When police kill: Fayetteville officers killed four people while Little Rock police killed six in the last five years
Banner, News — By Christopher Spencer on January 12, 2010 at 10:42 PM** UPDATE (3 p.m., 1/13/10): Fayetteville Police Chief Greg Tabor returned my phone call today.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” he said, referring to the number of times police in the city had killed someone.
Tabor said each incident is investigated by numerous agencies and each shooting was found to be justified. These shooting should each be viewed independently, as an officer making a split-second decision to fire. Tabor said he’s concerned every time an officer has to take a life in the performance of his duties, but doesn’t think there is a pattern.
By Christopher Spencer
Fayetteville police shot and killed four people in the last five years.
They include:
- Benny Spears, 47, in 2005. Police responded to an alarm call at Spears’ house and shot him after he came out of the house with a shotgun.
- Taylor Breeden, 25, in 2007. Breeden was killed when a Fayetteville SWAT Team entered his apartment to serve a drug warrant and gunfire broke out.
- Matthew Anderson, 29, and Jill Ulmer, 26, in 2009 during unrelated incidents. Anderson was shot by police while trying to rob the Arvest Bank on Garland Ave. Police said Ulmer was defending herself from the knife blows of an ex-boyfriend, Ricky Anderson, when a Fayetteville officer fired and hit Ulmer, contributing to her death.
During that same time period, Little Rock police killed six people, according to records obtained by Ozarks Unbound under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.
The state’s largest city, Little Rock, boasts almost 190,000 residents and reported 40 murders to the FBI in 2008. Fayetteville has a population of 73,000 and reported a single murder for 2008 to the FBI.
According to those same statistics, Little Rock has seven times the amount of violent crime as Fayetteville and five times the property crime. Little Rock is an urban city with a crime rate to match. Fayetteville is a quiet university town where murders are rare and people walk freely at night.
Police in Fayetteville’s neighboring cities are much less likely to kill people. Rogers police killed one person in the last five years, and three in the last ten years, according to Cpl. Angel Murphy-Pearce of Rogers (population 57,000).
A police officer has not killed anyone within at least ten years in Bentonville (population 36,000), said Sgt. Robert Burkhart of the Bentonville Police Department. Springdale Police Sgt. Shane Pegram said officers in Springdale (population 68,000) have been involved in four shootings where a person was wounded, but none were fatal.
Why then do Fayetteville’s police kill people at a rate that outstrips their neighbors?
Several calls today to Fayetteville Police Chief Greg Tabor were not returned. However, he did comment earlier to NWAOnline.com when asked about the department’s high rate of fatalities.
“Obviously, it’s a horrible situation for everyone involved,” Tabor told the newspaper for a Dec. 20th story. “I don’t think people realize how difficult it is until they know an officer personally who’s been involved in a shooting.”
“I think that when you read the blogs and the newspapers, it’s easy to sit back as the Monday morning quarterback,” he said. “But when an officer is involved in a shooting, he doesn’t have three days to think about it. He has about three-tenths of a second to react.”
What do you think?
Is this rate too high or are Fayetteville police justifiably responding to the situation?
SIMILAR POSTS
- Bullet shot by Fayetteville police struck stabbing victim, contributed to death at 6:22 PM on June 29, 2009
- Accused robber killed by Fayetteville police had drugs In system | CF at 6:24 PM on February 6, 2010
- UPDATED (12.4.09) Fayetteville police officer kills man suspected of Arvest bank robbery | Press Release at 11:10 PM on December 2, 2009
- Fayetteville Police: Officers had no option but to fire at 11:16 AM on July 1, 2009
- Fayetteville police launch online report system today | News Brief at 1:49 PM on January 5, 2010
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15 Comments
Thanks for investigating, Chris. I’m sure the blanket defenders will starting flaming, but this begs the question: Why does this happen so much here?
You know, i have often heard this. “Don’t screw up in Fayetteville – cops will take you out” and laughed it off as ridiculous, but now that the numbers are up there…… Fayetteville may have a problem.
That’s an interesting piece, Chris, great job. I think the Jill Ulmer shooting is kind of the outlier here. That seemed like an insanely difficult situation where the response was appropriate and outcome was just tragic. Either way, the numbers are really eye-popping and scary. Also, I call complete bullshit on Tabor’s “three tenths of a second” comment, with Matt Andersen’s murder being a prime example of that.
Thanks for the comments, Ben, Matt and Bruce. It’s a really sensitive topic and I certainly don’t wish to demean police by exploring it. Still, it’s worth asking the questions and being aware of how Fayetteville fits in contextually with the other cities.
Ulmer doesn’t count. The bullet “tumbled” after hitting a wood frame in furniture. In other words, it was an honest-to-god accident.
Matt Anderson shouldn’t have happened.
The others were justified.
That’s one unjustified killing in five years. That’s the statistic that’s worth talking about, and it hardly constitutes a trend.
Asking questions without stating any conclusion isn’t journalism. It’s just an easy story.
@resident: And you know journalism… how? Christopher is trained and has been a professional journalist. What are your qualifications? If you knew anything about real journalism, you’d know that a journalist isn’t supposed to draw any conclusions at all. A journalist researches an issue and relays the facts to the best of their ability, and the reader uses that information to draw the conclusions.
Ulmer counts. The cops fired nine times at an assailant who was attacking her. They missed him and hit her. That’s incompetence. If they were competent, the assailant would be dead.
Chris actually takes it easy on area law enforcement. Had he looked at other gun incidents there’d have been an even more compelling case made that there are trigger-happy folks up here. Erin Hamley’s murder was just one example of this…
For references sake, all of these shootings – Little Rock, Fayetteville and Rogers – were justified through internal investigation and, likely, through an external agency investigating. I’m not sure about the external agency except in the Fayetteville cases, but that is standard procedure, so I feel OK saying it.
