After 4 Killings, 'Officer of the Year' Is Still on the Job

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The New York Times
@nytimes
A Pennsylvania state trooper has fatally shot four people in separate incidents since 2007, an extraordinary tally for an officer responsible for patrolling largely rural areas with low rates of violent crime. Trooper Jay Splain remains on duty.

After 4 Killings, ‘Officer of the Year’ Is Still on the Job
A Pennsylvania state trooper was returned to duty following three investigations by his own agency. A fourth inquiry is underway.
nytimes.com
1:00 PM · Dec 30, 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/30/us/pennsylvania-trooper-jay-splain-investigation.html

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LEBANON, Pa. — In November 2008, Pennsylvania Trooper Jay Splain was honored at a county law enforcement banquet as a hero, the police officer of the year. The reason: He had shot and killed a suicidal man who allegedly pointed an Uzi submachine gun at him.

That was the first killing. Trooper Splain went on to fatally shoot three more people in separate incidents, an extraordinary tally for an officer responsible for patrolling largely rural areas with low rates of violent crime. All four who died were troubled, struggling with drugs, mental illness or both. In two cases, including that of the man with the Uzi, family members had called the police for help because their relatives had threatened to kill themselves.

The most recent death was last month, when Trooper Splain shot an unarmed man in his Volkswagen Beetle. After learning that the officer had previously killed three other people over nearly 15 years, the man’s sister, Autumn Krouse, asked, “Why would that person still be employed?”

Trooper Splain is an outlier. Most officers never fire their weapons. Until now, his full record of killings has not been disclosed; the Pennsylvania State Police even successfully fought a lawsuit seeking to identify him and provide other details in one shooting. In the agency’s more than a century of policing, no officer has ever been prosecuted for fatally shooting someone, according to a spokesman. That history aligns with a longstanding pattern across the country of little accountability for police officers’ use of deadly force.

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1. Whoa.