Source: STEPHEN ZENNER / Getty
On Dec. 22, 2020, 47-year-old Andre Hill was shot to death by a Columbus, Ohio, police officer who walked into a home garage Hill was standing in and, within seconds, killed him while he was trying to comply with the officer’s orders. Hill was armed with nothing but a cell phone. On Monday, the ex-officer, Adam Coy, a 20-year veteran of the Columbus police force, was found guilty of murder, reckless homicide and felonious assault. According to NBC News, Coy faces up to life in prison.
On Tuesday, the day after Coy’s conviction, the United States elected as president, for the second time, Donald Trump, who has promised America’s police officers “immunity from prosecution” and has even mused that officers should have “one real rough, nasty day,” of unfettered police brutality in order to get crime under control. (Trump spent the entirety of his campaign suggesting that violent crime had risen to an all-time high under the Biden administration while all available violent crime data indicates that it’s actually near an all-time low.)
Source: Franklin County Ohio Sheriff / Franklin County Ohio Sheriff
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In fact, in September, Trump said this about the state of policing in America:
“What the hell is going on? See, we have to let the police do their job. And if they have to be extraordinarily rough. And you know, the funny thing with all of that stuff, look at the department stores — same thing — they walk into it. You see these guys walking out with air conditioners —with refrigerators on their back. The craziest thing. And the police aren’t allowed to do their job. They’re told if you do anything, you’re gonna lose your pension, you’re gonna lose your family, your house, your car.”
Suffice it to say, Trump didn’t (and couldn’t) point to a single instance where a police officer was disallowed to do their job under threat of losing everything they hold dear after catching a burglar red-handed committing theft — because that’s absurd. However, what Trump was ultimately suggesting was that cops can’t arrest suspected criminals due to what “Back the blue” Republicans perceive as an anti-police narrative in America, particularly as it relates to the policing of Black people.
This is where Hill’s case is relevant because part of Coy’s defense was that he suspected, for no discernable reason, that his victim might be breaking into residences in the area.
From the Associated Press:
The officer’s attorneys argued Hill’s lack of a weapon did not matter because Coy thought his life was in danger. “He wasn’t reckless, he was reasonable,” said attorney Mark Collins.
Coy had gone to the neighborhood to investigate a complaint about someone inside a running vehicle when he first encountered Hill sitting in an SUV.
Hill told Coy he was waiting on a friend to come outside. The officer said he thought Hill seemed dismissive and then suspicious after Hill walked to a house and knocked on the door before entering the garage.
Coy said he lost sight of Hill and suspected he might be trying to break into the house. Coy used a flashlight to spot Hill in the garage and told him to come out, the officer testified.
Police body camera footage showed that directly after Coy demanded Hill come out of the garage, Hill walked towards him and a second officer with his cell phone raised high above him with the screen illuminated and facing the officers. Coy shot Hill anyway, and after the shots were fired, he was still yelling at Hill to “put your f**king hands out to the side” and to “roll on your stomach, now,” instead of immediately rendering aid. Coy, who was fired after the incident, even stopped his then-partner, Amy Detwiler, from helping Hill telling her, “Don’t get f**king close, I can’t see his hand.” Detwhiler later reported that she “did not observe any threats” from Hill that would prompt Coy to shoot in the first place.
This was arguably one of the most egregious and indefensible cases of police killings of unarmed Black people in 2020, and that’s saying a lot considering that was the year of civil unrest over the murder of George Floyd.
Trump was no friend to the Black Lives Matter movement then and he certainly isn’t now that he’s set to return to the White House. His promise of police immunity and his insistence that it is police officers, not police brutality victims, who will be empowered on his watch should raise concern that cases like Hill’s will yield appropriate accountability for officers in the future. That’s not hyperbole or fearmongering; it’s speculation based on the words that have come directly out of Trump’s mouth.
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