At least 31 times in 10 years, Greenville County Sheriff’s Office deputies fired their weapons at someone. A person died in 19 of those shootings. In each case, authorities determined the shootings were justified, and no deputies were disciplined.

Yet the fallout from each of the shootings lingers. Someone dies or is seriously injured; families grasp for explanations; communities become hesitant to interact with the people sworn to protect them; and officers’ careers — and sometimes their mental state — are changed after a pressure-filled, split-second decision.

Tiffany Copeland is one of many people facing the aftermath of a deadly shooting by an officer. Her life has been desolate after deputies shot and killed her fiance, Jermaine Massey.

Tiffany Copeland embraces her daughter Jenilya, 3, inside her home on Monday, Dec. 17, 2018. JOSH MORGAN/Staff

Her wedding planning book still sits in her room — names assigned to reception tables, colors selected for the groomsmen. Her engagement ring is tucked away in a drawer, no longer gleaming on her finger.

There are more mundane things, too: A clogged bathtub in her 800-square-foot home, a beeping smoke alarm that needs new batteries, a car that’s overdue for an oil change and birthday party plans for her children. There are about a dozen little things Massey once took care of that Copeland now faces alone. She’s in a cloud of grief yet forced to adjust to life as a single mother of two.

“My kids keep me going,” the 25-year-old said. “If I didn’t have these kids, I don’t know where I’d be now.”

On a dreary day in March 2018, Massey, the father of Copeland’s children, called deputies to his home during a mental breakdown. The incident ended with four deputies firing 11 shots that killed Massey in the backyard of his and Copeland’s home in the Poe Mill community. He was 35 years old.

Massey’s death was the last at the hands of Greenville deputies in the 10-year span ending in 2018, according to State Law Enforcement Division data.

Lethal Force: Greenville sheriff's deputies top list of police shootings in South Carolina Greenville County Sheriff's Office deputies were involved in more shootings than any agency in South Carolina in the past 10 years. Josh Morgan, Greenville News

Since then, county deputies have been involved in four more shootings: One was the fatal shooting of an armed man who shouted, “Kill me, kill me;” another involved a man being shot in his own home; a third involved a 15-year-old in a vehicle; and a fourth involved a 16-year-old girl who expressed suicidal thoughts.

Others over the years include: 31-year-old Wesley Swilling in front of the Greenville County Law Enforcement Center; 50-year-old Joseph Inabinet outside his estranged wife's Fountain Inn house; 22-year-old Jordan Browder outside a Piedmont gas station; and 55-year-old Charles Rosemond inside his Taylors home.

With each name, questions and grief persist.

In a six-month investigation, The Greenville News analyzed 10 years of statewide shooting data, investigative case files from more than two dozen shootings, court documents, criminal and personnel records, FBI crime data and interviewed dozens of experts, public safety officials and families. One notable statistic: One out of every eight people killed by an officer in South Carolina died in a shooting that involved a Greenville County deputy. No one seems to have a clear reason why deputies here pull the trigger more than any other officers in the state.

Among the other findings:

Between 2009 and 2018, there were at least 409 shootings by officers in SC.

officers in SC. In that span, 145 of the shootings were fatal.

Deputies don't always use their body cameras, leaving little visual evidence to review.

Body cameras in SC are exempt from disclosure through the Freedom of Information Act, putting the visual record of every shooting by an officer solely in the hands of law enforcement agencies.

Some officers in shootings are allowed by state investigators to wait days and even weeks before providing written statements about their actions.

Some shootings are never reported to state authorities and only investigated internally.

African Americans are shot by officers at a disproportionately higher rate than Caucasians, both in Greenville County and across the state.

Some deputies have been involved in multiple shootings, and some tied to shootings also have backgrounds of misconduct complaints or disciplinary cases.

The agency with the second-highest number of shootings was the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office, which recorded 18 shootings, according to State Law Enforcement Division records. Combined, officers from the two agencies fired shots at individuals 49 times in those 10 years.

So far this year, there have been more than 30 officer-involved shootings statewide, ahead of the average pace for the previous 10 years.

