Mother questions safety, policy after police shooting
By Chris Amos
Diversity Institute Fellow
07.23.04
Erica Hassell woke up early Monday morning to the sound of gunfire — a sound she says she hears often after dark in her East Nashville neighborhood. But this time, the sound was different.
"It sounded like it was in the house," said Hassell, who lives at 1109 N. Seventh St. with her three children.
She said she warned her children to lie still while she crawled across her living room floor to investigate. She estimated that 30 to 35 shots were fired. Later, her 11-year-old daughter Thera noticed smoke coming from a bullet hole in the window of a bedroom where she had been sleeping.
The bullet appeared to have passed just inches above her head.
Hassell said that police officers expressed little concern for her family following the shooting.
"Not one time did the officers knock on our door to ask if we were OK," she said.
The incident occurred after police began chasing a man suspected of stealing a car. The man, identified as Solon Baker, got out of the car in a nearby alley and began running, according to police. They said he then began firing shots at the pursuing officer and police shot back.
Once the shooting ceased, Hassell said she peeked through one of her living room's picture windows and saw a police officer standing above Baker with his weapon drawn, less than 15 feet from her front door.
She said that she watched for nearly 10 minutes as paramedics and police officers tended to a police officer injured in the shooting while ignoring Baker, whose breathing she said she watched slow down and grow fainter as minutes passed.
While Hassell acknowledged that police officers had the right to defend themselves when fired upon, she questioned their decision to return fire at a man so near her sleeping family.
But Metro Police spokesmen Don Aaron said that the police officers should not be blamed for defending themselves.
"The officers did not choose the setting; Solon Baker did," he said.
Aaron said that he did not know how many shots were fired but noted that four houses had been hit. He said that department officials thought that two of the houses had been hit by Baker and two had been hit by the officers. He said the fact that Baker and the officers fired similar weapons made it difficult to determine the details of the shooting.
Metro Police policy allows police officers to use deadly force when they have a reasonable belief that it is necessary to protect the life of an officer or another person. The policy does not require officers to take the safety of others into account when they feel threatened.
Aaron said that the officers felt compelled to shoot because one of them was wounded and the others were unable to take cover.
Neighborhood resident James Meddlin, 73, said that he witnessed the shooting from his front porch, several houses away.
"I had just finished meditating when I heard something," he said. "I knew it wasn't fireworks because it didn't sound right."
Meddlin said that he saw nothing wrong in the police officers' actions.
He said that he saw an officer put himself at risk by walking into the street during the gunfire. He believes the officer did so to avoid firing indiscriminately.
"I don't know where we'd be without them," he said of police. "I am just as angry at the boy as anyone. He's black, out here stealing cars. He needs to have himself a job," said Meddlin, a black man who says he hates to see young black people "put themselves in bad situations."
Hassell was not nearly as approving of officers' actions as she sat in her living room recalling the shooting. "I don't think that all that was necessary," she said. "If the police officers were properly trained, then they should have thought that with all these windows, somebody in this house might get hurt."