The article states that the “community is on edge following 18 Las Vegas police officer-involved shootings this year.” In this case the warrants used to run up on this unarmed youth were trumped up and the youth was murdered for making a ‘movement’ (even though his girlfriend said he didn’t move and was clearly unarmed).
Vegas police study policy after drug raid slaying
Sequoia Pearce, who is 9 months pregnant, says she and her fiance, 21 year-old Trevon Cole, thought someone was breaking in to their apartment, so she hid in the closet. "I was coming out, and they told me to get on the floor. I heard a gun shot and was trying to see what was happening and where they had shot him," she said.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/38564290
LAS VEGAS – The head of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department promised a review of how drug search warrants are obtained and served following the slaying of an unarmed 21-year-old man during a police raid at a Las Vegas apartment.
Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie told Las Vegas Review-Journal editors that he was troubled that a warrant affidavit said undercover officers bought less than 2 ounces of marijuana from Trevon Cole in the weeks before the June 11 raid.
The officer who shot Cole, Bryan Yant, also claimed incorrectly in court documents that Cole had an “extensive” criminal history in Houston and Los Angeles. The Review-Journal found that was not true.
“I can tell you that when I got my 48-hour briefing on that particular shooting, I had some concerns in regards to the level of narcotics purchased and the level of search warrant that was used,” Gillespie said in an interview reported Wednesday. “It definitely has given rise to me to take a look at what warrants are being served and who is serving those warrants.”
Gillespie, who is running for re-election in November, also promised corrective action if necessary.
Yant, 34, has been involved in three shootings in nine years as a Las Vegas police officer. He is on paid leave pending a departmental review and Clark County coroner’s inquest of Cole’s death scheduled for Aug. 20.
A jury will hear witness testimony and a presentation from prosecutors before ruling whether the slaying was justified, excusable or criminal. The officer and witnesses won’t face cross-examination.
Police have said Cole made a “furtive movement” before Yant shot him dead in the bathroom of a one-bedroom apartment while Cole’s pregnant 20-year-old girlfriend was in the next room. The woman told the Review-Journal that Cole made no movements toward officers, did not have anything in his hands and did not own a weapon.
Gillespie has pleaded for patience from a community on edge following 18 Las Vegas police officer-involved shootings this year. Five cases have resulted in death.
Critics and family members have called for police to release store surveillance tapes following the fatal police shooting July 10 of Erik Scott outside a Costco membership warehouse store in northwest Las Vegas. Scott, 38, was a U.S. Military Academy graduate who had a concealed weapon and permit.
Gillespie said surveillance footage of Scott’s shooting might not exist but store video hard drives had been sent to experts in California for review.
“As it stands right now, we don’t have any (footage),” he said.
An inquest in Scott’s slaying, initially scheduled for Sept. 3, has been postponed indefinitely.
Another Link On The Topic: Pregnant woman watches as police storm apartment, kill fiance
