The Jefferson Parish officers each face a count of manslaughter in the shooting of an unarmed man in a parked car, the latest in a long line of seemingly avoidable killings by the police in recent years.
Two sheriff’s deputies in Louisiana have been arrested on a count of manslaughter and fired after police officials said they fatally shot an unarmed man inside a parked vehicle last week.
Sheriff Joseph P. Lopinto III of Jefferson Parish said the officers’ use of force “was not justified” after they shot the man, Daniel Vallee, during a standoff with the police early Wednesday in Marrero, La., just south of New Orleans.
The shooting happened around 2 a.m., when the police, responding to a noise complaint in the area, found Mr. Vallee inside a vehicle parked in front of a “known crack house,” the sheriff said during a news conference Monday night.
Officers repeatedly ordered Mr. Vallee, 34, to exit the vehicle, but he refused, the sheriff said. During the standoff, which lasted about 12 minutes, Mr. Vallee locked the doors and eventually started the vehicle’s engine, according to Sheriff Lopinto.
“That, of course, escalated the situation,” he said. “Numerous of my deputies drew their weapons at that point in time, expecting him to try to take off.”
Mr. Vallee’s death behind the wheel is among the latest in a long line of seemingly avoidable killings by the police in recent years. A New York Times investigation last fall revealed that the police, over the previous five years, had killed more than 400 motorists who were not wielding a gun or knife or under pursuit for a violent crime.
The Times found that police culture and court precedents significantly overstated the danger to officers at vehicle stops. Charges against officers for using force in such cases are rare — making the swift arrests of the deputies in Mr. Lavalle’s death particularly unusual.
Pulled Over
An investigation
In recent weeks, several vehicle stops across the nation have escalated into the deaths of motorists, according to news accounts. In Monroe, Ohio, the police fatally shot an armed man, who was suffering from a mental crisis, as he walked away from his car. A New York State Police trooper, trying to pull over an erratic driver in Buffalo, N.Y., ended up killing him. In Oregon, officers fired at a driver who had evaded a traffic stop before raising a pellet gun toward them.
A number of cities have recently taken up measures designed to reduce the enforcement of low-level traffic offenses, which advocates say would limit the number of potentially combustible interactions between officers and motorists. For example, Pittsburgh’s City Council passed an ordinance prohibiting officers from stopping a driver for a secondary violation, including a broken taillight or an out-of-date inspection certificate. In Seattle, police are no longer initiating traffic stops for such infractions as expired vehicle registrations or cracked windshields.
Police across the country have been contending with a surge in violent crime in some cities. Several officers in recent months have been shot during vehicle stops, reinforcing the sense of peril for the police. On Saturday, a Mecklenburg County, N.C., sheriff’s deputy was shot during a traffic stop before returning fire at the driver. Both survived.
During the Louisiana encounter, Mr. Vallee had raised his hands, but at one point dropped them, hitting the vehicle’s horn, Sheriff Lopinto said.
“My opinion, that horn, whether it scares my deputy or whether my deputy reacts to the shot of the horn, ends up firing his weapon,” the sheriff said. “The second deputy fired his weapons reacting to that gunfire.”
Both officers fired multiple times, Sheriff Lopinto said. The three other officers on the scene did not fire their weapons.
The sheriff identified the fired officers as Isaac Hughes, 29, and Johnathan Louis, 35. Mr. Hughes had been employed with the department since 2013, and Mr. Louis since 2020. Each faces one count of manslaughter. The deputies and their lawyers could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
“Unfortunately, the use of force in this situation was not justified,” Sheriff Lopinto said, while adding that he thought the shooting was “certainly not intentional.”
The officers cooperated with an investigation, and body-camera video of the standoff, which has not yet been released, “backed up” what the officers told investigators about the shooting, Sheriff Lopinto said.
Sheriff Lopinto said the shooting was the first to be recorded by police body cameras since the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office started using them last year. The office adopted the technology after a video showing one of its deputies assaulting a woman attracted national news attention.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana has filed several lawsuits in the past two years against the sheriff’s office, stemming from what the A.C.L.U. says are incidents of violent beatings and racial profiling.
Last week, Glenn McGovern, a civil rights lawyer hired by Mr. Vallee’s family, told a New Orleans news station, WWL-TV, that Mr. Vallee’s constitutional rights had been violated and questioned why the police did not use other tactics to get him out of the vehicle. Mr. Vallee’s brother did not immediately respond to messages on Tuesday.
Mr. McGovern, in an email on Tuesday, called out the department for “defects” in its policies and training. He said the fact that the shooting was recorded raises questions about whether conduct before the wider use of body cameras went undetected.
“It makes me wonder what excess force and improper police procedures were done in the past and ignored for lack of video proof,” he wrote to The Times.
In an interview last week with NOLA.com, relatives of Mr. Vallee said he had long struggled with drug addiction but that he was not a violent person.
“He’s a struggling addict. That doesn’t mean he should have been shot and killed in the manner that he was,” his aunt, Tara Phillips, told the news outlet.
Derrick Bryson Taylor contributed reporting.
2 Louisiana Deputies Are Arrested and Fired After Fatal Shooting (Published 2022)
The Jefferson Parish officers each face a count of manslaughter in the shooting of an unarmed man in a parked car, the latest in a long line of seemingly avoidable killings by the police in recent years.
Jefferson Parish sheriff terminates, arrests 2 deputies involved in shooting of Marrero man
Two JPSO deputies were arrested and charged with manslaughter following the shooting of a man in Marrero
www.wdsu.com
You already know.
Last edited:
as expected.
