Short diary here, but former Weirton, West Virginia police officer Stephen Mader has been given a $175,000 settlement as a result of his wrongful termination lawsuit. Mader’s termination was precipitated because while answering a domestic disturbance call he elected NOT to shoot 23-year old Ronald Williams.
Mader told CNN last year that Williams was "visibly choked up" and told Mader to shoot him. As a Marine veteran who served in Afghanistan, Mader told CNN that he concluded Williams wasn't a threat and so he tried to de-escalate the situation.
Sadly, Mader’s compassion and cautious attitude did not save Williams’ life:
As Mader was trying to get Williams to drop his gun, two other Weirton police officers arrived. Mader told CNN that Williams raised his gun and was immediately shot and killed by one of the other officers. A state investigation found the officer's actions were justified.
After the incident, it was determined that Williams’ gun was unloaded. It seems to me that this was a suicide-by-cop situation, and while I understand that an agitated man waving a gun around is, indeed, a dangerous situation when one cannot tell a loaded from an unloaded weapon, I disagree that a police department should punish an officer who chooses to try to de-escalate rather than move directly to lethal force.
Mader’s former employer, however, took the position that by not putting lead downrange as soon as possible, Mader therefore put his fellow officers at risk. The Weirton PD also justified Mader’s firing by going back into his past record and dredging up various minor items as justification.
With this ruling, there is at least some support for the idea that resorting to lethal force is maybe not always the best option.
Full story here: www.cnn.com/...
Update: The Intelligencer has more on the story. The take there from Weirton is:
Weirton City Manager Travis Blosser said Monday that the city stands by Mader’s firing. Officials had said Mader was fired eight weeks after the shooting for conduct unbecoming of an officer in three separate incidents.
“We still feel we made the correct decision,” Blosser said in a telephone interview. “We don’t regret that decision. We feel we made the correct decision for the community.”
Blosser said the decision to settle the lawsuit was made by the city’s insurance carrier.
The other “incidents” referred to are 1) Mader allegedly opened a citizen’s vehicle in order to leave a ticket on the dashboard, and 2) Mader used the f-word with a citizen during issuing a citation and 3) Mader did not report the death of a resident whose body was found at the bottom of a flight of stairs as suspicious.
Mader’s defense on the last two are that the woman being cited accosted him and was being verbally abusive herself, and in the death instance, the responding EMT’s had told him that the death did not appear suspicious.
The only one of particular note here, IMO, is the last one, but police officers are not medical examiners or doctors. As we’re not privy to the exact details of what went on here, it’s hard to offer much in the way of assessment of how the situation was handled.
In any case, it certainly seems to an outside observer that these items were pulled together to provide a justification after the fact.