ACLU Wants Task Force Suspended For Terrance Kellom's Death

ACLU Wants Task Force Suspended For Terrance Kellom’s Death

The American Civil Liberties union along with several coalition groups have banded together to ask U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to suspend the task force involved in Terrance Kellom’s death.

As previously reported Kellom is the Detroit man who was shot 10 times by ICE agent Mitchell Quinn who claimed Terrance was was armed with a hammer.

Terrance’s dad who witnessed the shooting, refutes that claim however and says his son was unarmed.

Quinn is the same officer who was criminally charged in 2008 for pointing his weapon at his wife’s head.

The Detroit Metro Times reports:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan (ACLU), along with a coalition of local groups, have called for the suspension of a federal multi-jurisdictional task force involved in the shooting of 20-year-old Terrance Kellom.

Kellom died last month after the task force — known as the Detroit Fugitive Apprehension Team (DFAT) — executed a search warrant on the Kellom’s home in Detroit’s west side. The task force includes members of the U.S. Marshals Service, Detroit Police Department, Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.

In the letter sent Thursday to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the ACLU and the coalition of groups say funding for DFAT should be suspended until an investigation into the incident has been completed.

“This collective statement was critical because the killing of Terrance Kellom—not unlike the police slaying of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and the deaths of black men nationwide at the hands of law enforcement—cannot be looked at in isolation,” said Mark Fancher, the staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan Racial Justice Project, in a statement.

“Instead, we’re seeing a lethal pattern that demands a much broader look at the systemic factors involved, from the training methods employed to the standards for determining the fitness of these officers to serve. Above all, we need transparency and accountability.”

Quinn has a checkered past. While working for the Detroit Police Department, in 2008, he was criminally charged in 2008 for allegedly pointing his department-issued gun at his wife’s head. In addition, as MT first reported, the city of Detroit paid $20,000 in 2000 to settle a lawsuit involving Quinn and his partner Office Eugene Brown, who were sued for an alleged false arrest and assault and battery of a Detroit resident.

Read the letter in full below.

Wow, what do YOU make of this letter? It’s been weeks and we STILL don’t know what really happened to Terrance Kellom.