BY PEPPER FISHER
Port Angeles – When two Port Angeles Police Officers shot and killed a suspected bank robber last year, Clallam County Prosecutor Mark Nichols was, by law, tasked with reviewing the evidence to determine whether the officers should be charged with a crime.
Nichols submitted his determination this month, which says his office will not be charging those officers for their use of deadly force. The report also reveals new information about that incident.
It was just before 10:00am on Friday, May 3 when the first two officers responded to the call of a robbery in progress at the Chase Bank on Front Street. Both officers said in subsequent interviews that they saw a man come out of the bank. He sees the officers and immediately goes back into the bank.
As the officers moved closer to the bank entrance, the same man, later identified as 38-year-old Joseph Hadden of Port Angeles, comes out again and stands in front of the officers with his hand in his pocket. He tells the officers he has a gun. They order him not to draw his weapon. Surveillance video from across the street shows that Hadden began walking toward the officers, pulled a handgun from his pocket and raised it toward the officers before being shot multiple times by both officers.
It was later determined that Hadden had brandished a black plastic replica semi-automatic pistol and not an operational firearm.
In his report, Prosecutor Nichols says, “…based on the facts and circumstances known to (the officers) at the time of the incident, it is my determination that a reasonable trier of fact would conclude they each had a good faith basis for using deadly force against Mr. Hadden and that similarly situated reasonable officers would have believed the use of deadly force was necessary to prevent death or serious physical harm to themselves or another.” He goes on, “In my assessment, the relevant facts, as presented in the investigative materials, and the law, do not support the filing of criminal charges against (the officers) because I do not believe that a reasonable and objective fact finder would find them guilty of murder as it is defined in the law. Mr. Hadden posed an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm to these officers – and potentially others – and there was no reasonable alternative to the use of deadly force under the circumstances.”