Body camera video gives clearer picture of unusual city officer-involved killing

Submitted Photo This screenshot highlights what body camera footage showed of an officer preparing to shoot and then shooting a man Oct. 12, 2023, at a home on Helena Avenue in Youngstown. The body camera does not show the suspect because the officer was looking around a wall.

YOUNGSTOWN — When a Mahoning County grand jury declined in July to indict a Youngstown police officer who shot and killed 45-year-old Ricco Acevedo on Oct. 12, 2023, at a home on Helena Avenue on the South Side, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation released the body camera videos on its website.

BCI, part of the Ohio Attorney General’s office, investigated Acevedo’s death at the request of Youngstown Police Chief Carl Davis. At the end of the investigation, BCI turned over its evidence to the Ohio Attorney General’s Special Prosecutions Division to present the case to a Mahoning County grand jury, which declined to indict.

It was the first time the Youngstown Police Department had an officer-involved homicide that was caught on body camera, said Lt. Brian Butler, head of the Youngstown Police Department’s internal affairs division. The recordings provided “tremendous evidence” to show how this unusual case unfolded, he said.

When the shooting happened, few details were provided – a call at 9:13 a.m. for a burglary, a radio call from police at 9:41 a.m. for “shots fired,” and a man killed by police.

But body camera video from the officer who fired the shots explains what turned out to be a 21-minute effort to find out who the alleged burglar was and, more importantly, what he was doing in the home of a jailed Mahoning County man. prison. The homeowner’s mother, who initially called 911, said the house was supposed to be empty.

When the officer arrived on Helena at 9:21 a.m., he spoke with the homeowner’s mother, Elizabeth Cuevas, who said she saw a man she didn’t know coming down the steps of her son’s home.

The officer encountered Acevedo about a minute later. Acevedo calmly held a trash bag in the driveway of the home and said he was there doing plumbing and drywall repairs for the homeowner, who was in jail.

The interaction between the officer and Acevedo was cordial, polite and conversational. Acevedo offered to show the officer the work he was doing in the house and they entered. The homeowner’s mother “basically called you a burglar,” the officer told Acevedo.

“Indeed,” Acevedo said as he climbed the steps.

“You don’t look like a thief to me,” said the officer. Acevedo talked about the amount of money the owner would pay her, several hundred dollars. Even though the officer was conversing, it was clear he was questioning Acevedo to see if his story lined up.

“How long have you not seen him,” the officer asked Acevedo of the homeowner. “I saw it maybe a month ago,” Acevedo said as he showed the officer the bathroom plumbing. They went back outside and the officer left Acevedo in the driveway to find Elizabeth Cuevas and speak with her again, this time with Acevedo standing nearby.

“That’s how she knows you and you know her,” the officer said. Acevedo said her son hired her a month ago and gave her a key.

“Well, guess what? We changed the locks,” said Elizabeth Cuevas, explaining that someone broke in a few days earlier and stole seven bicycles. “Did you steal the bikes too?” she asked Acevedo.

“I’m working,” Acevedo said.

“He doesn’t work at home,” she said, not believing him.

“I promise you, I’m going to do a good job,” Acevedo said.

“No,” said the woman. “I haven’t known you since Adam. I want to know how you got into the house if I just changed the lock on the door. This happened just a few days ago. Not. He’s lying, she said.

The officer said, “We’ve never had a guy break into a house and work on it.” To try to verify his story, Acevedo tried to find the key he said he used to get into the front door that day. Acevedo looked for keys in the house, but couldn’t find one that would open the front door.

Acevedo was credible enough that two officers allowed him to enter the house alone because Acevedo said he would continue to look for the key. The officers waited outside on the front porch, debating whether to believe Acevedo. But he can’t seem to find the key he used to get in here. So it’s a bit silly,” said the first officer.

Acevedo told the first officer his name was “Rick Burkiemer” and gave him a date of birth and a social security number. The information turned out to be false. He said his girlfriend left him. The first officer went to his cruiser and ran the date of birth and social security number Acevedo gave him, but didn’t find a match in the database.

When the officer returned to the home, he told Acevedo that the social security number and date of birth “does not go back to anyone named Burkiemer” and “does not match a person.” He told Acevedo to put his hands on the wall. Acevedo protested, saying “I didn’t do anything.” A fellow officer was standing nearby. Suddenly, Acevedo bolted for the front door. The first officer followed him into the house. Acevedo could be heard saying, “I have a gun on me,” which was apparently not true.

“So am I,” said the officer.

