Editorial: New Hope learns an expensive lesson. We hope.
It galls us to see Brian Riling handed $750,000.
We don't mean to cast aside everything his body has been through since March 2019. After all, a bullet tore through his small intestines, fractured his pelvis and required two surgeries, removal of part of his bowel and return trips to the hospital due to wound complications.
It's just that as sympathetic figures go, the Richboro man doesn't make the grade. On the day he was wounded, he texted his estranged girlfriend more than 100 times, then confronted her outside her workplace, where he grabbed her by the throat, spit in her face and threatened her. He was shot later while trying to keep a police officer from retrieving a white packet that had fallen to the ground at his feet.
So we're chafing over Riling's payday. But we're even more upset that systemic failures within the New Hope Police Department allowed someone who behaved like Riling did to assume the mantle of "victim".
Sure, it was New Hope Police Cpl. Matthew Zimmerman who pulled the trigger — he grabbed and fired his police issue Glock 22 when he meant to use his Taser on Riling during a scuffle in the police station's holding cell — but it was the department's lax approach to its own policies that landed Riling in the emergency room and Zimmerman in retirement.
At least three years had passed since Zimmerman's Taser certification had expired and an investigation by this newspaper determined that nine of the 10 other officers employed by the borough at the time of shooting also had not been re-certified in Taser use since at least 2016. The department's own use-of-force policy required officers to complete annual Taser recertification sessions.
Zimmerman was wearing his service weapon and Taser on the same hip, in violation of the department's uniform policy, and New Hope did not require officers to check their weapons before entering a holding cell, which is something that many agencies, including the Philadelphia Police Department, mandate.
The police-involved shooting garnered national attention after Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub ruled it was unjustified, but excused, citing the officer’s “honest but mistaken” belief that he was deploying his Taser at the time he fired.
We, however, can't excuse the department for failing to follow simple protocols it drew up to protect both the officers and the citizens they take into custody. We believe that faithful adherence to those procedures might — no, would — have prevented this shooting and the costly lawsuit settlement that followed.
In 2020, the New Hope Police Department updated its use-of-force policy and Taser directives to obtain Pennsylvania Law Enforcement Accreditation. Let's hope police Chief Michael Cummings is making sure those rules are being followed to the letter.
Because at $750,000, this was an expensive lesson. The New Hope Police Department needs to learn it well.
We also hope officials in other nearby police departments are watching and learning it for free.
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Editorial: New Hope learns an expensive lesson. We hope.
