AKRON, Ohio — The eight Akron police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Jayland Walker, an unarmed Black man who was killed after a chase this summer, returned to work this week at the Akron Police Department.
What You Need To Know
- The eight Akron police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Jayland Walker have returned to work
- Dozens of people gathered in Akron to protest this decision
- Protesters said they are angry that the officers are back to work
Many community members are angry that these officers are back on the job before the investigation into Walker’s death is complete.
On Wednesday night, a few dozen protesters took to the streets of Akron’s Highland Square neighborhood to voice their concerns.
In attendance was Demetrius Travis Sr., who is Jayland Walker’s cousin.
“You try to process everything as it goes. You kind of start to get some sort of normalcy, and then here you go again, blindsided,” Travis said. “It stirs up emotions. It gets people angry. It feels like another shot just went into his body to me. It’s just like another shot in the body and it’s ignorant.”
According to the Akron Police Department, the officers will not be in uniform and they will be doing office work.
The department said a major reason for brining these officers back to work is because the department is short-staffed and doesn’t want to sacrifice services. The officers were being paid while on leave.
The chair of justice studies at the University of Akron, David Licate, said depending on the nature of the case, it’s not unusual to bring the officers back from administrative leave to do office work, but it might have happened faster than normal in this situation.
“They can question, you know, usually when it’s a use of force incident that results in the death of a civilian, that’s what they would question, they would say, ‘was this too quick to bring these individuals back?’ ” Licate said. “In any other circumstance, that would be protocol or even in this situation it would be protocol, but the question is these things usually take about a year to process. This happened in the summer.”
Activist said they are going to continue speaking out regarding this matter until this investigation is complete.
