What we know about the Raleigh officers involved in fatal shooting of man on I-440

The Raleigh police officer who shot and killed a man after a Jan. 11 crash on Interstate 440 had been in the field less than a year, according to personnel records obtained by The News & Observer.

Officer A.A. Smith, 25, shot at Daniel Turcios five times in about five seconds, according to a report from Raleigh Police Chief Estella Patterson. The department has not said how many of those shots struck Turcios, who police said swung a knife at officers.

Smith was one of five officers who responded to the crash on the interstate, and one of two placed on administrative duty while the state and police department investigate the shooting.

The N&O reviewed personnel records for all five officers obtained through a public records request, including that of Sgt. W.B. Tapscott, who had fatally shot a suspect in the line of duty two years ago.

Training to become a Raleigh police officer takes about a year, comprising about seven months in the classroom and five months in field training, Police Department spokesperson Laura Hourigan said in an email.

Personnel records show Smith was hired as a police recruit in September 2020.

Others responding to the crash included Tapscott and Officers R.C Job, K.G. Begin and D.W. Sigrist.

Tapscott, who fired a Taser at Turcios during the exchange on I-440, has worked for the police department since 2010. He was promoted to sergeant in 2021, a year after he was cleared in the fatal shooting of a man near Glenwood Avenue.

Job, 25, was hired at the same time as Smith, while Begin and Sigrist have worked for the department since 2019 and 2012, respectively.

Dawn Blagrove, executive director of Emancipate NC, which held a news conference with Turcios’ wife last week, questioned whether new police officers are “prepared for the reality of working in the field.”

“The fact that he’s new is even more concerning,” she said of Smith. “Because at a time when the training should be much more robust for new officers, we’re still seeing incidents like this.”

What we know about the shooting

Turcios, a 43-year-old native of El Salvador, was involved in a crash in which the car he was driving flipped. When officers arrived, he was holding what family members and activists have said was “a small pocket knife,” and walking away from the scene with his 7-year-old son.

Family members said the crash had initially rendered him unconscious, leaving him severely disoriented.

When officers told Turcios to drop the knife, he refused, according to the police report. Family members said he had a limited grasp of English and did not understand their commands.

Tapscott, 34, fired a Taser at Turcios as he walked away from officers, causing him to fall to the ground.

As they tried to take him into custody, police say Turcios “swung the knife towards the officers, nearly making contact” with one of them.

Smith then fired two shots at Turcios, striking him. The police report said Turcios tried to get back up and move toward Smith, prompting him to fire three more shots.

Experience ‘a factor, but not a defining factor.’

Hourigan said new Raleigh Police Department recruits undergo around seven months of classroom training. That includes over 600 hours of North Carolina’s Basic Law Enforcement Training curriculum, as well as an additional 600-plus hours of RPD specific training.

Recruits then have 20 weeks of field training with a supervising officer before they are permitted to perform independent police work, Hourigan said, speaking generally about the training process.

That’s about 12 months of total training. Per the standard training schedule, Smith would have completed his training around September 2021, four months before fatally shooting Turcios.

His personnel file shows salary increases in April and September of 2021, corresponding to when each training benchmark would roughly have been completed.

Keith Taylor, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former member of the New York Police Department, said experience is one of many factors to consider when evaluating whether a shooting was justified.

“The amount of time that a person has on the job would be a factor, but not a defining factor,” he said. “Just as, say, if an officer has a disciplinary record, that would be a factor, but not a defining factor.”

Years of experience can also paint an incomplete picture, Taylor said.

As an example, he said an officer with 20 years of experience on the job may be less prepared for a specific scenario than an officer with three years experience and a military background.

In determining whether the shooting was justified, “the intent of the officer is important,” Taylor said.

He added it is not abnormal for an officer with fewer years of experience to provide lethal force coverage during incidents.

“Experience is important,” Taylor said. “But regardless of how much time the officer has on the job, if they have to use lethal force, they’ve been trained to do so and they’ve met the requirements of the agency and the state.”

But Blagrove questioned whether the officer was “too eager to discharge his firearm.”

“There’s so many questions that need to be asked around this case,” she said. “The fact that he was a new officer is even more troubling.”

Blagrove noted that Smith was the only officer of the five to fire his gun, adding it “says a lot about what happened here, and whether or not this officer’s deployment of lethal force was warranted.”

Regardless of intent, Blagrove said officers should be held accountable for preventable deaths.

“A police officer has to be held to a much, much higher standard,” she said. “They are professionals.”

‘One year is not enough.’

To Blagrove, the training requirements for officers in the state should be longer and more robust.

“One year is not enough,” she said.

“I went to law school for three years. I had to have a four-year degree before that,” she said. “At the minimum, you have seven years of education before I was able to practice law at all, and I don’t have a gun or a license to kill.

The Raleigh Police Department has a longer training program than required under North Carolina law, mandating that new recruits engage in nearly twice as many classroom hours as the state requires.

But the state’s officer training requirements have been criticized before, with critics questioning why it can take longer to become certified as a barber than a police officer under state law.

Experts previously told The N&O that training reform should focus on content rather than hours spent in the classroom, though such reforms may still require adding hours.

Reviewing officer shootings can present opportunities to reevaluate training, if the department finds specific areas where additional instruction might have helped, Taylor said. He pointed to Tasers and how officers approach subjects after they’re used as a general example of a potential training improvement.

“When you look at how the situations play out in the real world, training helps with hypotheticals. It helps to deal with what your possible options are,” he said. “When you’re actually out there, handling a life-or-death situation, your training should kick in. ... But ultimately, you’re going to make your decisions based on the facts at that time.”

Judge to decide release of body camera footage

Two years ago, Tapscott shot and killed 52-year-old Keith Collins while responding to a report of a man with a gun near Glenwood Avenue, The N&O previously reported. Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman ruled Tapscott acted lawfully, after body camera footage showed Collins pointing what later turned out to be a BB gun at the officer.

Both Smith and Tapscott are on administrative duty while the State Bureau of Investigation and RPD’s Internal Affairs Unit investigate the I-440 shooting, as per police department procedure.

The SBI will turn over its findings to the District Attorney’s Office, which will decide whether charges are filed.

Raleigh police have petitioned a judge for the release of body camera footage from the five officers, as is required under state law. A hearing has been set for Feb. 2 in Superior Court, the department stated.