Team 4's In Custody Death

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Here’s the audit trail for the body worn cameras worn by the police personnel involved in this incident. You’ll notice there are 98 pages of Tucson PD employees who have accessed the footage.  There are personnel from the records section, detectives from violent crime units, as well as personnel from the Office of “Professional” Standards. There are a few things in this list of names that caught our attention. We will address each one. 

**Our apologies, we tried post these pages in order but couldn't get it done.  We will fix it soon!**

The first thing we noticed was the timing of this incident. Carlos Ingram-Lopez died in police custody on April 21, 2020.  We’re told this investigation was initially treated as a training issue. While we believe that things could have been done to make the “optics” better, It is a fact that Carlos Ingram-Lopez died as a result of a large amount of cocaine in addition to a heart defect (ventricular hypertrophy). We spoke with emergency medical personnel, people who save lives for a living, they described Carlos Ingram-Lopez as a “dead man walking.” They believe he would have been a DOA (dead on arrival) or a check welfare call for service had he not showed up to his grandmother's house.

So what happened to these officers after this shift? Nothing. It seemed to be clear to everyone involved that this was a drug overdose. The officers went back to work as police officers with no restrictions. That’s right, these menaces to society went back to work as uniformed, armed police officers, who drove marked patrol cars with the authority to, at least temporarily, suspend the constitutional rights of Tucsonans. These officers made arrests, they were allowed to testify in court, and one of the officers earned the Tucson Police Department Life Saving Award. 

Then on May 25, 2020, a man named George Floyd died in police custody over 1,600 miles away. That was enough to change the “optics” of the Carlos Ingram-Lopez case. There are certainly similarities between these two cases. George Floyd and Carlos Ingram-Lopez both committed crimes and were suspects in criminal investigations. Both suspects were both going to die because of the narcotics they chose to ingest. George Floyd died of a lethal dose of fentanyl, Carlos Ingram-Lopez died of a lethal dose of cocaine in addition to a heart condition. While so many are trying to show that these incidents are the same, we’re going to apply some much needed common sense to show they are very different. We’ll let Steve Serbalik handle this part. Mr. Serbalik is a panel attorney for AZ COPS and can explain this way better than we could so we’ll let him do it. Please click on the link below. (You may have to copy and paste until we get the button fixed-Sorry!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSCSWrblPtg

Now let’s take another look at the audit trail. You can see the dates and times of when the footage was accessed and you can read the name of the member who accessed it. One thing we noticed was the increase in frequency at which this body worn camera footage was accessed after May 25, 2020. We added a yellow line that separates the footage being accessed before and after May 25. See for yourself. So here’s another question, while we see an increase in viewership for the footage of this incident, and we also see that a legal advisor had accessed the footage after May 25, why do we not see a single chief-level commander on the audit trail? Now we’ll share a little bit of information we at Tucson’s Corrupt Leadership.com were shocked to hear. “Certain commanders” can receive electronic copies of body worn camera footage WITHOUT having that transaction show up on the body worn camera audit trail. I guess Tucson PD has given up on that whole transparency thing. So what is the point of the audit trail? We know of an incident involving the sister of Tucson Mayor, Regina Romero. This incident was addressed on this website under “Repugnant and Vile.” After Regina Romero received a letter, a DVD, and courtroom documentation from a denizen of Tucson, she somehow found out where the denizen worked and demanded he was investigated by the equivalent of the CEO of that organization. This organization happens to have an Office of “Professional” Standards (OPS). OPS personnel checked the body worn camera audit trail to see if the “suspect” in this incident illegally accessed the footage of the mayor’s drunk sister getting arrested for DUI. They found that all of his actions were “above board.” This will be documented very soon on this website in an investigation called “Tucson’s Dear Leader.” We think you’ll like it. We’ll rephrase our question: So other than punishing personnel for accessing body worn camera footage without permission, what is the point of the audit trail? Is it to afford these chief level commanders with plausible deniability when dealing with politically charged incidents? Again, 98 pages of names, and not a single member of the Executive Leadership Team is on the audit trail…except one…kinda. Chief Magnus announced Captain John Strader would be promoted to assistant chief on July 22, 2020. This promotion would take effect on August 1, 2020. Captain Strader is listed on this audit trail on July 22 and 23. Chief Strader is in charge of the Investigations Bureau, not the Field Services Bureau (Patrol). The Assistant Chief in charge of Field Services Bureau is Kevin Hall. Does AC Hall know what’s going on in his bureau??? We doubt we’ll get an answer for these questions. If we did get a response, we’re guessing the pertinent information would be redacted or our favorite, purged. 

