UPDATE | Niles police feared for their safety in firing weapons
NILES
Statement issued by Niles police regarding officer-involved fatal shooting at Royal Mall Apartments.
Police Chief Jay Holland and Capt. John Marshall said they believe the public may not realize a ruling by the Trumbull County Coroner that Matthew Burroughs' death is a homicide is a "medical" term and not an opinion on whether anyone was at fault in the Jan. 2 officer-involved shooting that killed him.
"It means death by another," Holland said during a news conference today at the Niles Police Department. It is not meant to imply any "criminal liability," Hoilland said. Some residents were alarmed by the "headline" indicating that Burroughs' death was a homicide, Marshall said.
Holland said there are a lot of things the department cannot and will not discuss about the shooting at the Royal Mall apartments, but he said "officers perceived a threat to their safety and fired their service weapons" at Burroughs.
The shooting took place near Burroughs' apartment.
Before Burroughs pulled into the apartment complex, a Niles officer was walking on foot to Burroughs' apartment, Holland said. At that same time, another officer in a cruiser was following Burroughs, 35, who was in his car.
"Burroughs then drove towards' the initial responding officers," Holland said. It was at that point, the officers perceived a threat to their safety.
Holland said it needed to be clarified that the Niles Police Department never alleged that Burroughs had a gun. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation said last week that an examination of Burroughs' car by BCI showed that he had no gun.
Holland said his department of 35 officers includes one female and one Hispanic male but no black officers. But the department's officers receive the diversity training required by the state for all law enforcement officers. That information was in response to a question from the president of the Trumbull County chapter of the NAACP contained in a recent news release.
Though the Niles Police Department has not released the names of the two officers on leave and others involved in the shooting death of Burroughs, itdid release the 911 audio recordings of the communications between dispatchers and the officers today.
They reveal that as Burroughs pulled into the apartment complex in his car with one officer in a car behind him and other officers already at the complex, one officer saw Burroughs coming and expressed concern: "I don't know if he's gonna stop, man," the unidentified officer said.
The next voice is an officer saying, "Send an ambulance," and then a dispatcher asks for an ambulance to respond to the Royal Mall apartments.
"PD is on scene screaming to send an ambulance," the dispatcher said into the phone.
An officer can then be heard saying, "Radio we need a squad. All of the officers are good. He is not." There is obvious strain in the officer's voice.
The police department has asked the Niles law director to give an opinion on whether the police department should release the names and personnel records of the officers involved, Police Chief Jay Holland said. The department is still waiting for the opinion, he said
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