FORT WORTH, Texas — A new 97-page report outlines a pattern of “disturbing” practices in Fort Worth’s police department from improper use of force to lack of accountability.
The city commissioned the report from a team of policing experts after Atatiana Jefferson was shot and killed in her home by former Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean.
“We’re going to tell you how it was and how it is,” Dr. Alex del Carmen, who led the panel of experts, said. “We are not going to sugarcoat this.”
The report found officers often started interactions with profane and aggressive language, saying “officers cursed and yelled at the individual involved in the encounter, often at the initiation of the interaction and before any resistance was displayed…The profane language was almost always noted by the chain of command review, but frequently excused.”
“I cannot stand what we see. It’s alarming,” Councilwoman Elizabeth Beck said.
The report also listed examples of officers using force in cases where it wasn’t justified. The Panel observed a disturbing pattern of the display of Tasers, punching, and force against persons in handcuffs under circumstances in which no threat of resistance was present,” the report says.
In one instance, police used a Taser in drive-stun mode at least 15 times on a man who appeared to be attempting to comply with an arrest. In another, a man was punched in the face while handcuffed and not resisting, a practice that’s not banned in policy.
“To read it on paper in black and white. It’s mindboggling,” Councilman Chris Nettles said Tuesday.
Nettles said he is already working to get policy recommendations from the report added to the city’s general orders for police.
“We need to have a strict policy,” he said. “If you break the rules in the police department, you’re gone.”
Nettles said he agrees with the report’s mention of recent improvement in the department. Chief Neil Noakes took over the department in early 2021 after the retirement of former chief Ed Kraus. For example, since the high-profile death of Breanna Taylor in Louisville, KY, along with a review of department no-knock warrants, the department temporarily stopping using them and in 2021 only used them in situations with extreme justification.
The report mentions, though, there’s still no policy written down to stop them and they were previously often used as de-facto training for the SWAT team and sometime used when not legally justified.
There are several other areas where the report provides more recommendations.
For instance, the report has recommendations on improving de-escalation, bystander intervention to keep other officers in line with policies and better audit policies. It also continually mentions a lack of accountability and the need for internal affairs need to hold more officers and leaders accountable for improper actions.
The report says middle managers were discouraged from disciplining officers “unless there had been a complaint or a public outcry”, adding, “accountability for aggressive police tactics is frequently anemic or ineffective.”
“We’re not acting in the way that we should in some manners,” Noakes said in Tuesday’s meeting.
He added he’s committed to change but that changing culture in the department can take time -- and with a large workforce, it’s impossible to be perfect.
“I as a chief and we as a department know we must do better,” Noakes said.
Officers also retaliated against people after they were arrested. In one case, a man was laying on the ground after a foot chase and an officer pointed his gun at the man’s head and yelled at the man and then hit him with the barrel of the gun.
The report reviewed 344 different force incidents in a three-year span.
“In almost 150 cases, force was used to effectuate an arrest, the person was not charged with any offense other that from conduct that occurred during the arrest process,” the report states. “This raises serious concerns about whether the arrests were justified initially or were the result of retaliation.”
“It’s disturbing. It’s eye-opening,” Nettles said. “We’re at a point in time in Fort Worth where we can’t just talk it. We have to walk it.”
There are further issues with a lack of diversity in the department, lack of discipline for officers who don’t turn on body cameras and a lack of clarity in the position of police monitor, which was set up to help encourage trust between police and the community.
Nettles says policies without accountability won’t have a positive impact.
“They’re not uniformly followed. That means on a daily basis they’re just kind of calling their own shots,” he said. “I’m going to be advocating that we touch every aspect of this report until we get it all done.”