The U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. announced today that there is not enough evidence to pursue federal criminal civil rights or local charges against two special police officers who were involved in the death of teacher in a Southeast apartment builidng.

Alonzo Smith’s case sparked protests last year, as well as cries from the victim’s mother to deliver justice in her son’s death. Among other things, Beverly Smith says she never learned the identity of the officers involved in the case, even to this day.

This morning, she was invited to meet at the attorney general’s office, where a crowd gathered. Netfa Freeman spoke on behalf of Pan-African Community Action, an organization he co-founded with Beverly Smith.

“Some people in the world believe that the most impacted communities are not capable of making decisions on their own behalf, and they believe that we are a people that need to be controlled,” Netfa said, before telling the crowd what little information he said knew about Smith’s case.

On November 1, D.C. police officers responded to 911 calls and arrived at a Southeast apartment complex to find a winded security guard with his knee on Smith’s back, according to an MPD report. The security guards involved were employed by Blackout Investigations as “special police,” which requires 40 hours of training in the District and affords arrest powers.

Smith, a 27-year-old teacher, was unconscious and in handcuffs. D.C. released police body-worn camera footage showing the next nine minutes of the encounter, in which police officers go to get additional restraints, call an ambulance, and administer CPR to Smith, who was later pronounced dead at a local hospital. This was the first time the city let the public view body-worn camera footage under the Metropolitan Police Department’s program.

The incident took place at the Marbury Plaza apartments at 2312 Good Hope Road SE. The medical examiner’s office later ruled the case a homicide.

The U.S. attorney’s office came to the decision not to charge the officers after conducting an investigation alongside MPD that included interviewing more than two dozen witnesses who said they initially saw Smith running and screaming outside of the complex shirtless and shoeless, while special police officers followed him at a distance. There were no reported accounts “that the Special Police Officers ever caught up to, or assaulted, Mr. Smith while he was on the grounds” outside of the apartment complex.

About a half hour later, a resident reported seeing Smith running inside the building. And several witness recalled him banging on their doors and yelling for help. But because they “believed Mr. Smith was on drugs, none of the residents opened their doors,” and Smith proceeded to try to climb up an interior fire escape ladder onto the roof, one witness said.

At this point, special police officers say they restrained and handcuffed Smith as he tried to run past them, according to the attorney general’s office. A few minutes later, MPD officers arrived on the scene and recorded what happened next.

According to the attorney’s office, there wasn’t enough evidence to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the special police officers “violated Mr. Smith’s civil rights by using excessive force or that they possessed the requisite criminal intent at the time of the events.”

Instead, officials say that evidence shows Smith “was under the influence of a significant amount of cocaine,” which could have contributed to a sudden cardiac incident that resulted in his death. Therefore, even though Medical Examiner labeled the death a homicide, “a manner of death determination is insufficient, in and of itself, to establish that another person is criminally responsible for an individual’s death.”

In addition to the disclosure of identities and an indictment of the special police officers, Freeman says that PACA wants to raise awareness “about the built-in injustices of the U.S. grand jury process” as well as we demand that laws and policies around surrounding misconduct of special police officers be made transparent. The organization also hopes to “pressure the department of justice to intervene nationally to begin prosecution of killer cops and other law enforcement” and recruit an organization such as the United Nations “to conduct and independent investigation into the likelihood of the U.S. federal government conspiring to protect police forces from federal accountability and killings.”

Meanwhile, Beverly Smith believes that a coverup is responsible for the attorney general’s ruling, according to Fox 5 News.

Filed Under: alonzo smith, beverly smith, homicide,