Christian Taylor shooting: No physical contact between college football player, police officer

Police Chief Will Johnson of Arlington, Texas, fired the officer who fatally shot a college football player last week, saying Tuesday the cop had had no physical contact with the unarmed black teenager.

Chief Johnson also used a Tuesday evening press conference to say that Officer Brad Miller was “exercising poor judgment” when he went into an Arlington car dealership’s showroom to confront a potential felon alone, without telling his supervising officer.

Christian Taylor, 19, played football at Angelo State University and was killed when police investigated a burglary at Classic Buick GMC.

“This is an extraordinarily difficult case,” Chief Johnson said. “Decisions were made that have catastrophic outcomes.”

Officer Miller, 49, graduated from the police academy earlier this year and was still a probationary employee doing field training under a more senior officer. According to the chief, this means Officer Miller cannot appeal the firing.

Mr. Taylor can be seen in the dealership’s security footage in the early hours of Friday morning breaking a windshield of a vehicle on the lot before driving his own car through the showroom’s protective glass.

Previously, police said Mr. Taylor was roaming around the showroom, and then tried to run away after refusing to surrender. The dealer footage does not show any of those events.

Chief Johnson said at the Tuesday press conference that Mr. Taylor was “actively advancing toward Officer Miller” rather than fleeing, and that the officer shot before he was ever touched — much earlier than department rules on deadly force allow.

Mr. Taylor was about 7 feet to 10 feet away from Officer Miller when the first shot was fired, the chief said. The officer fired several more shots into the wounded teen.

While the chief said “it is clear from the facts obtained that Mr. Taylor was noncompliant with police demands,” he has too many “serious concerns” about Officer Miller’s judgment to keep him on the force.

The local police union called the chief’s action “a snapshot developed in only days” and noted his statement that Mr. Taylor was disobeying lawful orders from a policeman.

“We again ask that citizens obey the commands of police officers in order to prevent these tragedies from occurring,” the Arlington Municipal Patrolman’s Association said in a statement Tuesday night.

There was no immediate word on whether Officer Miller will face any criminal charges in the shooting, and the chief said that call was for a grand jury to make.

Chief Johnson said he hoped his decision and his publicly revealing the basis for it “can assist in the healing process … some communities and our nation have been torn apart by similar challenges.”

But after his press conference, about 60 people marched outside the Arlington PD headquarters demanding a criminal indictment.

The firing was “not enough justice,” Matthew Higgins, a high school classmate of Mr. Taylor, told The Associated Press. “If it was a white person, it probably would have been different.”