More than 600 days after Akron Police Officer Davon Fields killed 15-year-old Jazmir Tucker on Thanksgiving night in 2024, Mayor Shammas Malik and Chief of Public Safety Craig Morgan decided that Fields had violated police department policies and fired him on Aug. 14.
Malik said he got directly involved in the termination decision because the internal APD probe, which records show reflect favorably on Fields and the other officers at the scene of the shooting from start to finish, was not indicative of what Malik said are the facts of what happened that night.
Brian Lucey, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Akron Lodge #7, the police union representing Akron officers, is furious. He’s vowing to file grievances that argue it violates the union contract. In the meantime, he is raising thousands of dollars in support of the fired Fields, who is also under criminal investigation for allegations he drugged and sexually assaulted a woman in May.
Signal Akron obtained records documenting the investigation and termination process and spoke with Malik and Lucey about their positions.
Mayor, not police chief, made termination call
Typically in internal investigations, the Office of Professional Standards and Accountability — the APD’s internal affairs office — reviews how incidents play out and compares them to the department’s rule book before writing a report they forward to the police chief.
At that point, the chief determines whether policies were violated. If that’s the case, disciplinary hearings are triggered.
That didn’t happen in the Fields case. Malik, after reading the OPSA report that he deemed insufficient, made the disciplinary decisions alongside Chief of Public Safety Morgan, leaving Akron Police Chief Brian Harding out of the final decision-making.
“I have [had] robust discussions on this with a lot of people — Chief Harding is an important part of that team and process,” Malik told Signal Akron. “I reviewed the draft reports and discussed those with him, but after reviewing the second one, I ultimately made the decision that we were not going to be relying on that report for the purposes of discipline. I communicated to him that I did not believe that report was going to be what was relied upon.”
Lucey, in Facebook posts and in interviews, accused Malik of changing a long-established process in order to ensure a predetermined outcome that Fields would be fired “to appease the anti-police vote.”
“I can tell you that in my time here, it’s never been this way on the department,” Lucey told Signal Akron on Aug. 18. “The investigation should be done by OPSA, and then should be turned over to the chief of police, who then conducts a pre-disciplinary hearing. That did not happen.”
In an interview with Signal Akron, Malik explained why he did it: The internal policy investigation was done poorly — that was among the reasons it took so long for the process to finish.
“The way the analysis and conclusions were done was not very strong, and that was the point in which I said that this is not what we’re going to be relying on to resolve this,” Malik said in an interview.
A first draft of the OPSA report only included written answers from Fields and his rookie partner, Malik said. He asked that they go back and conduct follow-up interviews.
The second draft was more thorough, but, Malik said, he fundamentally disagreed with the report because it essentially excused the officers of any wrongdoing for waiting seven minutes to approach Tucker as he lay dying on the ground and for not activating their body cameras prior to the shooting.
Malik also cited an ongoing criminal investigation into Fields in the termination notice. A police report indicates Fields is accused of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in May.
“My decision is grounded in the facts as I see them,” the mayor told Signal Akron. “I’ve reviewed the BCI recording, I’ve reviewed the facts gathered in the internal investigation, we’ve all seen the body-worn camera footage. The decision was purely based on the facts of the matter. Is it a reality that any decision, especially a decision like this to terminate someone’s employment for a critical incident, will be controversial? Absolutely. Am I aware of that? Absolutely. I take it extraordinarily seriously. That’s part of why this process is taking so long – I said we’re going to allow this process to proceed. It is very weighty and it weighs heavily on me, and I stand by my decision.”
Internal APD probe justifies long wait to approach Tucker’s body
As Tucker’s body lay slumped face down on the ground after two of Fields’ rifle rounds pierced his back and a third went through his right upper arm, the Akron police officers flooding to the scene claimed that the 15-year-old’s right hand was moving. Some, including Fields, shouted orders at Tucker to stop moving — others yelled for him to put his hands up or to his side.
To Fields and his rookie partner that night, the hand movement they said they saw wasn’t an indication to them that Tucker’s life could be saved, but rather an indication that he could get up and shoot back.
Fields had watched body-camera videos from around the world showing that happen, he later told state investigators.
So the officers who arrived after the shooting waited more than seven minutes to approach the dying teenager, as some gathered ballistic shields and others trained their guns on him while continuing to shout orders.
Officers inched forward toward Tucker’s prone figure, then handcuffed the teenager, discovering a handgun zipped away in his jacket pocket.
To OPSA, that seven-minute delay in approaching Tucker was excusable because the officers were scared and their stress kept them from accurately perceiving time.
“During both interviews, the officers expressed a similar idea about the resources needed to approach a downed and believed-to-be armed subject. They both felt it was prudent to wait for a shield that was already enroute and to approach with no less than six officers,” the OPSA report states. “In both cases, the officers’ perception of the elapsed time of the incident was less than the actual time of the incident. This is a phenomenon known as tachypsychia and is often associated with high-stress critical incidents.”
Malik expressed concern about the delay after watching the body-camera video in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Nearly two years later, he still maintains the wait was too long.
