Police Shootings Cause Alarm

Langley Park Incident Draws Attention to Surge in Pr. George's Deaths

Prince George's County police have shot and killed more than twice as many people this year as in all of last year and more than in any year since before 2004, when allegations of excessive force led federal authorities to begin monitoring the department.

County police have killed seven people this year, up from three in 2007. There have been two fatal shootings this year by police in the District.

In the most recent fatal police shooting in Prince George's, Manuel de Jesus Espina was killed Aug. 16 in Langley Park by an off-duty county officer moonlighting as a security guard, and the circumstances heightened concerns about officers' use of deadly force.

Espina, who was unarmed, was fatally shot during what police say was an attempt to arrest him after he was spotted with an open container of alcohol. Hundreds turned out last week for a vigil during which civil rights leaders demanded an independent investigation into the shooting.

"We are having too many incidents like this one," said June White Dillard, president of the county's chapter of the NAACP, drawing applause as she locked arms with Latino leaders at the vigil. Residents, she said, "are very familiar, too familiar, with police brutality and excessive force."

Mark Spencer, inspector general for Prince George's police, cautioned against drawing conclusions about the increase in fatal police shootings this year, saying officers are encountering increasingly dangerous situations.

"More people are armed, carrying around firearms, and more willing to shoot at police officers," he said.

The shootings have become a flashpoint in a county already rattled by incidents that cast law enforcement in an unfavorable light: In June, a 19-year-old inmate suspected of killing a county police officer was allegedly strangled in the county jail. And late last month, sheriff's deputies and police narcotics officers raided the home of the mayor of Berwyn Heights as part of a drug investigation. The mayor, whose two dogs were killed during the raid, has been cleared of suspicion.

Police shootings and aggressive tactics have long been a source of tension in the county. The department's canine unit, which was responsible for 800 biting incidents in a seven-year period ending in the mid-1990s, was released last year from federal oversight.

Submitting to federal oversight in 2004 on the broader issue of excessive force allowed the county to avoid legal action by the Justice Department after 15 shootings, five of them fatal, occurred in as many months. At the time, FBI agents were also investigating four incidents in which suspects died after being injured in struggles with county police.

With more than four months remaining in 2008, county officers, on and off duty, have drawn their weapons and fired at suspects 14 times, or almost every other week. The last three shootings, all since late July, have been fatal.

Not included in those numbers is a domestic incident in January in which a county police officer critically wounded her fiance and then fatally shot herself in her Charles County home with her service weapon.