The Facts: No Easy Answers

Hours before family and friends prepare to remember a father, husband and neighbor we learn more facts in the death of Jeffrey Stephens Sr. on Saturday morning in Akron.

The facts, as reported this afternoon just after three in the afternoon at the Harold K. Stubbs Justice Center, should be troubling to anyone; nearly two dozen shots fired and striking Stephens after officers reported he made what appeared to be threatening moves to his waistband and ignored orders to stand down. This afternoon police released more details of what happened July 5, 2008; tonight around nine his neighborhood holds a public memorial to remember his life even as the community still tries to find answers in his death.

Two officers now on suspension while this investigation continues, even as APD Chief Mike Matulavich describes the shooting as "justified". There is no doubt calls were made from the Celina Avenue neighborhood complaining about gunshots directed at the Stephens home.

Witnesses, police say, confirm at least one of the officers gave Stephens multiple opportunities to lay down on the ground but for whatever reason that command was either unheard or ignored. The heat of a summer night, fireworks exploding in air celebrating independence of a nation, the focus of a father striving to protect his family from unseen threats -- will we ever know for sure what was going through Jeffrey Stephens' mind as he set out, gun in hand, to put a stop to what he must have felt was some form of domestic terrorist striking at his family, his son, his home?

Contrary to the belief of some these are not the times men and women who serve choose to put on the uniform of a police officer; people who become officers of the law do so for a wide variety of reasons but upholding a sense of order and helping their community live in peace are common to everyone who wears a badge. Confronting angry, confused, or troubled armed persons in the street before dawn's early light is not one of those reasons but it comes with the territory.

For the most part, the warning is enough: when someone wearing a uniform and a badge tells us to get down the best course is to listen, comply, and if we are still in a fighting mood take it through the courts. There are plenty of lawyers who will take those cases. The problem comes when adrenalin is at its highest, when judgment abandons the mind in favor of rage or desire, when decisions made in the comfort of hindsight are instead shoved into a split second. Decisions made in the tick of a clock are rarely made well, and life-threatening situations often end with the wrong call.

This is a tragedy for the Stephens family, whether it was one shot or the 22 fired in blinks of an eye by two officers who's training told them a man standing in the street, upset and carrying a gun early on a holiday morning, was not a good thing. It is a tragedy for Officers Sidoti and Miles, trained to shoot only as a last resort; not trained to shoot to kill, only as a last resort when the decision comes down to shoot or be shot. Kill or be killed is something every officer trains for with hopes they won't have to use that training.

They have family, too; wives, parents and children who know their loved ones sometimes walk meaner streets so they can awake to a kinder world. Don't we all ultimately want the same thing Jeffrey Stephens, Sr. sought when he walked outside the morning of July 5, 2008: to keep his family safe?