When these shootings occur, our analysis found that oversight is inconsistent. Some shootings are never reported to the state law enforcement agency that usually investigates whether laws were broken by officers. On average, one out of every five shootings by the Greenville County Sheriff's Office were never reported to SLED in a 10-year span.

Even when law enforcement agencies find no wrongdoing by officers, the shootings may end up in civil court. The litigation costs taxpayers because authorities are sometimes forced to pay thousands of dollars in settlements and legal fees.

Shooting data Infogram

In addition, information about the shootings is difficult to access because no one agency collects the data.

Locally, some civil rights advocates have asked elected officials to create citizen review boards to examine interactions between police and the community.

But at least in Greenville County, the sheriff — who oversees the agency with the most shootings in the state — and head of County Council say a citizens review board is a bad idea.

"It won’t happen in this county. They don’t know anything about law enforcement," said Greenville County Sheriff Johnny Mack Brown. "Most citizens don't understand the makeup of law enforcement or understand what we do, so I can’t have them sit in judgment of what we do."

Greenville County Sheriff's Office officers investigate the scene of an officer-involved shooting near Poe Mill on Monday, March 19, 2018. JOSH MORGAN/Staff

Data contradicts idea violent crime is increasing

Law enforcement agencies say officer-involved shootings occur because of increases in violent crime in the community and across the country. But statistics don't support that.

Seth Stoughton, a professor at the University of South Carolina, has compiled FBI data on killings and assaults of law enforcement officers and compared the information against national data on violence. His findings show overall violence in the U.S. has dropped, including toward officers. His research dispels what some law enforcement leaders have said about society being more aggressive, both as a whole and toward cops.

"It is still a dangerous profession. We shouldn't overlook that. But we also should not exaggerate the dangers by saying and by training officers that this is the most dangerous time to be an officer," Stoughton said. "That’s simply not true."

Seth Stoughton, a professor at the University of South Carolina It is still a dangerous profession. We shouldn't overlook that. But we also should not exaggerate the dangers by saying and by training officers that this is the most dangerous time to be an officer. That’s simply not true. Quote icon

Rather than explaining shooting trends with a narrative that places fault on a violent society, Stoughton said, agencies need to analyze their shooting incidents even if officers are cleared of criminal wrongdoing.

"What they should be doing is assessing why and not assuming they know why," he said. "Without a deep dive into the data, you can’t tell based purely on the number whether that number is a red flag or a green flag."

The shootings leave their marks on those who are shot, the families the injured or dead, and the officer who fired his or her weapon.

"Understand that even though that individual — let’s say it is a deadly force encounter — does not go home and we did, we have to live with that for the rest of our lives. And it’s a burden, and that continues," said Lt. David Weiner with the Greenville County Sheriff's Office who's been involved in three shootings in his 19-year career.

Shootings most often stem from suicide threat calls, domestic cases or someone under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Often, but not always, the person involved is armed.

“I have no idea why we had that many shootings," Greenville County Sheriff Johnny Mack Brown said. "Are people more aggressive? Yeah. Are the shootings happening all over the U.S. that are being contested, causing people to be more aggressive? I think it has.

"This is a time of no respect for law enforcement.”

With a higher population, a larger criminal element is expected, Brown said. Higher crime rates also likely coincide with a higher officer-involved shooting trend, he said

"Population growth increases criminal growth," he said.

But Greenville County does not have the highest violent crime rate in the state, according to a 2017 SLED crime report. The report shows Greenville County has a violent crime rate of 49.1 crimes per 10,000 residents. Fairfield, Florence, Dillon, Colleton, Darlington, Greenwood, Marlboro, Richland, Hampton and Laurens counties all had rates above 70 crimes per 10,000 residents, according to the report.

SLED categorizes violent crimes as murders, sexual assaults, robberies and aggravated assaults.

When compared with the 10 largest counties, Greenville County ranked fifth in violent crime rate. Richland County had the highest with a rate of 74.1 violent crimes per 10,000 people followed by Spartanburg, Horry and Anderson counties.