Yeah, I’m not sure there really is a conclusion here. I think it’s enough to let the numbers speak and let the reader draw his or her own conclusion.
I’d not heard anyone else compare Fayetteville with Little Rock and I thought it was interesting to see how close the numbers were.
Five years is standard practice as a trend in most circles. Admittedly with such small numbers, 20 years would have even better but getting data like that – police killings are not kept as rigorously as other types of crime data – is no easy task. At least to my knowledge.
In Little Rock, the detective had to do some paper research to arrive at the number. It took some time. It’s not a readily available stat.
I can revisit the issue in five years with a decade a data. Trust me, if Ozarks Unbound is around in 2015, I certainly will.
Also, I’m thinking here’s a baseline for the next time it happens with any of the local police departments. This story is in my archive now, so it will be easier to use as a reference.
Again, I’m not trying to condemn police. I depend on them and respect them more than most. I enjoyed being a police reporter for almost two years in Little Rock.
Someone told me Matt Anderson was unarmed. Is that true? If so, I would like to know how his killing was justified. I know someone who knew him, and he told me that Matt was a good guy who had just recently started acting erratically and was probably in a major depression. The story in NWAT/ADG was woefully short on details. Not unexpected of them in situations like this.
Im going into law enforcement and my worst fear is being involved in a shooting because of the stress involved with making the choice to shoot or not to shoot. The truth is most officers dont recieve enough training on this topic and with the huge ammount of stress that is involved in these situations it is understandable that a officer can hit the wrong person or make a wrong choice, also when you look at how unreliable bullets really are it can play a part to, i mean they can bounce off some things and go through others and you cannot predict where they are going to end up when you have everyone moving around in low light enviroment inside a home you have never been in. If you dont shoot you or another officer can be killed and if you do shoot you will be draged through the mud for doing what you had to do. Fayettville is also a much more urban area as well as having a much differant demographic as compared to springdale and rogers which i think plays a big role in why there have been more shootings there. Fayettevile is much more like little rock than springdale or rogers, also i noticed that Fort Smith the states 2nd biggest city wasnt even talked about. Fort smith is much like Fayyettville as well having a urban area and with simular demographics.
This really pisses me off…
Benny Spears was a personal friend of my father(Captain at the PD) and he was a major supporter of the FPD. truth is, he screwed up; you dont get coked out and point a gun at police. Its unfortunate but its reality.
Taylor Breeden- same story as benny
Matthew Anderson- justified… he attempted to flee, rammed a car which put two officers behind the car in danger of being hit, didnt listen to verbal commands, Dave Williams shot him in the chest. Unarmed, but department policy as well as many other agencies policys state that a vehicle can be a means of lethal force. dont even toy with “shooting the tires,” its an asinine method of control that only works in movies. that would put others in danger of a ricochet not to mention its AGAINST department policy.
and Jill Ulmer- PURE accident. police were shooting through a window in a dark room with a BLACK male stabbing her… all they saw was his silhouette pinning her down to the ground and a knife thrusting up and down at her. the bullet in her was fatal but not the cause of her death. the 20+ stab wounds would have killed her none the less.
I love fayetteville but cant stand the bleeding heart liberals here. we have one of the best team of police in the country here. take them all away and youre screwed. think on that while you sip on your coffee while reading this. Im going to pray for you guys and hope god gives you the common sense to understanding the rock bottom reasoning to these officers decisions
@Mike B: Interesting you put “BLACK” in all caps. Does that matter? You don’t have to worry about praying for me. And some folks I know would be incensed that you didn’t capitalize “God” while “BLACK” is all caps. I think this is no accident.
Also, and if you had any journalistic training you will know this, you allege that Spears and Breeden were “coked out.” First, that hardly justifies killing them, but journalists know that unless that is proven (and I don’t know, they could have been) saying they were “coked out” is considered libel. You could be sued.
And you didn’t even begin to address the incompetence of nine shots fired, all missing an assailant… (horrors… a BLACK assailant). Why? Because you can’t.
I’m glad we have cops. Two of my family members are cops; one has put his life more on the line than any of these non-hackers ever dreamed of. Two of my family members are firefighters; it killed one of them.
Fayetteville cops are just not up to the quality that I think they should be. As a taxpayer and Fayetteville resident, I have the right to complain. Only a rampant homer would call them “one of the best team of police in the country.” That’s flatly absurd. You have no credibility.
@Bruce – Seriously? You read the “BLACK” as racist? I read it as emphasis following the bit about it being in a dark room – ie the thought that it might be more difficult to see a black man in a room with no lights on. That’s not racist, that’s just common sense. It’s probably more difficult to see a black man in a dark room than a white man.
As to his credibility, we have no more idea about his credibility than we do about your credibility. It’s the internet – a breeding ground for dumbasses and geniuses with opinions. Impossible to tell the difference and sometimes they are one in the same.
Bruce- No racism at all… simply stating black males are hard seeing in the dark with the lights out…
theres a toxicology report out stating benny was on coke
idk who u are, never heard your name mentioned ever. you rent with any news paper or new station here; therefore i do not trust your opinion anymore than my ex-girlfriends
If the lights were off… why were they shooting? How did they know he was attacking her and see a knife? Hilarious the lengths you two are going to on this one. Keep talking, please.
Again…seriously? I wasn’t explaining anything other than why it appeared the guy had black all in blocks. Hilarious the fact that you’ve now completly ignored that and the fact that you called someone out on being racist when they weren’t being racist at all. If you’re good with letting that accusation stand in face of a reasonable logical explanation then that’s on you.