Body camera video gives clearer picture of unusual murder of city officer

Submitted photo This screenshot shows what the body camera showed of an officer preparing to fire and then shooting a man on October 12, 2023, at a Helena Avenue home in Youngstown. The body camera does not show the suspect because the officer was looking around the wall.

YOUNGSTOWN – When a Mahoning County grand jury declined in July to indict a Youngstown police officer in the Oct. 12, 2023, shooting death of Ricco Acevedo, 45, at a home on Helena Avenue in the southern part of the state, the Ohio Bureau of Investigation released body camera videos bodies on its website.

BCI, part of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, investigated Acevedo’s death at the request of Youngstown Police Chief Carl Davis. At the end of the investigation, BCI turned its evidence over to the Ohio Attorney General’s Special Prosecution Section to present the case to a Mahoning County grand jury, which declined to indict.

This is the first time the Youngstown Police Department has dealt with an officer killing that was captured on body camera, said Lt. Brian Butler, chief of the Youngstown Police Department’s internal affairs division. The recordings provided “wonderful evidence” of what happened in this extraordinary case, he said.

Few details were given when the shooting occurred – a 9:13 a.m. call about a burglary, a 9:41 a.m. police radio call about “shots fired” and a police call about a man being killed.

But body camera footage from the officer who fired the shots illuminates what turned out to be a 21-minute effort to determine who the alleged burglar was and, more importantly, what he was doing in the home of a man locked up in the Mahoning County Jail. The homeowner’s mother, who first called 911, said the house was reported to be empty.

When the officer arrived on Helena Island at 9:21 a.m., he spoke with the homeowner’s mother, Elizabeth Cuevas, who said she saw an unknown man coming down the stairs of her son’s home.

The officer encountered Acevedo about a minute later. Acevedo calmly held a garbage bag in the driveway of the house and said he was fixing plumbing and drywall for the owner, who was in jail.

The interaction between the officer and Acevedo was cordial, polite and conversational. Acevedo offered to show the officer the work he was doing around the house, and they went inside. The officer told Acevedo, the homeowner’s mother, that he “basically called you in as a burglar.”

“Really,” Acevedo said as he climbed the stairs.

“You don’t look like a burglar to me,” the officer said. Acevedo discussed the amount the owner was going to pay him, which was several hundred dollars. Even though the officer was talking, it was clear he was questioning Acevedo to see if his story matched.

“How long ago did you see him,” the officer asked Acevedo of the homeowner. “I saw him maybe about a month ago,” Acevedo said, showing the officer the bathroom plumbing. They returned outside and the officer left Acevedo in the driveway to find Elizabeth Cuevas and speak to her again, this time with Acevedo standing nearby.

“That way she knows you and you know her,” the officer said. Acevedo said her son hired him a month ago and gave him a key.

“Well, guess what? We changed the locks,” Elizabeth Cuevas said, explaining that a few days earlier, someone had broken in and stolen seven bicycles. “Did you guys steal bikes too?” – Acevedo asked.

“I’m working,” Acevedo said.

“He doesn’t work from home,” she said, not believing him.

“I promise you I will do a good job,” Acevedo said.

“No,” the woman said. “I don’t know you from Adam. I want to know how you got into the house since we just changed the lock on the door. This is what happened a few days ago. NO. He’s lying,” she said.

The officer said, “I’ve never seen a guy break into a house and work on it.” To verify his story, Acevedo tried to find the key he claimed to have used to enter the front door that day. Acevedo looked through the keys in the house but didn’t find one that would open the front door.

Acevedo was credible enough that two officers allowed him to enter the house alone because Acevedo said he would continue searching for the key. The officers waited on the porch, wondering whether to believe Acevedo. “But it looks like he can’t find the key that got him in here.” So he’s a little twisted,” the first officer said.

Acevedo told the first officer his name was “Rick Burkemer” and provided his date of birth and Social Security number. The information turned out to be false. He said his girlfriend dropped him off. The first officer went to his patrol car and checked the date of birth and Social Security number Acevedo had provided, but found no match in the database.

When the officer returned home, he told Acevedo that the Social Security number and date of birth “did not come from anyone named Burkemer” and “did not match any person.” He told Acevedo to put his hands on the wall. Acevedo protested, saying, “I didn’t do anything.” Another officer stood nearby. Suddenly, Acevedo rushed to the front door. The first officer followed him home. Acevedo was heard saying, “I have a gun on me,” which was clearly not true.

“Me too,” the officer said.