Brown said he and his deputies work in a culture today that generally doesn't respect law enforcement, which leads to heightened dangers.

"It’s a different mentality that we are working with today. It’s a different mentality with our government, period, and police force, period," he said.

Show caption Hide caption 13th Circuit Solicitor Walt Wilkins announces that a three-month investigation found that the deputies responsible for killing 35-year-old Jermaine Massey acted appropriately during a press... 13th Circuit Solicitor Walt Wilkins announces that a three-month investigation found that the deputies responsible for killing 35-year-old Jermaine Massey acted appropriately during a press conference with interim Sheriff Johnny Mack Brown on Thursday, June 14, 2018. JOSH MORGAN/Staff

Anderson County Sheriff Chad McBride said Interstate 85 may bring more people to the region and could be leading to more violence there. The major thoroughfare connects Atlanta to Charlotte.

"Anderson County is a huge county and it’s almost 760 square miles, and we have probably more interstate that goes through our county than any other county, so we have a lot of traffic coming in and out," he said.

In Anderson County’s 18 shootings, four occurred from traffic stops; the rest took place after the agency received calls about breaking and entering, domestic disputes, barricaded subjects, welfare checks or men with knives, according to the SLED data.

Greenville County's Sheriff Brown added that he believes more guns are being brought into the area, so deputies are more often faced with situations involving firearms.

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Greenville County is the most populous county in the state. In 2017, Greenville County had an estimated population of 506,837; the next largest was Richland County at 411,592, making Greenville County about 23% larger. The Richland County Sheriff's Office had 14 shootings from 2018 to 2009, fewer than half the number of shootings in Greenville.

Law enforcement officials said shootings generally are the result of suspects not complying with demands. Often, deputies are confronted by those who would rather die than handle life’s problems, Brown said.

“They’re chicken. They don’t have enough guts to kill themselves, so they want law enforcement to do it,” Brown said. “My request to people who have thought of resisting a deputy is to comply with deputies’ commands. You can work out the problems later.”

Five out of the 10 Greenville County Sheriff's Office shootings since 2017 involved a male or female threatening to harm themselves or enticing law enforcement to kill them, according to investigative case files.

Not every shooting in SLED's data lists an offense or incident leading up to the shooting, but 10 cases since 2009 statewide referred to suicidal subjects. Others might have been initially reported as something else but became a suicidal situation as officers arrived on scene.

Such was the case in March 2017 with the shooting death of 50-year-old Joseph Inabinet. Deputies were given information that Inabinet wanted to die, but responded to an initial "domestic" call. He had been arguing with his estranged wife from outside their home and had said things like, "Call the cops. I'm ready," and, "The coroner's office will pronounce me dead here," case file records show.

Inabinet brandished a BB gun after deputies arrived on scene for the domestic disturbance. After a deputy yelled "gun," 29 shots were fired by four deputies.

Toxicology tests showed Inabinet was under the influence of alcohol and prescription medication.

Records later showed that the same deputy who shot Inabinet in 2017 also shot the man's dog at the same home in 2016. Deputy Kevin Azzara also shot and wounded a homeowner in Simpsonville this year after responding to an alarm call and seeing Dick Tench, the homeowner, with a handgun inside his front window.

Tench later said he thought the deputy was an intruder. Azzara was put on administrative leave before an internal affairs investigation cleared him of wrongdoing. He's now back on active duty. A SLED investigation is pending.

The Sheriff's Office's first shooting this year involved a 15-year-old boy driving with a teenage girl. A deputy showed up in a parking lot where the boy had parked his car.

When the deputy got out of his car and stood in front of the boy's vehicle, the boy tried to drive around the deputy, eventually speeding off and being shot at in the process. The case file shows the boy's shoulder was grazed by one of the deputy's bullets, but he was otherwise unscathed. He was arrested hours later and charged with attempted murder because the deputy said the teen tried to strike him with his vehicle. The department's records state that the teenager yelled, "I don't want to go to jail," when he tried to accelerate to flee the officer.

