Georgia police officer is fired after body camera footage captures him deliberately mowing down a fleeing suspect with his patrol car. Source: Athens-Clark County Police Dept
The following story is based on body camera footage and police statements regarding an incident in which a rookie officer drove his squad car into a fleeing suspect, causing him to be fired from the Athens-Clarke County Police Department within hours.
The call came in at 7.30pm local time on Friday: Timmy Patmon was running. There was a warrant out for him for violating probation on a drug charge last year - meth and less than an ounce of marijuana - and now he was running from an officer through east Athens, Georgia.
Officer Taylor Saulters sat in a squad car on a side street a few blocks away, listening to the call. He looked to his left, then his right. Then he threw the car into reverse and turned down Vine Street, sirens blaring, wipers flicking light rain off the windshield.
He accelerated down a narrow street of low-roofed houses and veered left at a fork - at an intersection that used to be called the "Iron Triangle" during the crack cocaine crisis of the early 2000s, according to Flagpole.
Oncoming cars veered out of the way as Saulters sped past the liquor store, the police station, the church. He spotted Patmon half a block ahead - sprinting down the footpath, clutching a baseball cap.
Patmon was 24 years old. Saulters was a year out of the police academy. He would later tell his bosses that he'd been trying to block the fugitive's escape. It all happened in a span of seconds - between two passes of the windshield wipers.
Saulters turned the car towards the footpath, striking the curb a few paces in front of Patmon.
Patmon escaped into the street, now sprinting down the yellow line. Saulters accelerated and veered toward him. Another jolt, and then Patmon was over the hood, bouncing off the windshield.
Somehow he never lost his grip on his ball cap, even as he fell face down into the street.
Saulters leaped out of the car. The second officer had already caught up and was straddling Patmon, who lay writhing on the wet pavement.
"We got him," Saulters said.
He reached back inside his car to kill the sirens. Almost instantly, the audio track on his body cam filled with the sounds of people screaming.
A woman had stepped into the street to stare at Patmon, covered in dirt, with two uniformed officers standing over him. "Oh my God," she aid. "Why'd you hit that man?"
Saulters pointed at her. "Stop!" He bent down to help the second officer cuff Patmon, who wouldn't let go of his ball cap. The hat was drawn taut as the officers tried to pry his arms apart.
It had been less than 60 seconds since the impact, but already a throng had gathered at the Iron Triangle. The accounts of eyewitnesses were relayed through the crowd as angry shouts: "He hit the man! He hit the man! He hit the man!"
On the ground, Patmon half-closed his eyes and finally let the officers cuff him.
"We're going to need crowd control," Saulters said.
"We need, uh, EMS," he added.
Timmy Patmon running to the left of the police car.
Seconds later, a second squad car pulled up. More uniforms joined Saulters and the second officer. A man in a camouflage T-shirt stepped out of the crowd, pulled a lanyard from his jeans and slung a badge around his neck.
"I got him with my car," Saulters explained. "That's what they're yelling about."
Most of the police started making a perimeter, herding the shouters back to the pavement. They left Saulters and Patmon to have a sort of conversation in the street.
"Stand up," Saulters said, almost softly. "We're going to put you in the back of this car while we handle this, all right?"
Patmon finally sat up, sitting with his hands bound behind him. Saulters ignored the jeers from all around him, discussing the damage to his front wheel with other officers.
After a minute or so, a woman walked slowly out of the crowd. She passed through the police line and held out a cigarette to Patmon.
She put it in his mouth and lit it, and the officers let him smoke it for a few moments. Then Saulters took it away.
"We can't smoke in the car," he said. "All right?"
They loaded Patmon, who no longer protested, into the second patrol car. Two days later, he would remain in custody on charges of probation violation and obstructing an officer.
Saulters had not been sure his car would be drivable after the collision, but he was able to rattle away on three good tyres, leaving the furious crowd at the Triangle.
ACCPD Chief Scott Freeman fired rookie cop Taylor Saulters (L) Saturday after reviewing body camera video that shows he swerved to the right at suspect Timmy Patmon and hit him. ACCPD says they don't believe it was intentional but negligent. See for yourself at 11pm @wsbtvpic.twitter.com/8RFO3AuZVV
He held Patmon's confiscated cigarette out the squad car window as he made one of his last journeys as an Athens-Clarke County police officer.
About half a dozen other officers had already gathered in a nearby parking lot when Saulters pulled up in his crippled car.
"Damn!" Saulters shouted, getting out and slamming the door.
"He's fine," one of the officers told him. In a news release yesterday, police said Patmon had suffered scrapes and bruises.
"He was running this way," Saulters explained to his colleagues in the parking lot. "And I just came this way, and he ran into the hood of my car and bounced off."
"All right," someone said. "As long as you didn't make some kind of overt movement to strike him, you'll be fine."
But he wasn't. Within a matter of hours, the police chief would watch footage from Saulters's body camera, which showed him jerking the steering wheel in Patmon's direction just before the car struck him. An internal affairs investigation was opened, and the rookie officer's firing was announced in a news release less than a day after the collision.
The news release somewhat supported Saulters' version of events, stating that had been trying to block Patmon rather than intentionally hit him. But the officer, who could not be reached, had also violated unspecified policy and used force excessively, a police spokesman told the Washington Post.
The state of Georgia will continue to investigate him and might assign additional penalties.
Before he turned off his camera, Saulters carefully set down Patmon's cigarette, which he had carried with him from the scene of the crash.
