Bucking the recommendation of police oversight officials who called the shooting “unprovoked and unwarranted,” a divided Chicago Police Board voted 5-3 Thursday night to clear an officer of all wrongdoing in fatally shooting a teen in the back of the head during a foot chase nearly six years ago.
The decision comes a little more than a year after the city’s police watchdog agency had taken the rare step of finding the officer at fault and recommending he be fired for using excessive force in shooting Dakota Bright. The 15-year-old was unarmed when he was shot, but officers recovered a .22-caliber revolver in a front yard near where the chase began, authorities said.
While the Independent Police Review Authority had found inconsistencies in Officer Brandon Ternand’s account of the November 2012 shooting, the police board credited his testimony as “credible and persuasive” and praised him as “a highly decorated and respected tactical officer with years of experience.”
The board majority said it also relied heavily on “his reputation for honesty,” based on the character witness testimony of his partner, other officers on the scene that afternoon, his wife and Deputy Chief Kevin Johnson, who called Ternand among the 10 best officers he has ever supervised.
The Chicago Tribune has previously reported that 23 complaints lodged against Ternand between mid-December 2010 and mid-December 2014 put him among the top dozen officers for the most complaints within the 12,000-strong police force over that period. Ternand was not disciplined for any of those allegations, ranging from excessive force to illegal searches, according to records.
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The 11-year department veteran, who has worked in violence-plagued parts of the South and West sides throughout his career, has also been named in half a dozen lawsuits, including one by Bright’s mother, that have cost city taxpayers about a combined $1.1 million.
Records also show that he opened fire while on duty on at least two occasions in addition to Bright’s shooting — all within an approximately two-year period.
A 21-page decision issued Thursday night by the board showed sharp divisions among its members over the case.
In clearing Ternand of wrongdoing, five of the board members found the officer justified in shooting Bright from about 50 feet away.
In testifying earlier this year at his disciplinary hearing, Ternand said he opened fire when he saw Bright turn his head to the right — in the officer’s direction — and reach his hand toward his left side as if he were going to pull a gun.
However, in a written dissent, the three board members who voted for Ternand’s firing questioned how Bright could have turned his head in the moment before he was shot because his autopsy found the bullet struck him “in the midline of the back of his head.”
Citing the testimony of an expert in use of force by police, the three dissenters also questioned why Bright would have been reaching for his left side since authorities found nothing in that pocket.
The decision means that Ternand won’t be fired or face any discipline for the shooting. He will be allowed to return to active duty and be given back pay for the nearly year he was suspended without pay. City payroll records show he is paid about $87,000 a year.
Reached by telephone Thursday night, Ternand declined to talk to a Tribune reporter.
Bright’s mother, Panzy Edwards, said she was unaware of the board’s decision to clear the officer of wrongdoing in her son’s death.
“There’s nothing I can do about it?” she asked.
IPRA’s decision last year to find Ternand at fault marked a rare rebuke for an agency much criticized for going easy on officers and taking far too long to complete its investigations — nearly five years in Ternand’s case.
The landscape appeared to change, though, after the court-ordered release in late 2015 of video showing Officer Jason Van Dyke shoot teen Laquan McDonald 16 times, sparking heated protests, political turmoil, promises of systemic change, and Van Dyke’s conviction last week for second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery.
When IPRA handed down its decision on Ternand in August 2017, that marked the fifth time in the previous two years that it found officers had been unjustified in shootings. By contrast, in the eight years before that, the agency — since replaced by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability — investigated hundreds of shootings but found only two to be unjustified.
Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson disagreed, however, that Ternand should be fired, finding that his actions were justified, according to records.
When IPRA and Johnson could not agree on how to resolve the case, Steve Flores, a police board member who was randomly selected to review the case, rejected Johnson’s recommendation and ordered an evidentiary hearing be held to decide if Ternand should be disciplined. Under police board rules, Flores, a partner at the Winston & Strawn law firm, had to recuse himself from the final vote since he previously reviewed the case.
READ MORE: Overruling top cop, Chicago Police Board to review officer's fatal shooting of teen »
Ternand and his partner, Officer Victor Razo, responded to a call of a burglary in the South Side’s Park Manor neighborhood on the afternoon of Nov. 8, 2012. After concluding it was a false call, the officers saw a young man, later identified as Bright, step into an alley with a gun in his hand, according to records.
As Bright took off running, Ternand exited the police vehicle and chased after the teen on foot while Razo remained in the vehicle during the pursuit. Bright scaled a series of fences in the backyard of residences in the 6700 block of South Indiana Avenue.
Ternand, who is white, fired a single gunshot from about 50 feet away, striking the black teen in the back of his head.
The five board members who cleared Ternand clashed with the three others over a host of issues, including whether Ternand saw Bright reaching for his left side, signaling to the officer that the teen was about to pull out a gun. The board members who felt the shooting was unjustified questioned whether Bright had ever possessed the revolver found by police.
The board majority found Ternand’s testimony persuasive and cited case law allowing officers to reasonably use deadly force if they’re forced to make split-second decisions “in circumstances that are tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving.”
Patrick McGhee, a Cicero police commander who testified for Ternand as a use-of-force expert, said Ternand had no choice but to pursue a suspect with a gun and that it was “instinctive” for the officer to shoot Bright when he reached for his side.
“It is also undisputed that this shooting was a terrible tragedy, only made more so by the fact Mr. Bright was 15 years old, and that (Ternand) has expressed sincere sympathy for the death of Mr. Bright,” said the opinion by the five — Eva-Dina Delgado, a community relations manager with Peoples Gas; John O’Malley Jr., a former chief deputy U.S. marshal; John Simpson, a partner at an investment bank; Rhoda Sweeney, a retired Cook County judge; and Andrea Zopp, president and CEO of World Business Chicago.
But the three dissenting board members — President Ghian Foreman, a real estate developer; the Rev. Michael Eaddy, pastor of a West Side church; and Paula Wolff, director of a criminal justice project — said they were persuaded by the superintendent’s expert witness who found Ternand’s testimony inconsistent with the evidence.
The use-of-force expert, Michael Gennaco, has reviewed more than 200 police misconduct cases and found deadly force wasn’t justified in only about 1½ percent of them, according to the dissent
Gennaco questioned Ternand’s justification for firing — that Bright had turned his head to the right just before opening fire. The autopsy finding that Bright was shot in the midline of the back of his head shows that he was facing away from Ternand when he was shot, he concluded.
Gennaco also found that Ternand’s admission that he holstered his gun while scaling a fence during the pursuit raised doubts about whether the officer truly feared for his life.
He also questioned why if Ternand and his partner saw Bright holding a gun, neither ever mentioned in their radio calls to a police dispatcher that the teen was armed.
But the board majority found that Bright could have reached for his side not knowing he had dropped the gun at the start of the chase.
The five board members also ripped Gennaco as unqualified to conclude that Bright — based on his head wound — was facing away from Ternand when he opened fire.
“(Gennaco) is not a forensic pathologist, and he is not an expert in reading and interpreting autopsy reports or in firearms and bullet trajectories,” the majority opinion said. “He is a lawyer.”
Twitter @JeremyGorner