Questionable Florida police shootings triple in past 15 years

The witnesses who saw a Broward County deputy sheriff kill a man who had strolled through his apartment complex with an unloaded air rifle propped on his shoulders agreed: Just before he was gunned down, Jermaine McBean had ignored the officers who stood behind him shouting for him to drop his weapon.

Nothing, the officer swore under oath, prevented McBean from hearing the screaming officers.

Newly obtained photographic evidence in the July 2013 shooting of McBean, a 33-year-old computer-networking engineer, shows contrary to repeated assertions by the Broward Sheriff's Office, he was wearing earbuds when shot, suggesting he was listening to music and did not hear the officers. The earphones somehow wound up in the dead man's pocket, records show."

*From Ferguson, Mo., to Baltimore to Cleveland, the nation is awash in disputed, high-profile cases of police violence.

A look at disputed cases in Florida is a reminder of how frequently they arise far from the limelight and how many questions surround the way they are investigated. The issue is particularly acute in Florida, where state Department of Law Enforcement statistics show the number of fatal police shootings has tripled in the past 15 years, even as crime has plummeted."

*In South Florida's Broward County, no officer has been charged in a fatal on-duty police shooting since 1980, a period that covers 168 shooting deaths.

"The court never goes against the police," said Rajendra Ramsahai, whose brother-in-law, Deosaran Maharaj, was killed by a Broward County deputy last year. "They are always ruling in the officer's favor."

In civil wrongful death cases throughout South Florida, lawyers discovered files missing, dashboard camera videos erased and police department accounts that did not match the evidence. Cases like McBean's underscore how law enforcement agencies handling their own shooting investigations can be exposed to criticism years after the crime-scene tape has been taken down and the television cameras are gone."

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