Why Some Police Departments Are Leaving Federal Task Forces
ATLANTA—The police call was routine: a “suspicious person” was lurking at an apartment complex north of downtown. When officers responded that morning in July 2016, a “black man in an white t-shirt” pulled a gun on them and fled, they reported. The cops shot at him, missed and hit a purple Nissan nearby.
A few days later, abandoned clothes and papers in a vacant apartment pointed to a likely suspect: Jamarion Robinson, a 26-year-old former college football star with a recent history of psychotic episodes but no felony record. The Atlanta Police Department asked a special fugitive task force—staffed mostly by local cops but led by the U.S. Marshals—to pick him up.
The task force treated him as a major threat. Armed with submachine guns and flash-bang grenades, task force members broke down the door to a friend’s duplex he was visiting. They shot Robinson 59 times, killing him.
The U.S. Attorney’s office in Atlanta cleared the task force of wrongdoing. But the local district attorney had questions: Why didn’t they take his schizophrenia into consideration when planning his arrest? Why didn’t they try to get him to surrender? Did Robinson shoot at the officers? Was his killing justified?
Three years later, the D.A. says, the federal government is blocking his investigation. The Justice Department maintains it has jurisdiction over the incident and doesn’t have to give him most of the information he seeks. The.
