Police blocked Spring Street in Montpelier as they investigated a fatal officer-involved shooting on Friday morning. Photo by Mike Dougherty/VTDigger
On Friday morning, Montpelier Police Cpl. Chad Bean shot and killed a Montpelier resident while responding to a reported break-in.
The incident is under investigation by the Vermont State Police. Bean shot resident Mark Johnson when he refused to put down a pellet gun that, at the time, the police believed to be a handgun. VSP Maj. Dan Trudeau said Friday that the responding officers felt “threatened” by the resident’s weapon and reacted accordingly.
But Friday wasn’t the first time Bean has been accused of using excessive force — or the first time his policing techniques have been connected to a death.
In June 2012, Bean and two of his colleagues responded to a 911 call from a Montpelier woman being roughly handled by her husband. According to court documents from 2015, the woman’s husband had been diagnosed with dementia, Parkinson’s disease and seizures, and his wife was concerned by his behavior.
After she refused to give her husband four antacids instead of one, he grabbed her by the wrist and refused to let go.
The 911 call recorded the wife “tearfully” telling her husband that she didn’t know what was wrong with him. He responded by yelling at her to hang up the phone, shouting “What’s the matter with you, bitch.” The wife told the 911 operator that her husband had never acted “like this” before.
Bean and his colleagues put their guns away as soon as they realized that the husband — who was not wearing pants — did not have a weapon. Instead, in order to arrest the husband, Bean performed a rear wrist lock on the husband’s left hand.
Montpelier Police Cpl. Chad Bean. Department photo
The maneuver Bean used is considered a safe one — but when Bean tried it, the technique snapped the husband’s arm. The husband died in the hospital several months later from an infection related to the break.
The Vermont medical examiner ruled the death a homicide.
The wife pursued legal action against Bean shortly after, and in 2015 the U.S. District Court of Vermont dismissed the case on the grounds that Bean’s force was not excessive. The judge ruled that Bean’s use of a rear wrist lock was “a reasonable means of obtaining control of an agitated and noncompliant individual.”
The 2015 case and Friday’s shooting incident differ in several ways, most notably Bean’s use of a firearm. But in both instances, Bean’s potential “excessive force” targeted someone with a mental illness. In June, the man killed Friday was involved with the police three times due to what Trudeau called “some comments of some mental health problems.” Trudeau said the department is “looking into that.”
In the 2015 court case, both the wife and Bean made statements addressing whether Bean had complied with his mental-illness-related trainings. The wife said Bean’s actions weren’t in line with a Montpelier Police Department policy for “dealing with persons of diminished capacity,” which recommended against the use of harsh language. The judge concluded that Bean could not be legally held to department policy — and that his behavior was in line with his job requirements.
In several other recent cases, Vermont police officers have sparked concern over their responses to those with mental illnesses. A current Northfield lawsuit alleges that officers were overly aggressive during a welfare check. In Burlington, officers discussed at length the use of pepper spray on a knife-wielding elementary schooler.
In the aftermath of both fatalities involving Bean, his law enforcement colleagues have defended his use of force as a necessary measure taken under extreme circumstances.
“What it’s fair to say,” Trudeau said Friday, “is that [the officers] felt threatened by the weapon being pointed at them.”
Bean has been placed on administrative leave following Friday’s incident while the VSP continue to investigate.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Montpelier officer in Friday shooting had earlier excessive force case.