Death by Cop  2021-2025

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Name Not Disclosed

Age :

Gender : Male

Race : Unknown

Date : 09/12/2021

Location : Lloyd Street

City : Fort Walton Beach

County : Okaloosa

State : Florida

Agency : Fort Walton Beach Police Department

Officer(s) :Not Disclosed

Cause of Death : Gunshot

Event : Killed by police during response

OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :

On 09/13/2021, a Fort Walton Beach Police Department officer shot and killed a man during an encounter in Fort Walton Beach. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement was called to investigate the fatal shooting.
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The initial reporting from Northwest Florida Daily News, WEAR-TV and WJHG identified Fort Walton Beach police as the involved agency and FDLE as the outside agency investigating the shooting.
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This case presents an unusually serious records gap in the surviving public record. The original news stories supplied for this database entry are no longer readily accessible through their original URLs, and the later searchable record located for this update does not reliably establish the man's identity, the precise location, the reason police initially encountered him, the sequence preceding the shooting, or the identity of the officer who fired.
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Those facts should not be reconstructed from similarly dated Fort Walton Beach or Okaloosa County incidents. In particular, this is not the March 2021 homicide of Earnest Riggs Jr., nor should information from later Fort Walton Beach-area police shootings be merged into this record. The available evidence is insufficient to safely make those connections.
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The most important established investigative fact is that Fort Walton Beach Police Department was not left to conduct the principal criminal investigation of its own officer's fatal shooting. FDLE was brought in as the outside investigative agency.
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A complete rebuild therefore requires the FDLE officer-involved-shooting investigative file or subsequent State Attorney disposition. Those records should establish the decedent's identity, shooting officer, initiating reason for the encounter, witness accounts, physical and firearms evidence, any available body-camera or dash-camera recordings, and the ultimate prosecutorial determination.
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OFFICER BACKGROUND
The Fort Walton Beach police officer who fired the fatal shots has not been publicly identified in the verifiable records located for this update.
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The officer's identity is particularly important because it would permit the mandatory review for prior shootings, use of force, complaints, discipline, civil-rights litigation and subsequent misconduct.
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There is documented Fort Walton Beach Police Department litigation predating this shooting. In Michael Hogan v. City of Fort Walton Beach, a former Fort Walton Beach police officer alleged retaliation and constitutional violations involving the department and former Chief Edward Ryan. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed dismissal of Hogan's federal action in 2020. Because that litigation did not concern this unidentified shooting officer, it should not be treated as evidence about the 2021 killing.
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SOURCE LINKS :

https://www.nwfdailynews.com/story/news/2021/09/13/fdle-investigates-police-shooting-fort-walton-beach/
https://weartv.com/news/local/fdle-investigating-officer-involved-shooting-in-fort-walton-beach
https://www.wjhg.com/2021/09/13/man-killed-in-fort-walton-beach-police-shooting/