According to SLED's 10 years of data, 57 of the 409 shootings in the state were classified as domestic-related calls, nine were drug-related, 54 were related to someone armed with a weapon, 56 were from traffic stops, and six were listed as '"mental subjects." Other cases did not have an offense listed.

Policy vs. practice

The Greenville County Sheriff's Office has a policy that states SLED will be asked to conduct external investigations when deputies shoot at someone.

But that policy isn't always followed, according to records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. A review of shooting case numbers obtained by the Sheriff's Office shows seven incidents since 2009 that were never investigated by SLED. The Sheriff's Office lists "no injury (target missed)" for the reason behind each of those cases.

Tiffany Copeland reads a book with her son, Jermier, 6, and daughter Jenilya, 3, inside her home on Monday, Dec. 17, 2018. JOSH MORGAN/Staff

A case file from a 2017 shooting shows that internal affairs investigators decided not to call SLED because the man deputies shot at was not actually struck. Instead, deputies fired a barrage of bullets at him while he sat in the driver's seat of a dump truck. After the shots were over, the man raised his hands and a deputy sent a K-9 to bite him and get him out of the truck. The man was hospitalized for his bite wounds.

Adrian Baumgartner was not armed when the shooting took place, according to the report. However, deputies had reason to believe he was armed because he was the suspect in a prior shooting incident, the internal affairs file states. Baumgartner was ultimately sentenced to 12 years for assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature in connection with the incident. His attempted murder charge was dismissed, court records show.

The same thing happened in November 2011 when four deputies responded to the home of a Greer woman who came out of her front door with a handgun and fired at them. Deputies returned fire and used a Taser on her. She was never struck by bullets, but did receive cuts and scrapes that were presumed to have been caused by shrapnel and debris from the gunfire. SLED was contacted, but did not do an investigation because she did not have bullet wounds.

Deborah Crisp was initially charged with four counts of attempted murder but later pleaded guilty to resisting arrest and was sentenced to five years of probation, court records show.

The Greenville County Sheriff's Office referred four other shooting cases to SLED under the same set of circumstances in which the person involved was not struck.

There were 39 agencies that notified SLED of at least one shooting incident in which no one was struck between 2009 and 2018, SLED data show.

"No, there is no requirement, either regulatory or statutory, that departments report to us," said Special Agent Thom Berry with SLED. "Departments do that as their courtesy for our records' keeping."

Tiffany Copeland holds her daughter Jenilya as she blows out the candles on her cake for her third birthday party at Big Air Trampoline Park on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2018. JOSH MORGAN/Staff

Based on the inconsistent manner in which SLED is notified, determining an accurate number of shootings by law enforcement per agency is difficult. The Greenville News' analysis of police shootings across South Carolina relied on SLED's record-keeping. Additional shooting cases from the Greenville County Sheriff's Office were discovered while reviewing deputies' personnel files for reporting on several stories unrelated to this story.

'Drop the knife'

The shooting of Jermaine Massey last year fell into the common category of "suicidal subject." Massey called 911 and told a dispatcher he was bipolar and didn’t want to harm himself or his family. He held a knife to his chest when four officers surrounded him while he sat on his back stoop that day.

When deputies arrived, they drew their guns inside Massey's fenced-in back yard. “Drop the knife,” they demanded 52 times. Massey appeared agitated. He stood up and paced back and forth, swinging the knife in the air at times. At least two deputies tried to deploy their Tasers. Then, as Massey lunged forward, deputies fired.

He fell on the muddy grass, a few steps from his daughter's pink bicycle with training wheels by the back door of his house. That is where he died.

Show caption Hide caption Jekeriah Massey, 8, cries as her aunt, Tamika Gordon, reads a poem she wrote for her father, Jermaine Massey, during a vigil for him outside... Jekeriah Massey, 8, cries as her aunt, Tamika Gordon, reads a poem she wrote for her father, Jermaine Massey, during a vigil for him outside of his home on Wednesday, March 21, 2018. Massey was fatally shot by Greenville County Sheriff's Office deputies Monday night outside of his home. JOSH MORGAN/Staff

Officers were on scene for about five minutes and 50 seconds before the fatal shots were fired. SLED and the Sheriff's Office ruled the shooting was justified.

