NOTE: The Scott family
was advised by their attorneys last year to suspend posting on the Erik Scott
case due to a pending lawsuit. I had been covering the case and posting articles
written by Erik's father, Bill Scott, along with some of my own commentary, but
removed most of the material from my site at that
time.
However, I have kept in contact
with Bill Scott, who has kindly given me periodic updates on the case. When I spoke with him earlier this week, he explained that the lawsuit had been dismissed and so I am now free to resume coverage.
Also, we look forward
to having Bill as a guest on The American Awakening (date to be determined, but
hopefully some time in June).
Truth and Justice for
Erik Scott!
BHP
May 25,
2010
Here is some of the latest
from the Erik Scott Memorial website.
Erik Scott Memorial Website
Springs family
dismisses lawsuit against Las Vegas police in son’s shooting
death
By Pam
Zubeck
Colorado Springs
Independent
April 18-24,
2012
The cops in Las Vegas, Nev.,
got away with murder — again. At least that’s how local author and former Air
Force flight test engineer Bill Scott sees the death of his son. Erik, 38, was
gunned down by the Metropolitan Police Department on July 10, 2010, as he left a
Costco store.
The case led to changes in
inquest procedures and played a role in the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s five-part
investigative series published last year about Metro’s excessive use of
force.
But one step in Scott’s search
for justice ended in March, when Scott and his wife, Linda, dropped their
federal wrongful death lawsuit against the Metropolitan Police Department,
Sheriff Douglas Gillespie and the three shooters, Officers William Mosher,
Joshua Stark and Thomas Mendiola. Mendiola has since been fired, after being
charged in January with providing a handgun to a two-time
felon.
The family asked the court to
dismiss the case after the defendants asserted “qualified immunity,” which
shields government officials from liability for the violation of an individual’s
federal constitutional rights and “puts a brick on the scales of justice”
against plaintiffs, Scott says.
Even if his family prevailed at
the trial court level, the verdict would have been appealed to the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals, which “has an almost unbroken record of finding for
police officers under qualified immunity,” he says.
Now, Scott is contemplating
other ways to vindicate his son’s death.
“I firmly believe that Erik was
murdered, the crime scene was corrupted, critical evidence was destroyed and
fake evidence was manufactured and introduced,” Scott says, “and it was all done
to protect an elaborate system that can only be described as a cartel of
corruption.”
Overkill
Erik Scott, a 1994 U.S.
Military Academy grad with an MBA from Duke University, was shopping when a
Costco employee noticed a handgun in his waistband and called a supervisor.
Scott, a medical device salesman, explained the gun was registered and he had a
concealed carry permit, but the employee said Costco’s policy forbids firearms,
although it posts no signs at entrances and doesn’t mention the ban in
membership applications.
The employee then told a
manager, who notified a private security guard, who called police, saying a
customer was acting erratically.
As Erik Scott walked to the
exit, more than a dozen police cruisers rolled up. Officers jumped out, yelled
conflicting commands at Scott — “Get on the ground!” “Drop your weapon!” “Keep
your hands up!” — and then shot him within two seconds of issuing those
commands, Scott says, citing dispatch recordings.
Mosher, who shot and killed a
citizen in 2006, shot him twice, and Mendiola and Stark shot him five times in
his back, after he fell, Scott says.
Police didn’t take possession
of Costco’s video until five days later, but the segments of the shooting were
found to be corrupted.
The same day as the shooting,
the Public Administrator, a former Vegas officer, and a police officer used a
locksmith to gain entry to Erik’s condo, where they confiscated a West Point
saber mounted in a shadow box and a pistol he kept in a drawer, logging those
items in police reports.
But after the search was
conducted, the family realized two other handguns were missing and not
logged in police reports. Scott contends the cops wanted a second gun, because
they claimed Erik pulled a gun on them, prompting them to fire. But that story
didn’t gibe with a report medics had written for their employer, American
Medical Response, saying the gun was still on Erik, when he was placed inside
the ambulance. Medics gave the gun to police, and photos of the shooting scene
taken by police show a handgun and a phone on the pavement, after the pavement
had been washed of blood, Scott says.