Acevedo entered an upstairs room and the officer was behind a wall at the top of the stairs with his gun drawn, ordering Acevedo to “Get on the ground” and “Put that gun down,” but Acevedo said “Not”. and “I’m not throwing it away.” Acevedo then gave the officer his real name, and the officer told Acevedo “Don’t (mess it up).” It was a tense situation, although both men spoke mostly in measured tones.

“I don’t care. I have nothing to live for,” Acevedo said, referring to the danger he was in. “I’m just trying to make some money (deleted). My mom just died. I’m not doing this anymore. The truth is, I met Cuevas in prison. He told me to come and do some… work on the house.”

The officer asked Acevedo why he was putting himself in this position if he was telling the truth about being allowed to be in the house, saying “a phone call could fix this (deleted).”

“Because I don’t trust the police,” Acevedo said.

The officer told Acevedo to “Trust it. Throw that (deleted) gun down or this is going to end very badly for you.”

“I don’t care about it anymore,” Acevedo said. “I know where I’m going. I respect law enforcement, but this is wrong. Have you ever shot someone?”

“Yes,” said the officer.

“Well, you’ll have to shoot me. I’m not going to jail. Do you hear me?”

“Understood,” the officer replied.

“At least three times. Do you understand?” Acevedo continued. After two seconds of silence, the officer fired three shots.

Another officer’s body camera shows the officer from behind, but neither the shooting officer’s body camera nor the other officers’ body cameras captured those two seconds or showed what the officer was seeing when he fired.

Three seconds later, as the officer shooting forward, Acevedo is seen on a camera on the floor in the hallway. He makes sounds but doesn’t move. The officers immediately called an ambulance, handcuffed Acevedo, and an officer applied pressure to Acevedo’s chest wounds.

BCI DOCUMENTS

An incident summary/overview BCI provided to prosecutors based on the results of their investigation states that the officer shot Acevedo because Acevedo “ran from the room he was in and begins to walk toward” the officer “while trying to retrieve something from him. waistband.”

It states Acevedo “then began to pull what appeared to (the officer) to be a chrome revolver from his waistband.”

After shooting Acevedo, the officer “observed an object on the floor not far from where Acevedo was sitting in the doorway of the bathroom,” the summary states. The officer “thought it was a handgun, but upon closer inspection realized the object was not a weapon,” it said.

The summary contains a list of items taken as evidence at the scene. Among them was a “grinding wheel cleaner”. A photo in the item summary shows a buffing wheel tool on a wooden floor, like the one where Acevedo was killed. The tool is roughly shaped like a gun, but has a silver metal wheel on the end where the gun barrel would be.

The photo’s placement in the summary suggests that this was the object the officer saw on the floor after shooting Acevedo. The officer later told investigators during an interview that he had never had contact with Acevedo before that day.

Acevedo, a Boardman High School graduate whose address was in Boardman, had worked in home improvement and landscaping and had been a professional mixed martial arts fighter and boxer, according to his obituary. He won all but three of his 80 fights and was the Packard Music Hall Toughman Champion in 2004, it said.

He had been in trouble with the law, most notably a six-year prison sentence in 2016 for punching and kicking his girlfriend in her Girard home in 2015. He had to have reconstructive surgery on his eye socket, she said to a Tribune Chronicle reporter.

BUTLER

Lt. Brian Butler of the internal affairs division said of the body cameras, “It’s just amazing technology. I think I appreciate it more myself because I’ve investigated 12 or 13 years (in internal affairs) without it, and now we have perfect first-person, high-definition audio accounts from the body cameras.”

Before body cameras, internal affairs investigators investigated from “whatever evidence we could gather. If there was surveillance video, that was awesome. And that was very rare,” he said.

“This is such a great illustration of body cameras and the transparency they give us,” he said of the Acevedo case. Butler said it might be difficult to convey to someone all the reasons why this situation unfolded the way it did. Having body camera video and audio makes it easier, he said.

Regarding this shoot, he found it “very different” in that it “evolved so much, that dialogue”. He said that in most cases where an officer shoots someone, it happens more quickly, not long after a person sees an officer in uniform.

A 2019 officer-involved killing in Niles, for example, involved officers shooting a man whose car was stuck between several police vehicles. Officers fired multiple shots from the front and rear of the vehicle as the driver moved his vehicle back and forth.

There was some body cam video and citizen video in that episode, but none showing the moments before the gunfire started.

A 2022 officer-involved killing in which Struthers police were chasing a man in a vehicle ended quickly after the man’s car was stalled on Youngstown’s West Side and an officer fired at the suspect’s car. In that episode, there was body cam video and surveillance footage.

Butler said the Acevedo case is the first time YPD has asked BCI to handle the criminal investigation of an officer-involved homicide. But since then, BCI has dealt with additional ones.