Jacobs & Crumplar File Civil Rights Action On Behalf Of McDole Family

March 3, 2016

Today the grandmother and mother of Jeremy McDole filed a state court civil rights action for the tragic and unnecessary death of Jeremy, a 28 year old young black man, who was not suffering from mental health issues, but who was shot 16 times by allegedly poorly trained and unqualified police officers and killed, while paralyzed from the waist down sitting in a wheelchair.

As shown by a contemporaneous video that went viral, he was unarmed, his hands were on his lap, sitting in broad daylight out in the open with plenty of nearby cover for the police. Jeremy was not combative or physically aggressive, nor did he say anything threatening or verbally taunt the police. Nor was he fleeing from the scene of a felonious crime which involved serious physical injury, or a threat of imminent harm to anyone. Jeremy’s assailants never identified themselves to him verbally as “Police” when they issued him commands before recklessly shooting him excessively. And they also never warned Jeremy that deadly force would be used against him to take his life if their commands were not followed.

The officers involved allegedly violated the Wilmington Police Department “Use of Force” Directive, due either to their poor training or lack of qualifications to be police officers licensed to use deadly force. The general state of such institutional failures within their police department has been highlighted recently in a Delaware judicial dissent. Before using deadly force, Jeremy could have been talked down by a properly trained professional using historic police methods before a cowboy mentality seeped into current day police training and police work. Also, lesser forms of force could have been utilized, such as, for example, a stun gun, a taser, pepper spray, tear gas or other chemical weapon, rubber buckshot or a bean bag shotgun.

Jacobs and Crumplar have filed this lawsuit in order to get answers for a grieving family who have nothing but questions as to how and why their beloved son, grandson, and brother could have been killed by the police when there is a video which shows that this killing was not justified .