The events were captured on body camera videos that were eventually released by the 13th Circuit Solicitor's Office after weeks of demands from the public and requests from The Greenville News. That the video was released is, in itself, unusual in South Carolina, where body camera footage is exempt from public disclosure.

Massey's shooting was the county's last before the agency announced a new policy geared toward transparency. The Sheriff's Office said it would begin releasing edited clips of body camera footage and 911 calls 45 days after its deputies fire their guns at anyone.

Shattered family

Jermaine Massey called law enforcement because he feared he would hurt his family. The pain they feel now is almost unbearable. His son, Jermier, is in counseling and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, Copeland said.

Last Christmas, the family’s first without Jermaine, Copeland forced herself to put up a Christmas tree in the living room.

Show caption Hide caption Jenilya Massey, 2, takes a nap on the couch next to a Christmas tree in her home on Saturday, Dec. 8, 2018. Christmas 2018 was... Jenilya Massey, 2, takes a nap on the couch next to a Christmas tree in her home on Saturday, Dec. 8, 2018. Christmas 2018 was the first the family celebrated after the shooting death of Jenilya's father, Jermaine Massey. JOSH MORGAN/Staff

But Massey wasn't there to watch 6-year old Jermier and 3-year-old Jenilya open gifts or to help them build gingerbread houses, something they did every year. Family photos on the walls are the children's only reminder of their father.

“Fact is, they already lost one parent. I don’t want them to lose another,” Copeland told The Greenville News, sitting in the living room while Jenilya napped on a couch across from her. “I have to make sure they’re OK.”

Comfort in numbers an unfortunate reality

One thing that helps Copeland, 25, is knowing she's not alone. Others who have experienced similar losses offer her encouragement, she said.

There are about 1,000 fatal officer-involved shootings every year in the United States, according to data collected since 2015 by The Washington Post. Public interest, scrutiny and accountability over those shootings, and policing in general, are the subject of many national debates and conversations. That's in part because of several high-profile shootings of unarmed Black men in recent years and a steady increase in the inspection of video evidence often provided by the public rather than law enforcement.

Show caption Hide caption Jermier Massey, 6, son of Jermaine Massey, holds a cross with his father's name and photograph on it during a protest march against police... Jermier Massey, 6, son of Jermaine Massey, holds a cross with his father's name and photograph on it during a protest march against police brutality outside of the law enforcement center on Monday, Oct. 22, 2018. JOSH MORGAN/Staff

Statistics show that officer-involved shootings are rare when compared to the totality of police interactions with the public. Those 1,000 shootings happen in a nation where 900,000 local, state and federal police officers working for 18,000 different agencies make contact with more than 60 million people, said Stoughton, the associate of law professor at the University of South Carolina. Stoughton, a former Florida police officer, has co-authored a book set to publish in 2020 on evaluating police use of force.

“Any one fatal shooting is inherently an anomaly,” he said. “There are tens of millions of police interactions with community members every year depending on what you categorize as an interaction."

In the eyes of the law, lethal force is justified if an officer has a reasonable suspicion there is an imminent threat of serious injury or death to the officer or someone else. The factors in making that decision are rooted in detailed law enforcement policies, but are made in the tense microseconds of emotionally charged encounters, the most fraught moments an officer will face in his or her career.

“They seldom pull their weapon unless they are faced with a danger,” said Sheriff Brown. “We don’t create situations; we respond to situations and we react.

"We’re trained to use what force is necessary to perfect an arrest. My thought is always and will be, if you point a gun at one of my deputies, we’re going to shoot you.”

Greenville County Sheriff Johnny Mack Brown They seldom pull their weapon unless they are faced with a danger. We don’t create situations, we respond to situations and we react. We’re trained to use what force is necessary to perfect an arrest. My thought is always and will be, if you point a gun at one of my deputies, we’re going to shoot you. Quote icon

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