Acevedo entered an upstairs room and the officer stood behind a wall at the top of the stairwell with his gun drawn and ordered Acevedo to “get on the ground” and “put your gun down,” but Acevedo said, “No.” and “I won’t throw it away.” Acevedo then gave the officer his real name, and the officer told Acevedo, “Don’t screw it up.” The situation was tense, although both men spoke in mostly measured tones.

“I don’t care. I have nothing to live for,” Acevedo said, referring to the danger he was in. “I’m just trying to make some (deleted) money. My mom just died. I don’t do that anymore. The truth is, that I met Cuevas in prison. He told me to come and do some… work around the house.

The officer asked Acevedo why he put himself in this position when he was telling the truth about having a stay-at-home permit, claiming that “a phone call could clarify this situation (redacted).

“Because I don’t trust the police,” Acevedo said.

The officer told Acevedo, “Trust this. Throw down this (removed) weapon or it will end very badly for you.

“I don’t worry about it anymore,” Acevedo said. “I know where I’m going. I respect law enforcement but this is wrong. Have you ever shot someone?

“Yes,” the officer said.

– Well, you’ll have to shoot me. I won’t go to jail. Can you hear me?”

“Gotcha,” the officer replied.

“At least three times. You understand? Acevedo continued. After two seconds of silence, the officer fired three shots.

Another officer’s body camera shows the officer from behind, but neither the shooting officer’s body camera nor the other officers’ body cameras captured those two seconds or showed what the officer saw when he fired.

Three seconds later, as the shooting officer moved forward, a camera placed on the floor in the hallway sees Acevedo. It makes sounds but doesn’t move. The officers immediately called an ambulance, handcuffed Acevedo, and one of the officers applied pressure to Acevedo’s chest wounds.

BIK DOCUMENTS

The summary/discussion of the incident provided by BCI to prosecutors based on the results of the investigation states that the officer shot at Acevedo because Acevedo “ran out of the room he was in and began walking toward” the officer while “trying to grab something from his belt.” “

It states that Acevedo “then began to pull what appeared to (the officer) to be a chrome-plated revolver from his waistband.”

After firing at Acevedo, the officer “observed an object on the floor near where Acevedo was lying in the bathroom doorway,” the summary said. The officer “believed it was a gun, but when he looked closer, he realized it was not a gun,” the document says.

The summary includes a list of items taken to the scene as evidence. Among them was a “polishing disc cleaning tool.” The photo in the facility summary shows a polishing wheel on a wooden floor, like the one where Acevedo was murdered. The tool is shaped like a gun, but has a silver metal ring at the end where the barrel of the gun should be.

The inclusion of the photo in the summary suggests it was an item the officer saw on the floor after shooting Acevedo. The officer later told investigators during an interview that he had never previously had contact with Acevedo.

His obituary says Acevedo, a Boardman High School graduate whose address was in Boardman, was involved in home improvement and landscaping and was a professional mixed martial arts fighter and boxer. As reported, he won all but three of his 80 fights and was crowned Toughman champion at Packard Music Hall in 2004.

He has had trouble with the law, most notably a six-year prison sentence in 2016 for punching and kicking his girlfriend at her Girard home in 2015. She had to undergo surgery to reconstruct her eyeball, she told a Tribune Chronicle reporter.

BUTLER

Lt. Brian Butler of Internal Affairs said of body cameras: “It’s just amazing technology. I think I appreciate it more myself because I researched 12-13 years (in internal affairs) without him and now we have first-person, perfect high-resolution audio accounts from body cameras.”

Before body cameras, internal affairs investigators investigated based on “all the evidence we could gather. If there was surveillance footage, that’s great. And this happened very rarely,” he said.

“It’s a great illustration of body cameras and the transparency they provide us,” Acevedo said of the case. Butler said it can be difficult to convey to someone all the reasons behind this development. He said having video and audio from a body camera makes the job easier.

Regarding this shooting, he found it “very different” because “it took so long to evolve, this dialogue.” He said that in most cases when an officer shoots someone, it happens more quickly, shortly after the person sees the officer in uniform.

For example, the 2019 officer killing in Niles involved officers who shot at a man whose car was wedged between several police cars. Officers fired several shots into the front and rear of the vehicle as the driver moved forward and backward.

There was some body camera footage and citizen video in this episode, but none showed the moments before the shooting began.

A 2022 officer-involved killing in which Struthers police were chasing a man in a vehicle ended quickly after the man’s car was parked on Youngstown’s West Side and the officer fired at the suspect’s car. There was body camera video and surveillance video in this episode.

Butler said the Acevedo case is the first time YPD has asked BCI to investigate an officer-involved homicide. But since then, BCI has operated others.