Officers involved in the investigation of a deadly police shooting in southeastern Washington pleaded with the public on Friday to not make a tense situation any worse.
“It’s a stressful time for anybody who wears a badge,” said Sgt. Ken Lattin of Kennewick Police, spokesman for a group of outside police agencies investigating the shooting Tuesday in nearby Pasco of a man accused of hurling rocks at officers.
At a news conference on Friday afternoon, Lattin said members of the public have a right to express their opinions on social media and to march peacefully in the town of Pasco, an agricultural city of 68,000 people about 215 miles southeast of Seattle.
Lattin stressed repeatedly that people need to be respectful of other points of view and to each other. He also cautioned against making a decision about the death based purely on a video seen on the Internet.
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The group conducting the criminal investigation was formed in 2010 to look at any officer-involved criminal cases. This is the eleventh investigation they have conducted since then, Lattin said.
In three previous fatal police shootings in Pasco, prosecutors cleared officers with the Pasco Police Department and a sheriff’s deputy who was working on a regional SWAT team.
One of the three officers involved in Tuesday’s shooting was a defendant in a federal civil-rights lawsuit the city settled in 2013 for $100,000, according to court records. The lawsuit claimed Pasco officers were inadequately trained in the use of force and how to respond to street confrontations.
