Phillip Pannell shooting incident

Phillip Pannell was an African-American teenager shot and killed by police officer Gary Spath in Teaneck, New Jersey, on April 10, 1990. Pannell was fleeing police when he was shot; Spath was later charged and acquitted on charges of manslaughter.^[1] The case created controversy over the issues racial profiling and police brutality.

Background & shooting

The African-American population in the Northeast corner of Teaneck grew substantially in the 1960s, accompanied by white flight triggered by the blockbusting efforts of local real estate agencies. As this de facto racial segregation increased, so did tensions between residents of the Northeast and the predominantly white Teaneck Police Department.

On the evening of April 10, 1990, the Teaneck Police Department responded to a call from a resident complaining about a group of teenagers, one of whom was reported to have a gun. After an initial confrontation near the Bryant School and a subsequent chase, Pannell was shot and killed by Spath, a white Teaneck police officer. Spath said he thought Pannell had a gun and was turning to shoot him. Many witnesses said Pannell was unarmed and had been shot in the back. A fully loaded .22 caliber pistol was recovered from the jacket pocket of suspect Pannell. The weapon had once been a starter's pistol that had been modified into a fully operable gun.

The original autopsy conducted by the Bergen Medical Examiner indicated that Phillip Pannell was shot in the back with his hands down, possibly reaching for the gun and corroborating the story of the two officers on the scene.^[2] The New Jersey Attorney General, in a harsh rebuke of the autopsy called it "tainted" and indicated that it was so flawed that another autopsy had to be done which would introduce a correct understanding of where his hands were when he was shot in the back. The Attorney General also indicated that Bergen Medical Examiner admitted the mistakes he had made in the autopsy process. The second autopsy conducted by the State Medical Examiner proved conclusively that Phillip Pannells hands were raised at the moment that he was shot in the back. This evidence corroborated the stories of witnesses at the scene ^[3]

Violence

Protest marches, some violent, ensued, with most African Americans believing that Pannell had been killed in cold blood, and some White residents insisting that Spath had been justified in his actions. Spath was ultimately acquitted on charges of reckless manslaughter in the shooting. Some months after Spath had been cleared, he decided to retire from law enforcement. The incident was an international news event that brought Reverend Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to the community, calls for Federal Civil Rights prosecution,^[4] and inspired the 1995 book Color Lines: The Troubled Dreams of Racial Harmony in an American Town, by Teaneck resident Mike Kelly.^[5]

References