Three Tacoma, Washington, police officers were charged in connection to the death of a black man in their custody.
Officers Christopher Burbank and Matthew Collins were charged with second-degree murder, while Timothy Rankine was charged with first-degree manslaughter, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced Thursday.
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Ellis, 33, was killed March 3, 2020. On that night, Ellis went to 7-11 for a snack and encountered the police officers on his way home.
The officers got out of their vehicle and began attacking him, according to three different witnesses who provided statements to police. Two of the witnesses were in their car, while the other was a pizza delivery driver who was on the way back to the store.
In the probable cause statement, all three witnesses said they “never saw Ellis strike at the officers,” and one of them said, “It doesn’t seem like he was fighting at all to me.” A different witness said, “He wasn’t even defending himself.”
Two of the witnesses filmed part of the situation, as did a neighbor. A neighbor’s doorbell camera also caught part of it.
Burbank, in the footage, can “be seen wrapping his arms around Ellis, lifting him into the air, and driving him down into the pavement, striking at him with one of his fists as he does so,” according to the probable cause statement.
Collins, during the struggle, used a “lateral vascular neck restraint,” which is supposed to be able to render someone unconscious in four to seven seconds if maximum pressure is applied.
In addition to the three officers who were charged, two others have also been on paid leave pending the charging decision.
Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer, who was a detective and spokesman at the time, said none of the officers placed their knees on Ellis’s neck, though the witness videos showed that it had happened, according to the Associated Press.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a slew of police-related legislation earlier in May.
The 12 bills Inslee signed included a measure supporting community-police partnerships and another requiring police to record interrogations of juvenile suspects, as well as any suspect accused of committing a felony.
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House Bill 1310, the use of force measure, creates a “reasonable care” standard governing police interactions, and proponents say the goal of the measure is “to address public safety concerns by limiting the use of deadly force to very narrow circumstances where there is an imminent threat of serious physical injury or death.”
There were nationwide protests during the spring and summer of 2020, with activists calling for police departments to be defunded or abolished altogether.
