Trooper fired; legislator calls for toughening SC’s racial profiling law

A local legislator is calling for a tougher state law on racial profiling in the wake of Friday’s firing of a Highway Patrol trooper for shooting an unarmed motorist he had stopped for a seat-belt infraction.

South Carolina’s Public Safety director terminated Lance Cpl. Sean Groubert in the Sept. 4 shooting of Levar Edward Jones during a traffic stop along Broad River Road near the northwest edge of Columbia.

The trooper misread that Jones was a threat, used too much force for too long and violated several agency policies, Leroy Smith, who leads the agency that oversees the patrol, said in defending the dismissal.

The local prosecutor’s office is reviewing evidence in the case to determine whether the now-former trooper might face criminal charges. Fifth Circuit Solicitor Dan Johnson said Friday he also is consulting with federal prosecutors.

The incident inflamed many African-Americans in the wake of fatal shootings of unarmed black teens in Florida and Missouri. Groubert is Caucasian. Jones is African-American.

The firing hasn’t quelled greater concerns, particularly among African-Americans.

“I think we need to revisit the anti-profiling legislation to put some teeth in it,” Rep. Joe Neal, D-Richland, said after the announcement of Groubert’s dismissal. “There can be a carrot and stick approach.”

Neal, one of the authors of the initial law to dissuade law enforcement officials from unfairly targeting minorities, said financial penalties should be imposed on the 167 police agencies in the state that do not comply with current law. That law requires tracking of racial data when officers stop a motorist for a seat-belt violation but do not issue tickets. The 132 agencies that are compiling racial information should get budgetary rewards, he said.

Jones’ lawyer, Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, had no response to the trooper’s termination, saying he would reserve his comments until he sees the officer’s dash-cam video.

Johnson said earlier this week his office would release the video after prosecutors finish reviewing the State Law Enforcement Division’s investigation of the incident to decide whether charges should be brought.

Johnson said Friday in a release that his office had received a report from SLED Thursday that was supplemental to what he received on Tuesday. He also said he requested additional information from agents. He repeated that he would not release the video as long as the case was being reviewed.

“At the conclusion of the investigation, or if criminal charges are brought, the public will be made fully aware of all of the facts and circumstances surrounding the events that occurred on Sept. 4,” Johnson said. “Obviously, I believe that transparency and responsiveness to the public are very important. However, I also have a duty to protect the rights of all citizens and potential litigants.”

Smith fired Groubert earlier Friday and issued the Public Safety Department’s first accounting of circumstances surrounding the shooting that happened more than two weeks ago.

“This incident occurred in broad daylight. Mr. Groubert had a clear and unobstructed view of Mr. Jones,” Smith said in a statement.

“While Mr. Groubert was within the law to stop Mr. Jones for a safety-belt violation, the force administered in this case was unwarranted, inconsistent with how our troopers are trained and clearly in violation of department policies,” Smith said.

“Mr. Jones exited his vehicle in the convenience-store parking lot, and Lance Cpl. Groubert asked for Mr. Jones’ license,” Smith said. “Mr. Jones turned to his vehicle and reached inside. For reasons that only Groubert can articulate at this point, he fired his service weapon multiple times while yelling repeatedly for Mr. Jones to ‘get out of the car.’

“Mr. Jones was not armed and was struck during the incident,” Smith said, adding that Groubert had just finished another traffic stop. Groubert pulled Jones over during afternoon rush-hour traffic along a heavily traveled thoroughfare.

Authorities have yet to disclose how many shots Groubert fired and how many times Jones was struck. People who know Jones said he was hit in the hip and is recuperating at home.

“These violations demonstrate behavior that deviates from (patrol) standards and cannot be tolerated,” the agency director said.

Smith called the shooting of Jones, 35, “an isolated incident.” The director said troopers make 750,000 traffic stops yearly and troopers are “trained to protect the public.”

“The facts of this case are disturbing to me,” the director wrote in his statement. “Mr. Groubert reacted to a perceived threat where there was none. The department’s use-of-force policy makes clear that officers shall use ‘only the level of force necessary to accomplish lawful objectives’ and that ‘the use of force must be discontinued when it becomes apparent to the officer that the force is no longer needed.’

“That protocol was not followed in this case,” Smith said.

The patrol has upheld two previous complaints against Groubert, The State newspaper reported Thursday. Those offenses occurred in 2009 and 2013 and followed internal investigations by the agency. Two additional complaints were dismissed, though the agency was investigating a current one.

Groubert left Public Safety in 2009, before an internal investigation was complete in the 2009 complaint, and therefore no disciplinary action occurred, agency spokeswoman Sherri Iacobelli said. Groubert returned to the patrol about three years later.

He underwent a counseling session after the 2013 incident because the offense was considered a minor policy violation, she said.

Groubert was dismissed after about seven years as a trooper. He joined the patrol in 2005, left in 2009 to work as a Richland County sheriff’s deputy and rejoined the patrol in 2012, Iacobelli said.

Iacobelli said the most recent trooper fired for excessive use of force was Trooper D. R. Swinehamer, in March 2010. Swinehamer used more force than necessary to arrest an intoxicated woman for DUI, Iacobelli said.

The incident the public may best remember is one from 1996, when trooper Harvey Beckwith was terminated for the mistreatment of a black female motorist from Miami during a stop for speeding on I-95 in Clarendon County. His dash-cam video captured him chasing her in his unmarked squad car, cursing at her at gunpoint, then yanking her from her rental car and shoving her to the pavement as he handcuffed her. The video was shown repeatedly on national television. The motorist said she didn’t stop because Florida motorists had been warned about stopping for unmarked cars but pulled over once she saw his trooper hat.

Neal, a former chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus and the current chairman of the Richland County legislative delegation, said the firing shows Public Safety took the incident seriously. The agency “has done administratively what it should have done,” Neal said.

“The question for me now is where do we go from here?” he said. “I think there’s responsibility on both sides of the equation.”

Besides reviewing the training of troopers on the issue of racial profiling, “There is a responsibility on the part of the African-American community to act so that it does not produce those sorts of behaviors (by police),” Neal said. “It is not a good idea for young men to be confrontational with someone with a gun.”

Neal is among other local black leaders trying to organize a forum in October to address the climate between young African-Americans and police and to stress there are better ways to settle disputes.

“We need to emphasize that we have a mechanism to deal with this so that it doesn’t end with someone pulling a gun,” the legislator said of formal complaints that produce investigations.

Last week, Neal wondered aloud whether the shooting of Jones meant it was “open season on black men” in light of the shootings of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and of Michael Brown in August.

Neal also is among some African-American leaders who criticized the lack of details released in the Jones shooting by the agencies involved: SLED, Public Safety and the 5th Circuit solicitor’s office.

He called on them to release the dash-cam video of the incident.

Rutherford, Jones’ attorney, said Friday that neither he nor Jones has seen the recording.

Rutherford, who is minority leader in the S.C. House of Representatives, said he has spoken several times to Johnson but Rutherford does not know when the video will be released to him as the lawyer for Jones.

This story was originally published September 19, 2014 at 8:25 PM with the headline "Trooper fired; legislator calls for toughening SC’s racial profiling law."