Why Should Delaware Care?
The debate in Delaware over how to investigate incidents of police violence has been reignited following the fatal shooting of Kadir Skinner. For decades, Delaware police have been granted a broad deference around use-of-force actions. Today, calls for changes are growing.
Following the fatal shooting of Kadir Skinner in Wilmington, Democratic state lawmakers in Delaware have advocated for several new police reform measures, include timelines for the public release of body camera footage and new statewide standards for investigating officer-involved shootings.
The proposals follow weeks of public outrage and demonstrations after the shooting of Skinner by a Wilmington Police officer. The response intensified in recent days following the release of body camera footage Thursday showing an officer shooting Skinner as he was running away.
During rallies on Thursday and over the weekend, community advocates demanded to know the name of the officer who fired the fatal shot, and called for criminal charges to be filed against him.
They also called on state legislators to pass police reform legislation, arguing that current law allows departments to conduct police-involved shooting investigations without publicly releasing reports, camera footage, officer names, among other details.
In all, the shooting has become among the state’s most closely scrutinized police use-of-force incidents since the 2015 fatal shooting of Jeremy McDole, a man who used a wheelchair, or the 2021 fatal shooting of Lymond Moses.
In an apparent response to the community’s calls, Democratic leaders in Delaware’s House of Representatives and Sen. Marie Pinkney (D-Bear/New Castle), said they would pursue legislative reforms to promote transparency and accountability.
“Our community is grieving, and public trust has been broken,” Pinkney said in a statement on her Facebook page.
House leadership also released a statement Thursday evening following the release of the body camera footage that calls for a “thorough, independent, transparent” investigation of the incident.
“This case has also highlighted broader questions about how Delaware responds to officer-involved shootings and how confidence in those responses can be strengthened,” the House statement said.
House Majority Leader Kerri Evelyn Harris (D-Dover) told Spotlight Delaware that the public response should include conversations with law enforcement and the Delaware Department of Justice about creating a standard timeline for when body-worn camera footage is released.
Under Delaware law, police body camera video cannot be released until the Department of Justice’s Division of Civil Rights and Public Trust has completed an investigation, or a prosecution – or if the division authorizes its release.
Separately, Delaware’s open records law allows police departments to use exemptions for investigatory files and criminal records to deny public requests for body camera footage.
Over half of states have a policy of releasing footage within 21 and 40 days of an incident, Harris said, so lawmakers are considering a rule for distribution within that time window.
Lawmakers are also aiming to create more consistent guidelines for how police departments across the state handle investigations, Harris said, including incorporating third-party investigators to assuage citizens’ concerns about internal police department investigations.
“The more that we can have a clear and straightforward way of processing these types of officer-involved shootings, the better we will be as a state,” Harris said.
Harris said House members have a goal of introducing legislation in January.
The current law
The legislative pledges have been echoed by activist groups and community members who have held several gatherings and protests following Skinner’s death.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware has also called for lawmakers to change its open records laws to allow the public access to police body camera footage, regardless of the type of incident.
The group further called for lawmakers to make misconduct records public and allow police review boards to have oversight powers.
Under Delaware’s Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights, the broader statute that advocacy groups point to as an underlying shield for police, records from a police misconduct investigation are confidential and cannot be provided to the public.
Reforms passed in 2023 opened exceptions, requiring agencies to release an officer’s name and a summary of findings whenever an officer discharges a firearm at a person or uses force that caused serious physical injury. For allegations of sexual assault, dishonesty, or domestic violence, disclosure is only required if the investigation results in a “sustained” finding of misconduct.
The same reforms also required every police department in the state to create a police accountability board to advise them on police training and other matters.
Those boards do not have investigative, subpoena, or disciplinary authority.
“Our right to know should not be contingent on the generosity of officials; it should be a right explicitly guaranteed in the law,” ACLU of Delaware Executive Director Mike Brickner said in a statement on Friday.
Say Buterbaugh, a community advocate, was at Thursday’s protest and told Spotlight the next day that she believes the state should require independent investigations of incidents, such as the Skinner shooting. She also pointed to the need for more training to teach officers how to deescalate encounters and the need for police to release more details of such an incident.
“If the shooting had been the other way around, we would have known the name of the shooter the same day. If that officer believes he acted accordingly, there should be no reason to hide his name,” Buterbaugh said.
Another community activist, Mahkieb Booker, pushed back against arguments made by critics of reform efforts that releasing information to the public would endanger officers’ safety or taint investigations.
“Proper conduct fears no exposure,” Booker said.
The Delaware Fraternal Order of Police State Lodge and Wilmington’s Fraternal Order of Police Lodge did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
The body camera footage of Skinner shooting, which was released on Thursday shows a chaotic 28 seconds between the moment the shooting officer leaves his vehicle to chase Skinner, before firing his weapon and handcuffing the wounded teen on the pavement of a Wilmington street.
Another three-and-a-half minutes pass after Skinner was shot before officers place him into a patrol car and take him to Wilmington Hospital, where he died.
The matter is currently being investigated by the Wilmington Police Department and the DOJ.
Protests after release of body camera footage
A group of over 50 residents, many from the Northeast Wilmington neighborhood where Skinner’s family lives, gathered on Thursday night to march from the neighborhood to the Wilmington Police Station, calling for the officer who shot Skinner to be held accountable.
The protestors made the roughly 1.5-mile walk from 24th and Jessup Street to the Wilmington Police station on Walnut Street, carrying Black Lives Matter and Pan-African flags. They filled the multi-hour march by chanting Skinner’s name and rallying cries such as, “No justice, no peace. No racist police.”
The group frequently called out the elected officials involved in the investigation — including Wilmington Mayor John Carney, Attorney General Kathy Jennings, and Wilmington Police Chief Wilfredo Campos — claiming they were not doing anything to provide justice for Skinner’s family.
In a joint statement on July 16, Jennings, Carney and Campos said the shooting remains an ongoing investigation, and “consistent with DOJ policy, the officers will be identified and all evidence published as part of a fully-detailed public report and legal analysis following the investigation’s conclusion.”
Present at the protest were Skinner’s family members, including his parents, Durrell Dollard and Rashai Skinner. City council members Christian Willauer and Coby Owens also attended.
Owens led the chant calling for justice for Skinner at one point.
Traffic largely stopped for the protestors as they walked down the city’s most prominent downtown street, Market Street, and many cars honked at the protestors seemingly in support as they passed by.
Wilmington Police cruisers were visible about a block down from the group on each side as they marched from Rodney Square down to the station and two officers were standing on the roof of the station when protesters reached the building.
The officers did not appear to directly get involved with the protest, outside of blocking some traffic from passing as the protesters walked down the downtown streets.
Some attendees said they knew Skinner personally, while others said they showed up to push for an end to the police violence that happens too often in Wilmington.
One participant, Debra Aikens, said her own son was killed by an act of gun violence last fall, and she never felt like she got answers from Wilmington Police. She said they have yet to solve his murder. Now, when Aikens visits the cemetery, she thinks of her own son, Skinner, and other kids whose lives have been lost, she said.
“This is now about something bigger,” she said.
Michael Bartley waved a Pan-African flag and led the group in chanting “put your foot on the gas, don’t pump the brakes,” for a portion of the march.
Bartley said he and other community organizers recently formed a group they are calling The People’s Council, because the formal institutions are not doing anything to support their community.
“We need to be able to give them what they need, love on them, grieve on them, because you can’t depend on nobody else,” he said.
