Mentally ill man shot at Birmingham police

• Originally published by the BIRMINGHAM POST-HERALD on August 28, 2004 [here ]
  

By DANIEL CONNOLLY

A man killed by police earlier this month was shot about 24 times, Jefferson County Chief Deputy Coroner Jay Glass said this morning.

On Aug. 6, officers firing automatic weapons killed Benjamin Griggs, a mentally ill Vietnam War veteran, on his front porch in West End after a standoff that lasted about two hours.

Glass said investigators can't be sure of the exact number of bullets that hit Griggs because some of the wounds intersected.

A friend of the Griggs family, Rev. Abraham Woods Jr., said today the number of times he was shot was "complete overkill."

"They just blasted him away. One or two well-placed shots would have immobilized him or killed him and they know that," Woods said.

Even though one shot could have killed Griggs, Woods said the number of shots is still outrageous. "The difference ought to be obvious to everybody. If you shot a dog that many times people would be up in arms about that," he said.

At Thursday's press conference, a reporter asked Birmingham Police Chief Annetta Nunn why police shot Griggs so many times.

"When you restrain someone the object is not to shoot them at all," Nunn said. "Had he stayed down, there would be no shots fired. When someone shoots at you, you're trained to shoot back."

Police spokesman Henry Irby said today that Nunn addressed the issue on Thursday. He offered no other comment.

Nunn described the shooting as unfortunate, but justified.

"We would have like to have seen the situation resolved peacefully. If it hadn't gone a different way, we would have been prepared to wait as long as possible," she said.

Nunn said that Griggs had shot at police on three occasions that day.
Nunn spoke to the news media two days after an emotional press conference in which family members said the shooting was unjustified. Family members said they weren't allowed to communicate with Griggs during the standoff.

But Nunn said a family member was allowed to try to talk to Griggs over a bullhorn and that Griggs' actions forced police to kill him. She also announced that the District Attorney's Office determined the shooting was justified.

Nunn said she had given the same set of facts to Griggs' family members earlier Thursday.

Griggs' nephew, Jeffery Herd, said Thursday night that he didn't want to comment. But Rev. Abraham Woods Jr., who is working with the family, said he wasn't impressed that the district attorney had found the killing justified.

"We all expected that. That's routine," he said.

Woods said he wasn't present at Nunn's meeting with the family members but expected to meet her later. He said he still had questions.

"How did they expect him to act like an average person when he has mental problems?" Woods said.

He said the police appeared to lack a solid policy for dealing with people with mental illness. Griggs was a diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, according to probate court records. Woods said it may be true that Griggs fired a third shot at officers. But he said police should have considered nonlethal alternatives, like having a police dog attack him, using a stun gun or withdrawing and waiting.

Family members haven't said if they will sue or take other action.

In a conference room at police headquarters, Nunn laid out the police account of what happened:

About 12:15 p.m., she said, police received a report of a man outside with a gun.

An officer arrived, saw Griggs had two handguns and spoke with him. But Griggs reached for one of the guns and the officer took cover behind his police car. Griggs fired once and hit the car's windshield, then went into the house.

More police arrived.

Police and a family member tried to talk to Griggs using the bullhorn. The phone had been disconnected, but police contacted BellSouth to have service restored. But Griggs never answered the phone, she said.

"If we had been able to make contact again with him by phone, probably another one of the family members would have been allowed to talk to him," she said.

At 2:08 p.m. Griggs fired another shot from the house, she said, but police didn't shoot back.

"Because the situation was escalating, the decision was made to deploy tear gas to try to get him to come out," she said.

Police were considering Griggs' safety, the officers' safety, and the concern that a bullet could hit an innocent person.

Police fired 14 tear gas canisters, 12 of which entered the house, she said.

About 2:24 p.m. Griggs came out. Officers from the tactical unit approached Griggs, who obeyed commands to lie flat on the porch. But he held on to his guns.

"They were approaching him to arrest him and he came up and fired at the officers. And that's when they returned fire," she said.

One officer reported that Griggs' bullet flew by his head, she said. "When somebody fires a deadly weapon at you, you are authorized to return deadly force," she said in response to a question about why officers didn't use nonlethal methods.

The four officers who fired their weapons have returned to duty, she said.

Nunn said she still wasn't sure how many times Griggs was shot or how many shots officers fired. She said families should alert police if a mentally ill family member has discontinued his or her medication or is acting strangely.

"We have community service officers, who are licensed social workers, that we use to deal with these type of situation to assist the family and assist us," she said.

The social workers who deal with the mentally ill on a regular basis weren't at the shooting scene, but a trained hostage negotiator was, she said. She also invited residents to use the police shooting simulator to get a sense of how little time officers have to make life-and-death decisions.