Sunday, December 19, 1999
A mistaken shot in the dark
Officer fired at sleeping man
BY PERRY BROTHERS
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Ciro Alfonzo's thick, brown hands shake when he talks about the February night a Cincinnati police officer shot at him while he slept in his parked minivan.
The bullet missed but the memory plagues the Cuban-born Winton Terrace man.
Police said the officer's decision to shoot was unfounded. It was one of two unjustified shootings among the 32 times that police have shot at civilians since 1994. The 46-year-old man posed no real or immediate threat, division investigators found.
Mr. Alfonzo remembers the white flash and deafening noise of the gunshot.
“I feel very paranoid and concerned about the police,” said Mr. Alfonzo, who has filed a lawsuit over the shooting. “Every time I see them I feel nervous ... I don't even trust them anymore.”
A fight with his wife that winter night left him without a place to sleep. He told police that he was parked, with his boss' permission, in the parking lot of the little grocery where he worked. Mr. Alfonzo was asleep in the back of the van when one officer threw open the side door and another fired a shot through the back window into the dark van.
It was over in a matter of seconds.
The officers never identified themselves as police, an internal investigation found. They didn't turn their cruiser's headlights on the van. And, when Police Spc. Cecilia Vincent Charron fired her gun, her partner was in harm's way.
Spc. Charron was suspended for five days. She was ordered to training and, after a routine psychological evaluation, Spc. Charron returned to duty.
Retraining for seven-year veteran Spc. Charron included instruction in weapons and shoot-don't-shoot scenarios. Her partner, Officer Darian Bookman, met with a superior officer to review procedures he should have used.
In statements to police investigators about the shootings, Spc. Charron first said she could see into the van, “but not that clearly.” Nine days later in a follow-up interview, Spc. Charron said she “could see all the way through to the front of the van.” She said she fired because she saw Mr. Alfonzo lunge violently toward her partner.
In a disciplinary hearing report, Capt. G. Alan Matthews said Spc. Charron's explanations for what happened that night were “without merit and void of Division training and practice.”
Spc. Charron, 31, who declined to be interviewed for this series, has had an exemplary career — her personnel record shows high praise in every review and no disciplinary actions.
“Put yourself in her place, it's early in the morning, it's dark, she just maybe overreacted a little bit,” said Capt. David G. Ratliff.
Mr. Alfonzo would rather the police put themselves in his place.
He thought he was being robbed. He didn't move but yelled, “Hey!”
“They should have banged with a stick on my van,” said Mr. Alfonzo, “and said, "Come on out' or used the speaker and said, "Come on out with your hands up.'”
Mr. Alfonzo says he filed the federal lawsuit against the city and police to teach Cincinnati police to be more careful with their guns. “Sometimes, I think about it and I thank God that I survived,” he said.
Deadly force, weak controls
Shots fired: The cases
A mistaken shot in the dark
Toughest decision takes a split-second
No one knows national figures on police shootings
About this series
Agencies with review power
Experts who reviewed shootings