We also found it interesting that Tucson’s Mayor, Regina Romero, was “outraged” at this incident. It is interesting because she did not even acknowledge the 100% avoidable death of a Tucson bicyclist (see the investigation titled “Bicycle Friendly” on this website). That victim rode his bicycle through an “unmarked and unguarded” City of Tucson property. According to City of Tucson Risk Management Personnel, no funds have been paid to the victim’s family (as of February 22, 2021). The family of Carlos Ingram-Lopez was paid nearly $3,000,000.00 of taxpayer money from Mayor Romero’s bottomless cash register.

**We are not even close to being done with this investigation.  Stay tuned, there is so much more to come.**

As we all know, Carlos Ingram-Lopez died in the custody of the Tucson Police Department on April 21, 2020.  On June 18, 2020, three Tucson Police Officers were forced to resign. This was covered earlier in this investigation but we think its worth repeating. For those 58 days, Lead Police Officer Jackson, and Officers Rutledge and Starbuck, were allowed to work as police officers. They were armed, they drove marked patrol cars, they responded to 911 calls for service, they could testify in court, and they had the authority to, at least temporarily, suspend the constitutional rights of the citizenry. That is, until George Floyd died in police custody hundreds of miles away. That was when the “optics” changed, remember?

We wanted to take a deeper look into these “optics” so we did some digging. What we found was an incident that occurred a few months before the death of Carlos Ingram-Lopez. This incident occurred on the afternoon of December 28, 2019 and it was documented under Tucson Police Department case number 1912280133.  As you will read there are many similarities between this incident and the incident of April 21, 2020, 115 days later by our math. This police report contains 19 pages. We will post it in its entirety as soon as we redact some of the names of the people who are only involved because they picked up a phone and called 911 to report the actions of Carlos Ingram-Lopez. In the meantime you can see a single page of that report. It is the page that documents that Carlos Ingram-Lopez was offered assistance in enrolling in a drug treatment program. On January 16, 2020, Tucson Police Officers responded to the home of the grandmother of Carlos Ingram-Lopez. They were told by his grandmother that Carlos does not live there. In fact he lives in Colorado. Again, on April 21, 2020, Carlos died in her garage of a cocaine overdose.

Here are some details of this investigation.  Some of these bullet points were pulled from the call text and some were copied from case reports completed by the officers who investigated this incident.  

*Complainant said subject (Ingram-Lopez) is in her backyard saying someone is chasing him. 

*Male wearing all black stopping vehicles saying someone shot his grandmother

*A male subject identified himself as Carlos Ingram-Lopez was in his room at his grandmother’s house when he heard her scream. Carlos stated he went outside and observed several males. Carlos then heard several shots from a gun. Carlos stated he ran from the house because he believed his grandmother was harmed and the males were after him. Carlos then advised he was under the influence of cocaine.

Other witnesses saw…

*Ingram-Lopez was waving his arms around like he needed help.

*Ingram-Lopez was knocking on a complainant’s door before jumping the fence into the backyard.

*One reporting party saw Carlos in their backyard “hiding.” They stated that Carlos looked as though he was running for his life. They screamed when they first noticed Carlos in their backyard. They said that when Carlos heard them scream he came to the backdoor of their home and was pulling on the door, attempting to get inside. They told me that Carlos appeared to be foaming at the mouth. 

**There were no signs of a shooting and the grandmother of Carlos Ingram-Lopez was not harmed. The only person to see the “shooters” or hear the “shots” was Carlos Ingram-Lopez. 

Here's a quick question, what if the Pima County Attorneys Office prosecuted this case?  Remember, Carlos Ingram-Lopez was arrested for possession of a narcotic drug (a class 4 felony) and possession of narcotic paraphernalia (a class 6 felony).  Should he have been court ordered to treatment for the drug addiction that would later kill him?  Oh that's right, we can't arrest our way out of this problem.  Just look at the "success" of the Tucson Police Department's Deflection Program on this website.

We'll keep on this as we still have several unanswered questions.  We have requested the investigation into this investigation, conducted by the Office of "Professional" Standards to look into the Office of "Professional" Standards.  Maybe that will explain why three street cops were forced to resign while no one else was punished unless you count a couple of cosmetic 10-hour suspensions.  

We are far from done on this one.  Stay tuned!