Shooting of Daniel Shaver

On January 18, 2016, Daniel Leetin Shaver of Granbury, Texas, was shot and killed  by  police  officer Philip Brailsford in the hallway of a La Quinta Inn & Suites hotel in Mesa, Arizona. Police were responding to a report that a rifle had been brandished at the window of Shaver's hotel room.

After the shooting, the rifle, which remained in the room, was determined to be a pellet gun. Following an investigation, Brailsford was charged with second-degree murder and a lesser manslaughter charge and found not guilty by a jury. Prosecutors argued the shooting was unjustified. In March 2018, it became known that the United States Department of Justice has reopened the case and is looking into a possible civil rights violation by Brailsford. Brailsford was reinstated to the department in August 2018, then over a month later was granted retirement on medical grounds, as well as a pension. Brailsford's lawyer has said that Brailsford suffered from post traumatic stress disorder due to his shooting of Shaver and the resultant criminal trial.

Backgrounds

Philip Brailsford
Philip Mitchell "Mitch" Brailsford was 26 years old at the time of the shooting. He had been employed with the Mesa Police Department since 2013. Brailsford's father was a police sergeant who had also worked for the Mesa Police Department. He graduated from Mesa Desert Ridge High School in 2009, and had signed up with the Arizona National Guard before being hired by Mesa Police. He is married to his wife and has a son.

Daniel Shaver
Danieel Leetin Shaver, 26, grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and graduated from Hillwood High School in 2007. He had lived in Granbury, Texas, with his wife and two daughters. Shaver was employed as a pest control worker, and was in Mesa for a business trip.

Shooting 
According to a police report, Shaver had been staying at a Mesa La Quinta Inn & Suites on business. He invited two acquaintances, Monique Portillo and Luis Nunez, to his room for drinks. There he showed them a scoped air rifle he was using to exterminate birds inside grocery stores. At one point the gun was pointed outside his fifth-floor window, prompting a witness to notify the hotel receptionist; the police were immediately called.

Nunez left the hotel room shortly before police arrived at about 9:20 p.m. When police arrived at the hotel, they ordered Shaver and Portillo to exit the room. Six officers in the hotel corridor pointed weapons at them and gave them orders for several minutes with frequent admonitions that failing to comply with them would get them shot. Portillo was taken into custody unharmed.

Police Sergeant Charles Langley then ordered Shaver, who was lying prone, to cross his legs. Moments later, he ordered Shaver to push himself "up to a kneeling position." While complying with the order to kneel, Shaver uncrossed his legs and Langley shouted that Shaver needed to keep his legs crossed. Startled, Shaver then put his hands behind his back and was again warned by Langley to keep his hands in the air. Langley yelled at Shaver that if he deviated from police instructions again, they would shoot him. Sergeant Langley told Shaver not to put his hands down for any reason. Shaver said "Please don't shoot me". Upon being instructed to crawl, Shaver put his hands down and crawled on all fours. While crawling towards the officers, Shaver paused and moved his right hand towards his waistband. Officer Philip Brailsford, who later testified he believed that Shaver was reaching for a weapon, then opened fire with his AR-15 rifle, striking Shaver five times and killing him almost instantly. Shaver was unarmed, and may have been attempting to prevent his shorts from slipping down.  An autopsy report found that Shaver was intoxicated, with a blood-alcohol level over three times the legal driving limit, which police stated may have contributed to his confused response to their commands.

Body camera footage 
Shaver's wife requested that the Mesa Police Department release bodycam footage of the event. The request for the bodycam footage was initially refused. In a recording released by Shaver's wife, purportedly of a meeting between her and Maricopa County prosecutors, she was told that she could watch the video only if she agreed not to discuss its contents with the press. Prosecutors and defense attorneys in Brailsford's murder trial asked that the bodycam footage be sealed. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Myers granted the motion to seal the footage.

On May 25, 2016, Myers ordered portions of the video released. The released video omits the shooting itself. The redacted version includes footage from Brailsford's body camera up to the time when someone exits Shaver's hotel room and footage from another officer's camera while he escorts a woman from the room. The full unedited body camera footage of the shooting was released by the Mesa Police Department hours after Brailsford was found not guilty of murder and reckless manslaughter.

Aftermath

Criminal charges and termination from police department
In early March 2016, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office announced it would pursue second-degree murder charges against Brailsford in relation to the incident. According to a statement by the county attorney, "after carefully reviewing the relevant facts and circumstances, we have determined that the use of deadly physical force was not justified in this instance." Brailsford pleaded not guilty.

Later that month, the Mesa Police Department fired Brailsford, citing several policy violations and unsatisfactory performance. An internal investigation report revealed that Brailsford had violated department  weapon policy by engraving his patrol rifle with the phrases "You're fucked" and "Molon labe" (a Greek expression meaning "come and take them"). Brailsford had also previously been investigated for body slamming a teenager during an arrest.

In the official police report of the incident, Brailsford defended his actions, saying that Shaver crawling towards the officers was Shaver "trying to gain a position of advantage in order to gain a better firing position on us". Shaver had indeed crawled towards the officers after one of them instructed him to. The report stated: "Shaver was co-operative, but sometimes confused by the commands and because of his possible intoxication".

Four months after the shooting, Charles Langley, the officer who gave orders to Shaver, retired from the department. By December 2017, Langley had emigrated to the Philippines.

Criminal trial and acquittal
Brailsford's trial for second-degree murder was originally scheduled for February 2017. A defense motion challenging the state's probable cause to send the case to trial; appeals to the Arizona Supreme Court over the release of controversially redacted footage from Brailsford's body camera, made a February trial unrealistic. On February 10, 2017, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge George Foster rescheduled the trial for October 23, 2017.  Brailsford faced up to 25 years in prison if found guilty of second-degree murder.

On December 7, 2017, after a six week trial, a jury acquitted Brailsford of all charges.

Also in December 2017, it was revealed that Brailsford had been involved in a prior incident  in 2015 regarding an arrest of teenagers in a store. During the arrest, Brailsford was recorded on video throwing a teenager against a shelf, putting the teenager in a headlock, and then slamming the teenager onto the ground. At the time, the incident was publicized (but Brailsford was not named) by a witness to the arrest, who alleged excessive force because the teenagers "weren't doing anything". A spokesman for the Mesa Police Department said that the department "looked at" the incident and "administratively cleared" Brailsford, because "police work sometimes isn't pretty".

Bankruptcy and pension 
In January 2018, Brailsford filed for bankruptcy. In early 2018, the United States Department of Justice opened its own investigation into Shaver's killing.

In August 2018, Brailsford was reinstated by the Mesa Police Department, staying for a further 42 days in what the department described as a "budget position". The department agreed to reimburse Brailsford for medical expenses related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Brailsford's lawyer has said that Brailsford suffered PTSD due to his shooting of Shaver and the resultant criminal trial. The reinstatement allowed Brailsford to apply for "accidental disability" suffered during the course of work. As a result, Brailsford was unanimously approved to be retired on medical grounds. Brailsford was also given a pension of $2,500 per month. The fact that Brailsford was ultimately medically retired instead of  remaining fired was only revealed to the public in July 2019. According to a pay stub attached to Brailsford's bankruptcy file, he has been working for a steel company in Glendale, Arizona.

See also 

 List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States, January 2016

References 

Category:2016 in Arizona
Category:2016 controversies in the United States
Category:Criminal trials that ended in acquittal
Shaver, Daniel
Shaver, Daniel
Category:January 2016 events in the United States
Category:Law enforcement in Arizona
Category:Mesa, Arizona
Shaver, Daniel
Category:Police brutality in the United States