AAPD Chief’s Decision to Keep a Lid on Details About Woman’s Shooting Triggers Questions

AAPD Chief Seto, when asked, declined to release the name of the officer who shot Aura Rosser. Neither would he answer questions about how many officers responded to the call and why two officers have been put on paid administrative leave.

by P.D. Lesko

AURA ROSSER, according to family  members, came to Ann Arbor to better her life. On Nov. 5 she changed her Facebook profile photo. Four days later she was dead, shot by an Ann Arbor Police officer who responded to a yet another domestic dispute call in the 2000 block of Winewood. It has been two weeks since the shooting and neither the public nor Aura Rosser’s family are any closer to knowing exactly what happened. An autopsy was done last Tuesday as were tests to determine if Rosser’s blood contained traces of any drugs.

AAPD officials have said patrol officers wear audio-recorders, but have refused to say if the officer who shot Rosser was wearing one at the time of the incident. AAPD patrol cars are equipped with cameras, but it’s unclear anything recorded would be of use to determine if the shooting of the woman was justified.

AAPD’s Chief wants to withhold information until the Michigan State Police’s (MSP) investigation is complete and the Washtenaw County Prosecutor, Brian Mackie, has determined if the shooting was justified.

That’s what they want.

Ypsilanti resident Mark Maynard sees a process which will produce a predetermined outcome. He writes: “I suspect we’ll be told that we have to take the word of the officers involved. Given the recent high profile cases involving the use of lethal force by police officers, like the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, though, I’m not so certain that people in Ann Arbor are going to just accept that official narrative, even if it’s accurate and the officers were in immediate danger. In fact, people are already beginning to come out and call what happened that night murder.”

In response to the rise in the number of people killed by the police nationwide, the public and media are demanding transparency when police use lethal force.

Mix in the well-documented militarization of local police departments across the country, including in Washtenaw County and surrounding counties, and Chief Seto’s efforts to try to keep a lid on information about the officer and the shooting have prompted questions.

Mark Maynard shared this observation: “As I wasn’t there, and have no first-hand knowledge of the case, I hesitate to speculate as to what might have happened. Based on the account of Stephens, though, it sounds like things escalated very quickly, and that she was killed within moments of the police having arrived, without much attempt on the part of police to end things peacefully.”

When the Chief of Police in Ferguson, Mo. elected to withhold the name of the officer who shot Michael Brown, newspapers across the country editorialized that the officer’s name and service records needed to be released to the public. The Missouri ACLU successfully sued to get a copy of the police’s incident report when the group’s FOIA request for the document was unsuccessful.

Alan Haber was the first president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). SDS  was a U.S. radical student activist organization started in Ann Arbor in 1960. Haber still lives in Ann Arbor and advocates for public-owned open space next to the downtown library, Palestinian-Israeli peace and, most recently, sent an open letter to his Ward 5 Council members (Anglin and Warpehoski) and Mayor Taylor  urging them to back transparency and public oversight of the investigation into the Nov. 9 shooting of Aura Rosser.

Warpehoski lives directly across from the house where the shooting took place and has come out in favor of equipping  the city’s police officers with body cameras. Studies show that when officers use them, the number of citizen complaints can decrease by over 80 percent.

Rosser’s shooting was the first use of deadly force by an AAPD officer since 1976.

On a private listserv populated by Ann Arbor residents who follow local politics very closely, a listserv to which Alan Haber belongs, there has been a spirited debate concerning whether the name and service records of the officer who shot Aura Rosser should be released to the public.

In his open letter, Alan Haber writes, “…Accountability is important and that the people, the public, those ultimately responsible is our self-government, know what happened. This is not such a completed crime scene that the witness reports, etc., cannot be told to the interested public, as well as some clarification of the further process.”

Council member Jack Eaton (Ward 4-D) argues that the police officers involved may be put in danger and the investigation hindered by sharing details with the public.

The officer who responded to the domestic dispute between Rosser and her live-in boyfriend Victor Stephens, and who shot Rosser, has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the MSP’s investigation, according to Chief Seto. A second officer was placed on administrative leave, as well. The Chief has declined to explain why the second officer was placed on leave.

In response to a request for the names of the officers placed on administrative leave, Chief Seto responded to The Ann Arbor Independent by email: “The names of the officers involved will not be released until the Michigan State Police investigation is complete and a decision is rendered by the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office. The officers have been placed on paid administrative leave pending this same decision. Both are standard practices. The Ann Arbor Police Department has not released the names of anyone involved.”

Five days after the shooting, the AAPD released Aura Rosser’s name to the media.

In 2009, the Police Chief of Baltimore, Md. created a policy similar to one Seto has implemented. Shortly after a Baltimore officer shot a resident Baltimore’s Chief wrote in a letter to that city’s Council members who pressed for the release of the officer’s name, “With the increasing amount of personal information on any individual available through the Internet, we must take a measured approach in balancing the public’s right to know against personal security.”

City and state elected leaders, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union criticized the policy.

Baltimore Council members wrote to their police chief urging transparency and arguing that withholding information could “undermine the hard-earned, sacred trust between our police officers and the public they serve.”

In Aug. 2014 the ACLU of Missouri filed a lawsuit against St. Louis County for withholding a “copy of the incident report for the shooting of Michael Brown on Aug. 4, 2014.” The ACLU argued that St. Louis County had knowingly violated that state’s Freedom of Information Act statute. The incident report was released.

Though the U.S. government does not have a database collecting information about the total number of police involved shootings each year, it’s estimated that between 500 and 1,000 Americans are killed by police officers each year. Since 9/11, about 5,000 Americans have been killed by U.S. police officers, which is almost equivalent to the number of U.S. soldiers who have been killed in the line of duty in Iraq.

Rosser’s death—the death of an African-American woman—has raised the specter of whether race played a factor in the officer’s use of lethal force. Ann Arbor patrol officers who conduct traffic stops are required to fill out a form that indicates the race of the individual pulled over.

AAPD officials suggest the shooting was justified, saying that the 40-year-old Rosser was advancing with a “fish knife.” Michigan State Police First Lt. Sean Furlong is in charge of the investigation. He says he’s waiting on reports from the medical examiner.

Drew J. Tracy is the Assistant Chief, Investigative Services Bureau, Montgomery County, Md., Police Department. In a 2010 piece published by Police Chief magazine Tracy  offers guidance on how to handle the release of information about officers who kill citizens in the line of duty:

“With any law enforcement shooting comes intense media scrutiny. The best policy for all parties involved in a shooting is a 48-hour release policy. Neither the officer’s name nor the name of the individual shot should be released for 48 hours. This gives involved officers time to notify their families and arrange for temporary, secure accommodations if they fear threats or retaliation may follow. The 48-hour release policy also provides the department sufficient time to properly notify the family of the individual who was shot. A professional, timely media release issued by the head of the agency sends the message that this is a serious incident that will be handled with expertise and professionalism.”

Local activist Alan Haber writes in his letter, “At a minimum, if City Council members…recognize the relevance of public interest, then the City Council should express its urgent desire to have a report from the State Police as to the state of the investigation….The City Council should use the next meeting to discuss how to proceed, ask the Chief of Police to report, and the State Police too, and invite public comment.”