Dallas Officer Amber Guyger Fired Over Botham Jean Shooting

By Alan Pyke, ThinkProgress

24 September 18

Guyger was fired after the off-duty killing of Botham Jean.

allas Police Chief Renee Hall fired Officer Amber Guyger on Monday, less than three weeks after Guyger shot and killed Botham Jean in his apartment after mistaking it for her own.

Hall had claimed she could not fire Guyger just a few days earlier, alternately citing legal restrictions on her authority and a concern that the administrative process involved in a formal termination would undermine parallel efforts to hold her criminally liable for killing her neighbor.

But late Monday morning, the department announced Guyger had been fired in a post on the blog that serves as DPD’s main public relations outlet. The post offered little detailed information, indicating that it was Guyger’s arrest on manslaughter charges that gave the department formal grounds for termination and noting her right to appeal.

Police officers’ employment rights are unusually robust compared to most American workers. Even officers who’ve been involved in serious and serial misconduct have often been able to force departments to rehire them using the appellate processes ironed into their union contracts.

Guyger’s September 6 killing of Jean was the second time she shot a man with her service weapon in her nearly five years on the force. Her first shooting was an on-duty discharge that struck but did not kill a suspect who had tried to wrestle a weapon away from a fellow officer.

She killed Jean while off duty, however, likely depriving her of the special legal protections and court rules privileges afforded to officers accused of a crime in an on-duty use of force. The investigation into the killing has churned up dodgy suggestions that Jean had some weed in his apartment, prompting the family’s lawyers to warn against character assassination of a man dead by an intruder’s hand.

Comparatively little information about Guyger’s actions or mental state has been released, though early reports indicated she had just come off a shift far longer than the recommended maximum of 12 hours. Hall also mentioned that Guyger had submitted to a blood draw to be screened for drugs and alcohol in her system, but neither the Texas Rangers (who took over the investigation from DPD) nor the local prosecutor’s office have answered ThinkProgress’ efforts to confirm that such a screening is in the works. Toxicology reports typically take weeks to come back, unlike what televised cop shows portray, a spokesperson for the DA’s office said by phone last week.