{continued}
Police say they were fired on from a Nissan Rogue as they chased it onto Interstate 55.Imani Khayyam for NBC News
Walker said the two cars then left the highway and returned to downtown Jackson. On a residential street, gunfire again burst from the Rogue, and both officers fired at the car, Walker said. Then, Walker testified, he saw “numerous objects coming out the passenger side window.” Walker said he did not know what the objects were.
Investigators later searched for the items and found a homeowner who told them she saw an armed group of men walk off with them, Walker said.
Jordan, the Rogue’s driver and Harris’ friend, has provided a different account of how the chase started, the route it took and where shots were fired. Jordan, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, recounted his experience in a letter and in phone calls from a Hinds County jail, where he has been locked up for more than a year while awaiting trial.
Jordan said that he didn’t have a gun and that he didn’t throw anything from the car.
He said he thought about driving to a police station after Harris was shot but was afraid of getting shot there. He said he didn’t drive to a hospital out of fear that dips and potholes in the road would worsen his friend’s injuries. “I got scared and tried to drive home,” Jordan said.
Sinatra Jordan led police on a chase through downtown Jackson with Harris in the passenger seat. Courtesy Sinatra Jordan
In a June interview, Tindell, the public safety commissioner, said he wasn’t surprised that Jordan would claim he was unarmed.
“I don’t think he can deny that he was certainly fleeing law enforcement and took them on a chase,” Tindell said. “I think his actions speak for themselves, and we’ll see what the evidence reveals.”
Police and Jordan also have sharply different accounts of how the chase ended.
Walker testified that the officers followed the Rogue to the intersection of Lamar and Adelle streets, where the car hit the curb and stopped. Jordan fled from the car, and the officers chased him. Jordan then turned toward Walker with “a long black object in his left hand” and something else in his right. “That’s when I returned fire on him fleeing,” Walker said.
Jordan dropped what he was holding, and Walker said he stopped shooting. The objects Jordan dropped turned out to be a black cellphone and a bag of marijuana, Walker testified. The officers did not find a gun in the car, Walker said. “There was also a passenger in the vehicle that we didn’t know about that was struck by a round,” Walker said. The officers called an ambulance, he said.
Jordan was not struck by a bullet, but said that the officers beat him up, and that he does not recall what happened after; he said he woke up in jail a few days later. None of the public defenders who have represented him at different points over the last year have responded to requests for comment.
A witness, Vivica Johnson, said in an interview with NBC News in April that she was sitting with a friend on a porch at the corner of Lamar and Adelle that night when she saw Capitol Police chasing and shooting at a car. Johnson said when the driver got out with his hands up, the officers fired at him. The man fell to the ground and the officers began beating him, she said.
“Once they got through kicking him and beating him, they went to the vehicle that he jumped out of and that’s when they realized it was a lady shot in the head,” Johnson said.
Johnson said she heard one of the officers exclaim, “Oh my God, oh my God” after finding the woman in the car.
NBC News requested radio traffic recordings and dispatch logs from the Capitol Police and city of Jackson, but the requests were denied.
Johnson said she didn’t hear Jordan say anything until they arrested him, when she said he hollered, “Help me.”
Tindell said in June that he was not aware of the beating allegation. He said the conflicting versions of what happened would be sorted out in the criminal justice system.
“We’ve got a subject in this case, now the accused, claiming one thing, a witness saying one thing and an officer saying something else,” Tindell said in response to NBC News’ questions based on accounts from Jordan, Walker and Johnson. The details will be “examined in a court of law,” he said.
The chase stopped at the intersection of Adele and Lamar streets, where officers found Harris wounded. Imani Khayyam for NBC News
The collection of evidence from the chase route — surveillance video from homes, businesses and government buildings, shell casings scattered on the street, witnesses’ accounts — lasted several days. Walker testified that he and his partner did not find any guns in the Rogue and that the patrol car had not been hit by any bullets. He testified he was told the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which is looking into the shooting, found guns but he did not know where.
The shootings and
the agency’s refusal to release records fueled opposition to efforts by state officials to further expand the power of the Capitol Police, which for decades focused primarily on security for government buildings. So far, the Capitol Police have won that fight. Republican lawmakers from outside Jackson passed a law in April that expanded the agency’s jurisdiction to the entire city, which is led by Democrats. Civil rights groups
are suing to block the law.
At the time of the Harris shooting, Capitol Police officers were guided by policies that had not been updated since 2006. They included
a policy that prohibited car chases because they “present an unacceptable danger to the lives of the public, officers and suspects involved in the pursuit.” But the document then contradicted itself, outlining situations in which officers may conduct car chases.
The Capitol Police’s
use-of-force policy at the time prohibited using deadly force “at or from a moving vehicle.” But it also allowed for the use of deadly force if officers feel that their lives, or someone else’s, are in danger.
The Department of Public Safety has since
updated its use of force policy to allow shooting at a moving vehicle in situations where it is “necessary to prevent imminent death or serious injury to the officer or another person.” A
revised car chase policy, dated September 2022, clearly allows them under certain circumstances.
The two officers involved in Harris’ case did not wear body cameras and their car was not equipped with a dashboard camera, Tindell said in June. His spokesperson said Wednesday that the agency has started to issue body cameras to all Capitol Police officers. She did not indicate whether the same is being done with dash cameras.
The Capitol Police has expanded its patrols in Jackson under a new state law.Imani Khayyam for NBC News
None of this helps Harris.
She said she is just as confused about what happened to her as the day she woke up in the hospital.
Moore, her lawyer, said he wants the state Attorney General’s Office, which is overseeing the investigation into whether officers should face criminal charges, to recuse itself because the office will also be responsible for defending the officers in Harris’ lawsuit. Moore said that he would like the Hinds County District Attorney’s Office to conduct that investigation. He has also asked the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi to do its own investigation.
Harris said her injuries have made her unable to work or take care of her children.Imani Khayyam for NBC News
Harris said she knows that no amount of money will make her able to run around with her children or go back to work.
“I’m never going to be me again,” she said. “I love me. But I’m never going to be that me and be able to get up and go. They’ll never be able to give me what I need. They’ll never be able to compensate me because they took my life with those shots.”
apple.news
www.freep.com
www.wvpe.org
www.nbcnews.com
atlantablackstar.com
