behavior that can also lead to people being killed - and not just people of color either.

Ex-Mesa PD officer Philip Brailsford

Last Wednesday blogger The Field Negro wrote a piece about a Mesa, Arizona police officer who shot an unarmed white Texas man named Daniel Shavers at a Mesa LaQuinta Inn & Suites hotel back on January 18th.

Police, including Philip "Mitch" Brailsford (pictured left) a two and a half year veteran of the Mesa PD, were originally called to the scene in response to an apparent call of a man waving a gun out of a 5th floor hotel window.

It's not really clear if Shavers, a father of two young daughters, was actually doing that or not.

As an employee of a pest control company who was traveling on business, he was supposedly carrying at least one pellet rifle which he used for his job.

The police arrived at the hotel and demanded that he and his wife crawl toward them, which his wife did.

According to an article on AZ Central.com about the investigation into the killing, a transcript of police video taken at the scene revealed Shavers begging for his life moments before Mesa police officer Philip "Mitch" Brailsford shot and killed him.

The 26-year-old Shavers was on his stomach crawling towards the police in the hallway in front of his hotel room, complying with their orders to do so.

A judge recently blocked a request to release the video on the grounds that it would harm the "integrity" of the case.

Mesa PD shooting victim Daniel Shavers & his two daughters 

On the audio taken from the police body-cam footage, Shavers can be heard crying and pleading, "Please don't shoot me! Please don't shoot!" before Brailsford shoots him.

In a police report filed after the shooting, Brailsford made the claim so often used by American police officers who shoot and kill unarmed people.

Brailsford claimed he saw Shavers hand moving towards his waistband and felt an "immediate threat".

Despite the fact that Shavers was on his stomach at the time and pleading for his life, Brailsford claims that Shavers reached for his waistband?

It doesn't add up and Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said an extensive review of the officer's body camera showed "the shooting was the result of unjustified deadly force" and Brailsford was charged with second-degree murder on March 4th and fired from the Mesa PD.

It's not easy to imagine the thoughts going through the minds of police officers in certain situations.

But based on some of the actions of Luis D. Macahdo and the three members of the Conditions Unit who arrested mailman Glen Grays in Brooklyn, or ex-Mesa PD officer Philip Brailsford killing an unarmed father of two - you have to wonder if they're really doing it in the name of the law.

Based on data on killings of civilians tracked by The Guardian, Wikipedia is reporting Daniel Shavers is one of approximately 38 people killed by members of American law enforcement in 2016.

That number will surely be revised upward by the time you read this.

And so the list of The Counted continues to grow.