Police later claimed Erik was
carrying two guns: one found by medics and a second he had drawn on officers.
“He never carried a second gun,” his father says. Scott notes it would have been
easy for police to learn about his son’s other guns, because Erik’s permit in
his wallet listed all the guns he was licensed to
carry.
“Everyone who testified [at the
coroner’s inquest] said he was unremarkable and didn’t pose a threat,” Scott
says.
But evidence at the inquest
showed Erik had been taking pain killers — for a back injury, his doctor
testified — leading authorities to depict him as a drug abuser, Scott
says.
The shooting was ruled
justified. Not surprising in a city where only one officer of the 194 involved
in shooting incidents in 34 years was found at fault, and he wasn’t prosecuted,
Scott says.
Research
shows
The Scott case, the subsequent
lawsuit and questions raised about other shootings prompted the Review-Journal
to study local cops’ use of force. It found that since 1990, Clark County cops
racked up 378 shootings, killing 142 people. Las Vegas officers were responsible
for 81 percent of the deaths. Others happened in North Las Vegas and Henderson
and other agencies. The newspaper also reported that frequency of killings in
Clark County rose from an average of 12 a year from 1990 to 2000 to an average
of 21 a year since then.
In comparison, the Colorado
Springs Police Department and El Paso County Sheriff’s Office logged six
officer-involved shootings each from 2008 through 2011, an average of three per
year. Springs Police killed three people, while sheriff’s deputies killed
four.
In one case, the newspaper
reported, “On Feb. 28, 2003, Las Vegas police officer Brian Hartman shot Orlando
Barlow in the back while the unarmed man was on his knees, surrendering to other
officers, who had holstered their weapons and were moving in to arrest him for
domestic violence.” Like the others over the years, the shooting was ruled
justified.
Scott says Vegas cops also are
vengeful. In the days after his son’s death, Erik’s friends placed magnetic
ribbons bearing his name on their cars. One co-worker got two traffic tickets in
one day. Another was followed home by a cop. Erik’s girlfriend was ticketed
three times in three weeks, with one cop saying, “You may want to think about
that Erik Scott ribbon. Have a nice day.”
Moving
on
Now, 20 months later, Scott’s
first waking thoughts are about Erik, though the pressure of the lawsuit and
media interviews have faded.
But the ordeal has left Scott
embittered and defiant, despite a small victory achieved in changing the inquest
system to allow an ombudsman to represent victims’ families. Before, family
members could only suggest questions that were left to the discretion of a
judge. Even that small change led cops to refuse to cooperate, with the police
union arguing the change violates their Fifth Amendment rights. As a result,
“they have a backlog of inquest hearings,” Scott
says.
The family hasn’t decided
whether to file a lawsuit against Costco, but financial considerations may
complicate that option.
Scott, who’s written two books
on space warfare, based on nearly two dozen years as an aviation writer, is
penning a fictionalized account of his son’s death called “The Permit,” to be
published in coming months.
“If we’d gone for a financial
settlement, I guarantee you part of it would be Scott can’t do any books — no
movies, no documentaries. I would have been muzzled for the rest of my life,” he
says. “It was never about the money. It was about justice and helping the people
of Las Vegas root out this cartel of corruption.”
Scott won’t disclose his next
strategy but says those steps include New York, California and Washington,
D.C.
“I have no constraints on me
now,” he says. “We like to think we can do more good and eventually attain
justice of some sort.”
We are now posting chapters of "The Permit," a free,
serialized book of fiction, online at:
A new chapter will be available online
every Friday.
"The Permit" was inspired by the
actual event of my son, Erik Scott, being killed in Las Vegas, Nevada, on July
10, 2010 (www.erikbscott.com). Although certain elements are true,
this is strictly a work of fiction, a product of my imagination, and all
characters bear no relationship to actual persons, living or dead. However, a
number of technologies and weapon systems depicted in the book do exist.
William B.
Scott
******************************************
Legal Defense &
Research Trust
Barbara
Hartwell Vs. CIA