Wrongful-death suits name LR police officers

— A pair of civil lawsuits filed in federal court Monday name six Little Rock police officers for excessive force and wrongful death in two separate officer-involved shootings.

The lawsuits, filed by attorney Mike Laux of Chicago, not only challenge the justifications of the killings of Landris Hawkins in November 2009 and William “Collin” Spradling in July 2008 by police, it also questions the findings of the police investigations into the shootings.

Last October, Laux filed a civil suit against the department on behalf of the family of Eugene Ellison, who was shot and killed in his apartment by off-duty Little Rock officers in December 2010.

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The Hawkins lawsuit, filed on behalf of Hawkins’ mother Nikita Hawkins, names Police Chief Stuart Thomas, the city and officers James Christ and Jason Roberts as defendants, and contends that a “pattern of police misconduct and violations of police general orders was so pervasive as to constitute a ‘custom or usage’ with the force of law.”

The Spradling lawsuit, filed on behalf of Spradling’s family, names officers Clay Hastings, Michael Ford, Frederick “Steve” Woodall and Aaron Simon and contends that Spradling’s shooting was unnecessary, and that the detective leading the internal investigation neglected “many pertinent facts that speak to the reasonableness of the officer’s actions.” The omissions, the suit said, were “to prevent information which tended to incriminate officers who shot and killed [Spradling].”

The officers involved in both shootings were exonerated and not disciplined, the complaints state.

Little Rock Police Department spokesman Sgt. Cassandra Davis said she couldn’t comment on pending litigation. The department’s investigative files on the two shootings were not available Monday afternoon.

According to earlier reports from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, police found Hawkins, 28, terrorizing his grandmother and great-grandmother with a knife as well as cutting himself at his 5915 Carlyle Ave. home on Nov. 3, 2009.

When officers Christ and Roberts arrived, Hawkins had put the knife to his own throat and refused to follow officers’ orders to drop it. They opened fire on Hawkins when he pointed the knife at another woman and an infant in another room, reports said.

But the lawsuit filed Monday argues that Hawkins did not present a threat to others and that the officers were never close enough to feel threatened.

The officers never entered the home, Hawkins never came outside and, according to the suit, the officers, knowing Hawkins was in a “suicidal” state, used “unnecessary and unreasonable” force when they shot through a glass door and killed Hawkins.

That shooting violated several department policies, including its use-of-force policy, the lawsuit said.

Spradling was shot and killed on July 16, 2008, by three of the officers named in the complaint outside his girlfriend’s 621 Gillete Drive home, when, officers said, Spradling was going for a gun.

Earlier Democrat-Gazette reports stated that police had gone to the address to talk to Spradling about a burglary committed the previous day, and that he pulled out a weapon and pointed it at officers before they shot him four times.

The case is old enough to fall outside the statute of limitations but Laux said he is arguing for a hearing under fraudulent concealment, where facts are concealed, suppressed or the plaintiff was misled.

In the lawsuit, Laux argues that Spradling’s parents were misled when the department’s then-public spokesman, Lt. Terry Hastings, told them that their son had been killed during a warrant arrest.

There was no warrant, the lawsuit said. The suit mistakenly refers to Clay Hastings as Terry Hastings’ son, and argues that the father of the victim’s shooter has an interest in protecting his son and has no place delivering news of Spradling’s shooting to his family.

Josh Hastings, Terry Hastings’ son and Clay Hastings’ cousin, was fired from the department on Oct. 19 after his Sept. 7 arrest for manslaughter in the shooting of 15-yearold Bobby Moore.

The Spradling lawsuit further contends that detectives spent a total of two hours interviewing witnesses and routinely used leading questions, interjected into explanations, cutting off witness’ accounts and drafting their findings “for the purpose of disparaging [Spradling] so as to make the officers’ actions seem justified and to make it more difficult to pursue a civil cause of action against [the officers involved].” The fact that witnesses never heard officers mention a gun before they shot Spradling, and doubted he had one, was not resolved in the file, the lawsuit states.

Arkansas, Pages 7 on 11/06/2012

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