West Virginia police officer who sued city over wrongful termination for NOT shooting a suicidal man wins $175,000 settlement
By Mary Kekatos and Valerie Edwards
Daily Mail
February 12, 2018
A former West Virginia police officer was awarded $175,000 after he sued the city for wrongful termination after he refused to shoot a suicidal man.
Stephen Mader responded to a domestic incident in May 2016 and found himself in a confrontation with a 23-year-old armed man, Ronald 'RJ' Williams, who was begging Mader to kill him.
'Just shoot me,' Williams pleaded, but Mader used what he learned in the Marines and the police academy to assess the situation - and refused to shoot.
One month later the Weirton Police Department fired Mader. The lawsuit, filed in May 2017, claims the department fired him because of 'failure to meet probationary standards of an officer' and 'apparent difficulties in critical incident reasoning'.
'At the end of the day, I'm happy to put this chapter of my life to bed,' Mader said in a news release by the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia.
'The events leading to my termination were unjustified and I'm pleased a joint resolution has been met. My hope is that no other person on either end of a police call has to go through this again.'
Mader had only been working with the Weirton Police Department for 10 months when the incident took place.
According to the lawsuit, Mader responded to a call from Williams's girlfriend that he was threatening to hurt himself with a knife.
Mader said his Marine Corps and police officer training taught him to assess a threat level. He said Williams was visibly upset but not aggressive or violent.
He said instead of shooting Williams he tried using his calm voice, urging the 23-year-old, of Pittsburgh, to put the weapon down while standing behind the man's car.
'I told him: "Put down the gun" and he's like, "Just shoot me". And I told him: "I'm not going to shoot you brother",' Mader told The Pittsburgh-Post Gazette.
Mader said Williams started flicking his wrist to try and get a reaction - but still he didn't shoot.
'I thought I was going to be able to talk to him and de-escalate it. I knew it was a suicide-by-cop situation,' he said.
Two other Weirton officers then arrived on the scene. When Williams walked towards them and brandished his weapon, one cop fatally shot him.
Investigators later found Williams's gun to be unloaded. Mader was fired shortly after the incident.
The ex-cop's attorney, Timothy O'Brien, along with the ACLU of West Virginia, filed the suit against the city of Weirton on Mader's behalf in May.
Timothy O'Brien, lead counsel in the lawsuit, said he's pleased Mader's case has been resolved.
O'Brien said the city's decision to fire Mader 'because he chose not to shoot and kill a fellow citizen, when he believed that he should not use such force, not only violates the Constitution, common sense and public policy, but incredibly punishes restraint'
'No police officer should ever lose their job - or have their name dragged through the mud - for choosing to talk to, rather than shoot, a fellow citizen,' he said. '
His decision to attempt to de-escalate the situation should have been praised, not punished. Simply put, no police officer should ever feel forced to take a life unnecessarily to save his career.'
An investigation by West Virginia State Police concluded the shooting was justified.
But the case was handled questionably by the local police department, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The newspaper reported that Williams was not identified for three days after the shooting. Additionally, the case was assigned to an investigator who immediately went on a week-long vacation.
Weeks after Mader returned to work following the usual leave after an officer-involved shooting, he was told to meet Weirton Police Chief Rob Alexander.
Alexander told him that he was being placed on administrative leave pending an investigation because he 'put two other officers in danger'.
Mader said: 'Right then, I said to him: Look, I didn't shoot him because he said, 'Just shoot me.''
But on June 7, he was handed a notice of termination saying that he had 'failed to eliminate a threat'.
It also mentioned other incidents in which the city deemed Mader behaved inadequately.
One was because neither he nor two other officers with more experience than him (the same two involved in the Williams case) reported an elderly woman's death as suspicious after she appeared to have fallen in her home after suffering a stroke.
Another was a complaint from a woman who said Mader cursed at her when she asked why her husband was arrested for disorderly conduct after receiving a parking ticket.
Mader insisted he did nothing wrong in either situation, but was never given an opportunity to clarify what happened.
He also said he was outraged that at a press conference on June 8 – after he was fired – Alexander told reporters that all three officers involved were back at work.
He believes the chief said so to give a good impression of the police department and the officers, who are all white, involved in the case in light of the tensions across the country between the black community and police.
Mader believes the other two officers were justified in shooting Williams, adding: 'They did not have the information I did.'
He added: 'All they know is [Williams] is waving a gun at them. It's a shame it happened the way it did, but, I don't think they did anything wrong.'
Williams's family, however, believe the decision to fire Mader shows the nature of the police department's policy.
'Not only do they think he should have been shot and killed, but shot and killed more quickly, an attorney for the family told the Post-Gazette at the time.
Mader grew up in Weirton and was ecstatic to land a job in the police department after four years in the Marines, which included a tour of Afghanistan.
He married his high school sweetheart, Kaycie Mader, and the couple has two sons, ages three and five.
Mader was excited for the challenge after getting a job with the police department, which paid just $34,000 in the first year.
Since he was fired, he has been working with the West Virginia National Guard.
In 2016, Mader sought legal help to fight the city's decision - only to be told there was no point because he could be fired for any reason in an 'at-will' state.
They told him he could ask to resign instead of being terminated, but Mader refused to admit wrongdoing.
'To resign and admit I did something wrong here would have ate at me. I think I'm right in what I did,' he said.
His wife agrees, saying she is 'extremely proud of her husband'.
'I'm proud that he noticed what the situation really was and didn't shoot, I'm proud that he's standing his ground, and I'm proud that his side of the story is finally out,' she wrote on Facebook.
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