PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — In St. Pete's City Council chambers Monday, the Civilian Police Review Committee (CPRC) gathered to look over local police work.
The case on hand was the 2021 officer-involved shooting of, then, 17-year-old Christopher Tonsel during an arrest.
According to court documents, in October of 2021, Tonsel was seen fighting with a girl at Wildwood Park. St. Petersburg police were called and the department says Tonsel ran into a neighborhood.
Body camera footage from responding K-9 Officer Leighton Williams shows him chasing Tonsel behind a house.
Officer Williams shot Tonsel in the stomach after claiming he saw the teen pull out a gun with his right hand.
Tonsel survived and in January of 2022, his family and some in the community protested his charges— for aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer and for carrying a gun as a minor.
"You gave him so many commands that he couldn't even follow the first one," said Tonsel's mother, Catherine Jones, in January.
The group also called the shooting itself into question.
"How is it justified; he never pointed a gun at you?" said Jones.
And Monday, the review committee had questions, too—mainly about what can and can't be seen in that video because of where the body camera was placed.
"It's kind of tough to tell; things happen very quickly, but I can't make heads or tails looking at that video in terms of what Mr. Tonsel is doing; we're only talking about two or three seconds," said CPRC member Cyril Flanagan.
It's a concern that led to one of a few recommendations for the police.
"It might be worth looking at in a number of cases with K-9 officers if a body camera tends to be more blocked than just a regular officer interaction," said CPRC member Robert Gavin.
That concern was addressed by the city's police chief, Anthony Holloway, at Monday's meeting.
"Some officers place it [in the] center, some officers put it to the right, some officers put it to the left, so they're trying to find the best place also to capture things," he said.
Despite the partially blocked view in the body camera footage, the committee determined that police documents, a report from the Pinellas County Use of Force Task Force, and the fact that a gun was seen falling near Tonsel's feet—gave them a good idea of what happened.
In the end, the committee voted unanimously that the shooting was justified.
ABC Action News spoke to the CPRC's Co-chair, Laketta Davis, about the decision after the meeting.
"Being able to see the video and having that actually slowed down in slow motion and actually seeing the weapon drop from the suspect's hand, that is what solidified it for me that the officer was absolutely justified with this individual," she said, "Even in cases where people don't agree we just want to make sure that we're going back and with factual information, that we've done our due diligence on this board to represent the community and any questions that they may have in regard to policies and procedures."
The committee also recommended that the St. Pete police department reviews its policy for filling out reports in cases where deadly force is used.
Right now, an officer's supervisor can complete the documentation for them.
"Those things that we suggest create ripple effects within the policies and procedures in the police department and in turn, it impacts how officers come out and police our community," said Davis.
It's work that Chief Anthony Holloway praised.
"It's really another set of eyes, another set of eyes to look at it and go like 'Okay, this is how the community sees [it], and this is how law enforcement sees it,'" he said.
In a sit-down interview weeks before Monday's meeting, Chief holloway told us that the committee's existence is one piece of a push for transparency within the department.
"We should be able to explain our actions because, again, the public puts a lot of trust in us, so we can't take that shame on us," he said.
And it's a push that he says starts with the department owning the fact that police will mess up sometimes.
"When you say, 'Oh, that could never happen here,' now you're setting yourself up for failure. It's, 'it happened, so that means it could happen anywhere,' and how are you going to come up with a policy, how are you going to come up with training, so it doesn't happen here or the most important thing is 'How am I going to explain that to the community,'" he said.