“As I reviewed the draft report, I did not feel like the weight of evidence, in particular around the rendering of medical aid, fully supported that conclusion,” Malik said in an interview on Wednesday. “The way the analysis and conclusions were done was not very strong, and that was the point in which I said that this is not what we’re going to be relying on to resolve this.”
Fields’ termination notice, signed by Malik and Morgan, told Fields, who was a training officer at the time of the shooting, that, “Immediately following the shooting, you failed to appropriately evaluate the circumstances at the scene, particularly the increasing availability of tactical resources, against the obvious medical needs of the injured subject. … Your actions disregarded critical components of APD policies and training and inherent duties of a police officer to preserve life.”
Internal APD probe justified waiting to approach Tucker and not activating body cameras
The City of Akron’s termination notice to Fields said the officer violated nine policies — seven from the night of the shooting (though not the shooting itself) and two connected to the ongoing criminal investigation.
Signal Akron obtained a copy of the OPSA report that Malik disagreed with. OPSA does not make disciplinary decisions, but the report indicates the officers did little wrong.
The APD’s body-camera policy says officers must activate their cameras prior to taking action unless the process of hitting record would put them in danger in a situation requiring “immediate action.”
Neither Fields nor his rookie partner activated their body cameras — they were activated automatically only when a nearby cruiser came to the scene, too late to meaningfully document what the officers did prior to encountering Tucker walking away.
OPSA did not find fault with it.
In his interview with the state’s investigators, Fields methodically explained that he heard gunshots in the distance while doing paperwork in his cruiser and then decided to take out his rifle because it would be better to shoot from a distance than a handgun would be.
He then quietly approached Tucker from behind, saying he yelled clear directions to Tucker before the bend in Tucker’s elbow indicated to him he was about to pull a gun from his waistband and shoot approaching officers.
Fields couldn’t explain why his body camera wasn’t on. He said he tried to turn it on, but his focus was on Tucker, and maybe dirt got inside the buttons.
His rookie partner said he didn’t record, either, because of “the high stress situation” where everything “gets a little blurry.”
OPSA accepted these justifications. “Akron police officers are expected to activate their body-worn camera prior to citizen interaction or taking police action, but there are also a number of mitigating factors to consider in this situation which the procedure allows for.”
Malik and Morgan disagreed with those mitigating circumstances.
The failure to activate body cameras “deprived the City and the public of critical evidence during the same category of event for which recording requirements are most important,” the termination notice says.
Police union says firing is ‘thumb in the eye’ of the grand jury
One of the biggest criticisms from the police union about the elements weighed in the decision to fire Fields is that he was not charged criminally.
“This is politics at its worst,” Lucey wrote in a statement posted on Facebook two days before Fields was officially fired. “The mayor is trying to appease politicians and interest groups who are unhappy that an independent citizen grand jury cleared our officers. He’s sticking his thumb in the eye of the grand jurors who heard the evidence and the police department investigators who did this the right way the first time. He’s determined to order as many investigations as it takes, regardless of the facts, to reach his preferred outcome.”
Lucey, in an interview several days later with Signal Akron, reiterated his point: The “grand jury heard the evidence and decided that no charges would be warranted.”
Signal Akron told Lucey the grand jury was only allowed to consider a murder charge and nothing else and that Lucey’s implication would be that, if an officer is not indicted for murder, that they should not face any workplace discipline.
“Not at all what I said,” Lucey responded. “If you read the whole thing, I said it’s a thumb in the eye of a grand jury and the individuals that are the two lieutenants and sergeants that are tasked with doing these internal investigations. … It’s a thumb in the eye of the entire process that’s bargained for.”
In an interview with Signal Akron a day later, Malik disagreed with Lucey.
“The reality is the issues upon which [Fields is] being terminated are not issues that the grand jury weighed in on,” Malik said. “We’ve said that from the beginning that there would be a criminal process that would refer to the underlying shooting, and there would be a policy process into the entirety of the situation, including the medical aid, the body-worn camera, and otherwise. To me, those two things are separate — the grand jury did not weigh in on medical aid or the body-worn camera.”
Fields’ supporters raise money as union considers grievances
As Fields awaits the outcome into the investigation of allegations that he drugged and sexually assaulted a woman this spring, the FOP started a crowdfunding campaign on behalf of the terminated officer.
“Being a member of the FOP is important,” Lucey explained to Signal Akron about the fundraiser. “We stand with Officer Fields on this, and we’re going to support him, whether it’s financially, emotionally or spiritually.”
The police union will be filing several grievances against the city, Lucey said, in hopes of getting Fields back on the force. Lucey said the timeline violates the 120-day window for disciplinary action after an incident — the union contract says the window doesn’t apply when officers go on paid leave after the incident, which happened in this case — and that Malik’s circumvention of the typical process is also in violation of the contract.
“We negotiated a discipline process, the city was part of that negotiation, and if they don’t like the process, then negotiate the changes,” Lucey told Signal Akron. “They can’t just decide they are going to adopt their own rules midway through.”
Malik told Signal Akron he has a different interpretation of the contract.
“It is ultimately my decision to discipline any employee,” he said.
