Lt. Jason Bagshaw was off-duty when he shot and killed a man after observing “a commotion” at The Wharf.

HAH Photography / Flickr

The U.S. Attorney for D.C. will not press charges against a D.C. police commander who shot and killed 23-year-old Lazarus Wilson, of Dumfries, Va., in a confrontation at The Wharf last summer, according to a press release.

Lt. Jason Bagshaw, an MPD commander notorious among D.C. activist circles for his aggressive policing tactics, shot and killed Wilson after seeing Wilson brandishing a gun in what the law enforcement narrative speculates was an armed robbery. Surveillance video shows Wilson carrying the gun and a bag, which police recovered, with more than $30,000 in cash inside.

Andrew Clarke, an attorney for the family of Lazarus Wilson, says he’s disappointed that no grand jury was convened in the case. Furthermore, he argues there are key details missing from the U.S. Attorney’s investigation, as well as the description of the situation provided in the press release. For starters, he said Wilson pulled his gun to protect a friend from being robbed in an altercation with another armed individual.

“Lazarus was being robbed that night and was protecting his friend, and the police — they knew that,” Clarke told WAMU/DCist. “They talked to that witness and they chose to disregard that.”

According to police, Bagshaw was off-duty at the time, dining at a restaurant with his wife, who is also an MPD officer, but had his service weapon on him. The two noticed “a commotion” and bystanders near the restaurant “crouching and crawling away,” according to the findings of the U.S. Attorney, and went outside to investigate.

Police claim Bagshaw yelled “MPD, drop the gun!” before shooting Wilson, but Clarke also disputes that. He claimed an eyewitness at the scene had not heard any such command.

Clarke also noted that the U.S. Attorney’s conclusions include no determination on whether or not Bagshaw had been drinking at the restaurant before he shot and killed Wilson. D.C. police chief Robert Contee III previously said that Bagshaw showed “no signs of impairment” at the time, but had not taken a blood-alcohol test.

Prosecutors said they could not find evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to prove that Bagshaw used excessive force in the case. The U.S. Attorney’s announcement on Thursday notes that prosecutors face a high bar in proving excessive use of force: They must prove that the officer both used more force than was necessary, and did so deliberately.

Because Bagshaw was off-duty, he was not wearing a body-worn camera. Investigators reviewed footage from on-duty MPD officers who arrived at the scene after the shooting, as well as eyewitness testimony, surveillance video, physical evidence, forensics, and the autopsy, per the U.S. Attorney.

In the days following the shooting, D.C. police released selected surveillance footage showing Wilson with a gun and Bagshaw and his wife leaving the restaurant. Clarke said he was surprised and frustrated that police have not released any footage of the shooting itself.

“It’s very hard for me to believe that there are no cameras down there at The Wharf in the possession of MPD or the U.S. attorney’s office that show what Mr. Bagshaw was doing inside the restaurant before this shooting took place, and then when he goes outside of the restaurant and takes a life,” he said.

Bagshaw has a reputation for authorizing or participating in harsh and escalating uses of force against racial justice protesters, including against family and community members gathered to mourn another victim of police violence. Activists have also accused Bagshaw of taking a more lenient approach to violent right-leaning protesters like the Proud Boys.

“The US Attorney Office has once again cleared a killer Cop,” tweeted police abolitionist group Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, at the news of the end of the investigation. The group called for “full transparency and accountability around D.C. police brutality and killings.”

Black Lives Matter D.C. said the investigation’s conclusion was not surprising.

“The criminal injustice system NEEDS to allow cops to enforce the state’s monopoly on violence for its legitimacy and survival,” the group said in a tweet.

Black Lives Matter D.C. has previously called for Bagshaw’s firing, posting a video of him roughly carrying and throwing a protester.

Wilson’s family held a balloon release to mark what would have been his 24th birthday last week, Clarke said. Wilson’s mother traveled down from Philadelphia to learn in a meeting earlier today that prosecutors would not press charges against the man who killed her son, Clarke said, describing her as “distraught” at the news.

The announcement comes on the heels of the conclusion of another U.S. Attorney’s investigation into another police shooting. Earlier in the month, prosecutors said they would not bring charges against Reinaldo Otero-Camacho, who fatally shot Kevin Hargraves-Shird in Brightwood Park, just weeks after Bagshaw killed Wilson.

“This is becoming a narrative that Black people in America know all too well, that our lives don’t matter, that cops’ lives are more important than the men and women they’re sworn to protect, that we are just a footnote, a statistic or a press release,” Clarke said.

Filed Under: general assignment, metropolitan police department, police, police shooting,