The officer was acquitted. He had shot and injured the driver of a car. He was acquitted and restored to his police force.

The officer claimed he had been hit by the car and knocked to the ground. He had fired in self-defense, heroically. There was a video of the incident, though, and it showed no such thing. The video showed that he remained standing as the car moved past him, not even at a car-like speed, and he fired point-blank at the driver on the driver’s side. The driver was not badly injured. The officer was arrested for assault, and he was also arrested for fabricating evidence.

The prosecutor said on the record at the time that if officers can get away with shooting people and lying about it, “the system is doomed.” The officer’s own lawyer recently told The New York Times, “There was no way around it—he (the officer) was dead wrong.” The two lead lawyers on both sides agree: The officer had lied about the incident. He was wrong. But he was acquitted by a jury and eventually restored to the force, and he successfully sued the city and won his back pay.
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