Pastor shot and killed by police

 ATLANTA-Associated Press and others are reporting that undercover plainclothes police officers shot and killed a pastor when according to police the 28-year-old father-to-be resisted efforts to question him about a passenger in his car who was allegedly the target of a drug sting, authorities said.

Jonathan Paul Ayers of Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Lavonia wasn’t even targeted in the probe nor did he have a criminal record yet this tragedy ended in a police shooting in a public gas station Tuesday, Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said.

 

But drug task-force agents say they opened fire on the pastor only after he tried to avoid them, putting his car in reverse and striking one of the officers. A video recording of the shooting obtained by the Laguna Journal clearly shows that the plainclothes undercover officers were pursuing Ayers and firing before he put his vehicle in reverse

 

One witness asked “those guys looked more like criminals than cops, how was that guy or anyone else to know”? When undercover plainclothes officers are operating it seems they have a responsibility to clearly identify who they are so innocent folks won’t think they maybe being rob”.

 

Bankhead said agents approached Ayers after he dropped a woman off at a store in downtown Toccoa, which is about 90 miles northeast of Atlanta. The passenger allegedly was the person being investigated by the task force.

A grainy surveillance video from a nearby store shows two drug task-force agents emerge from a black SUV before Ayers’ small car backs up. The two men fire into the passenger side of Ayers’ car, and then it takes off with the agents running behind it, the video posted on WNEG-TV in Toccoa shows. The station owner would not release the video to The Associated Press.

 

Bankhead said Ayers died Wednesday, about an hour after he had surgery. He said the agent who was hit by Ayers’ car was treated for minor injuries.

Bankhead would not disclose the identity of the woman who was in Ayers’ car, but said she’s been charged with cocaine possession and distribution.

On Thursday, Ayers’ brother-in-law Matt Carpenter said the pastor had nothing to do with drugs.

 

“Any question of his character, particularly involving something like drugs, is just ridiculous,” he said.

Carpenter said Ayers and his wife had wanted to live in a town closer to their family, but they settled near the Lavonia church where Ayers felt called to be a pastor.

“They were exactly where they were supposed to be,” Carpenter said, adding that they had recently led the small congregation’s first mission trip, to Africa.

Carpenter said Ayers’ wife, who is 16 weeks pregnant, is grappling with the idea of being a single mom.

“That’s why it’s hurting us all so badly,” he said.

Ayers’ wife declined to speak to The Associated Press.

 

It is unclear how many shots were fired by police or how many officers fired their weapons killing Ayers.

According to news accounts there have been a rush of officer involved shootings in the Atlanta area. The way the law stands now that law gives a police officer wide–close to carte blanche–discretion to use lethal force if he says he believed his own life or someone else’s was in jeopardy. Prosecutors in the Atlanta District Attorney’s Office, who are charged with and review police shootings here, never find wrong doing.

In Georgia as in most states, police decide when to use deadly force, and police agencies get to investigate themselves. They release only the information they want to release when the investigation is complete. The agencies can shield information about “bad apple” cops from the public. And those of us who simply want a little more debate and accountability are told that it’s unconscionable to second-guess the authorities. I don’t mean to be alarmist here, but the Webster’s definition of a police state, i.e., a political system characterized “by an arbitrary exercise of power by police,” is starting to cut a little too close to the bone.

Lawyers say the Georgia Attorney General should investigate this shooting independent of the police and local persecutors, and that that the grand jury does also have the authority to investigate this matter. They could even appoint an independent attorney to help persecute the legal process, without the Atlanta District Attorney’s Office being involved. The Attorney General has the authority to investigate and persecute law enforcement wrong doing.

 

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Was slain Georgia pastor simply in the wrong place?