DAMNED BECAUSE HE DIDN’T, DAMNED BECAUSE HE DID

White Nashville cop charged with shooting dead an armed black man who was running away, had been reprimanded by supervisors months earlier for NOT opening fire on another armed suspect in a similar case

By Frances Mulraney and Associated Press

Daily Mail
January 28, 2020

Newly revealed police records show a rookie white Nashville police officer charged with fatally shooting an armed black man who was running away had been reprimanded by supervisors months earlier for not shooting another armed suspect in a similar case.

Officer Andrew Delke, 26, will soon stand trial for first-degree murder in the shooting of Daniel Hambrick, 25, in July 2018. He will be the first Nashville police officer to face a murder charge for killing someone in the line of duty.

Nine months before Delke shot and killed Hambrick, supervisors gave the rookie officer an 'informal counseling session' and told him he should have drawn his gun in a similar case involving an armed black man running away.

Delke had been on the force for about a year when he used a stun gun to arrest an armed suspect, Terry Crowell, who ran from him in November 2017, WPLN News reports.

His supervisor Sgt. Matthew Boguskie later held an 'informal counseling session' with Delke, stating that his should have used his firearm.

Delke told the sergeant that he didn't pull his service weapon because of what he called 'the hostile climate towards police use of force throughout the country'.

Just nine months later he would pull his gun to shoot and kill Hambrick as he ran away.

On November 4, 2017, Officer Delke was patrolling the north side of Nashville when a call came in from the owner of Caribbean Splash Reggae Cafe on Clarksville Pike.

The owner said a former employee was standing outside the cafe with a gun and called on cops to come immediately.

'The guy that worked in my place, he's on my property now with a big .45 gun in his pocket,' the man said.

'I need somebody to get this guy immediately.

'Please, I hope someone catches him, please.'

The former employee was said to be wearing a black hoodie and black pants and had an Afro and a beard. Several officers, including Delke, were dispatched to the scene.

Delke spotted a man who fit the description with his hands in his pockets. The rookie officer asked the man to show his hands twice but the man ran away and Delke radioed in: '11 — running. Male black. Black hoodie. Beard.'

Catching up with the suspect, Delke used his taser instead of his gun and arrested Terry Crowell, who it emerged had three outstanding warrants.

A few days after the arrest, Delke was called in by his supervisor Sgt. Matthew Boguskie for what the department called an 'informal counseling session', telling the officer that he would have been 'justified' to have pulled his gun on the suspect as per his training.

Delke responded that he didn't for a reason, namely 'the hostile climate towards police use of force throughout the country'.

He also told Boguskie that at the time he was thinking of Officer Josh Lippert, the former Nashville officer who shot Jocques Clemmons, a black man, after a traffic stop.

When the district attorney decided not to prosecute Lippert in this case, demonstrations and protests lasted for months calling on the department to fire anyway.

'I discussed with Officer Delke that we cannot allow outside factors to detract us from our training and what we know we should do in dangerous situations, particularly situations that could quickly rise to a deadly force situation,' Sgt. Boguskie said in the report.

In a memo sent later that month, North Precinct Cmdr. Terrence Graves agreed with the sergeant, and suggested more training across the force, but Metro police said that was never implemented.

Delke has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the killing of Daniel Hambrick, 25, who was shot from behind while running from officers in July 2018.

An arrest affidavit said Nashville officer Andrew Delke, 25, pulled into an apartment parking lot on July 26, 2018 after seeing a car he mistook for one he had been following in North Nashville.

Delke had been following a 'suspicious' white Chevrolet Impala initially stopped at a stop sign. He had run plates and found it was not a stolen vehicle. but followed it regardless 'to see if he could develop a reason to stop the Impala'.

Daniel Hambrick, also 25, was in the area at the time when Delke mistook his car for the Impala and pulled up in the parking lot. Hambrick began to run when he saw the cops and can be seen gunned down from behind on a surveillance video.

Delke shot Hambrick in the back, torso and the back of his head.

The case sparked an outcry that led to a November referendum approving the creation of a citizen oversight board for Nashville's police force.

Delke had been charged with criminal homicide, which includes murder, voluntary manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide but in January 2019 Judge Melissa Blackburn ruled that the evidence presented in a preliminary hearing showed that Hambrick's behavior 'certainly didn't justify (Delke's) use of lethal force', the Tennessean reported.

The grand jurors selected first-degree murder, showing they believe a premeditated illegal killing was committed by the police officer.

A trial has been set to begin March 16.

It's the first time a Nashville officer will face a murder charge for killing someone in the line of duty, WPLN News reported.

Hambrick's family is suing Delke and the city of Nashville for $30 million.