Video and audio released on Monday by the Seattle Police Department related to the fatal police shooting of Che Taylor don't tell us much more about whether police were justified in taking the man's life.
Taylor was shot and killed by two officers at the passenger side door of a parked vehicle in the Wedgewood neighborhood on February 21.
Police say he was reaching for a gun at the time and disregarding commands. They say the reason they moved in to arrest him is that he possessed a firearm, violating the terms of his release from prison. Two people were in the car with Taylor at the time—their names and faces are redacted.
Taylor's family says the 46-year-old was going through a "redemptive process," including working at an Amazon warehouse in Kent, after serving a two-decade sentence in prison for violent crimes.
In the release yesterday, there's audio of a Seattle firefighter who responded to the scene telling police he found a gun holster attached to Taylor's belt. And the department revealed that it recovered a handgun from the floor of the passenger's side of the car after the vehicle had been towed to another location. The SPD believes the gun was Taylor's.
A key witness—a young woman who was sitting in the backseat of the vehicle at the time—makes contradictory statements in two separate recordings. "I think he pulled out a gun and then they shot back and he died," the woman said in a video taken from a patrol car.
In a subsequent interview the day of the shooting with two SPD officers from the Force Investigation Team (FIT), she said, "I couldn't see the past the seat, but he had a gun, I guess—supposedly—is why he got shot, he was trying to get his gun out of his pants err, I don't know, cause I couldn't really see to tell you the truth because it was in the front seat, and I was in the back."
In the audio recording, her interviewers describe her as a nervous, homeless young woman.
Later on, asked once again about what she saw, she said, "While the cop was yelling get out of the car, he was reaching for his gun." She does not reconcile or withdraw any of the conflicting statements in her interview. The FIT interviewers don't follow up and ask what she was actually able to see from the backseat.
Given the clear contradictions in the woman's testimony, why has the SPD claimed, without any qualification, that this witness said Taylor was reaching for a gun? The SPD hasn't responded to a request for comment about this.
The FIT interview is supposed to determine whether the shooting violated any SPD policies—essentially, whether it was justified. But the department's public affairs team has already cherry-picked one set of statements from the female witness who spoke with FIT and publicized it, painting a picture that corroborates the views of the officers who killed Taylor. Those officers also say Taylor reached for a gun. This calls into question the neutrality of the SPD's process. Taylor's family has repeatedly called for an independent investigation.
FIT officers sometimes ask questions in ways that seem designed to justify officer actions, the department's federal monitor said in a report last June. Even as the monitor declared the FIT to be in initial compliance with federal reforms in September, the FIT team was found to ask leading questions 44 percent of the time.
The other witness to the Taylor shooting, an older man, was sitting in the driver's seat at the time of the incident. He said Taylor was tossing items out of a "murse" as police approached, including a baggie of drugs, but he didn't see whether Taylor had or reached for a gun.
Andre Taylor, Che Taylor's brother, said the release of the information doesn't settle anything because it doesn't prove he was reaching for a gun or not following commands. "Arrest him if he had drugs," he said. "Don't kill him... The issue is whether it was justified or not to kill my brother."
In a statement, the Seattle-King County NAACP called the new information "nothing more than a smoke screen... we have yet to see anything that convinces us he had a gun on him at the time of the shooting." The organization said the media has perpetuated a narrative that Taylor "somehow deserved to be murdered."
The SPD has not offered an interpretation of the evidence it released yesterday. Mayor Ed Murray has previously said police acted "appropriately."
One example of the media advancing a pro-police narrative is in today's Seattle Times:
The newly disclosed information fulfilled a pledge by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole to provide a comprehensive update on the incident within 30 days of the shooting of the 46-year-old African American.
While it's a positive step that the police shared more information, this account of the timeline simply isn't accurate. The shooting took place on February 21. Thirty days later was March 22—more than one week ago.
UPDATE: The Times has made a correction. SPD pledged to give an update within thirty days of February 26, which means that in the end, the update arrived one day late.
