Around 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, Karen Griffin called 911 to report that her son, 23-year-old Jacob Griffin, had been threatening to kill her and others. During the call, audio of which was released by the Metro Nashville Police Department on Sunday morning, Griffin told a dispatcher that her son was schizophrenic and living in the wooded area behind a Goodwill store in South Nashville. He’d recently been fired from the Goodwill, she said, and had repeatedly made comments over the past three or four months about going into the store and shooting people.
“He does have a gun,” she said. “He has texted me pictures of a full magazine of bullets this morning. So he is armed and I personally would consider him dangerous. He has never actually been violent. I really don’t want the police to kill him, but I don’t want him to kill anyone else either.”
Around five hours later, following a long standoff, a SWAT officer shot and killed Jacob Griffin during an attempt to arrest him at his campsite.
The MNPD released a critical incident briefing Sunday morning — the video of which can be seen at the bottom of this story. The briefing includes partial body-camera footage from an hours-long standoff between police and Griffin. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is now investigating the incident. It’s the fifth time the TBI has been called on to review a Metro police shooting this year. Griffin is the third person to be shot and killed by a Nashville police officer this year — one deadly incident took place in March, and another just last weekend.
MNPD spokesperson Don Aaron says in the department’s briefing that police first made contact around 3:30 p.m. Saturday, when two South Precinct officers found him at his campsite behind the Goodwill. Griffin told the officers he had a gun, but “refused to surrender it,” Aaron says. South Precinct Officer Louis Pena deployed his taser, which Aaron says “was ineffective.” The briefing does not include footage of that incident.
“It should be noted that while body cameras are being deployed department-wide, most South Precinct officers do not yet have them, and this initial interaction was not recorded,” Aaron says.
According to Aaron’s briefing, police department negotiators and SWAT were called to the scene around 4:10 p.m. Around 5:15 p.m., he says, Mobile Crisis staff from the Mental Health Co-Op arrived and signed emergency committal papers for Griffin. In the woods, officers were in a standoff with Griffin.
In body-camera footage released by the department, one officer can be heard telling Griffin, “The first step in this is all up to you, and that’s just to walk out here without that pistol.”
Griffin can be heard shouting back.
“I am a hypnotist! Get off my property!”
Later, an officer tells him: “We can’t leave until we get you safely outside to talk to a counselor.”
In the briefing video, Aaron says “the posture of the negotiations” changed around 7:20 p.m., when Griffin fired a shot from his pistol. In the body camera footage, officers are seen continuing their negotiations with Griffin when what sounds like a gunshot goes off, although apparently not in the direction of the officers.
The officer whose body camera the footage was recorded from raises his gun and aims it in Griffin’s direction. An increasingly agitated Griffin begins shouting and swearing at the officers, telling them not to point guns at him. They urge him not to pick up the gun again, and he yells, “Get off my property!”
“We can’t leave until we resolve this,” says one officer.
“You just fired a shot, you just upped it up, Jacob,” says another.
In the briefing video, this is how Aaron describes what happened next.
“At approximately 7:30 p.m., as daylight began to wane, SWAT officers put a plan into motion to take Griffin into custody by using distraction devices, direct impact hard foam rounds and a police K-9 team. In the midst of trying to effect the arrest, Griffin fired another shot from his pistol. SWAT officer Matthew Grindstaff, a 15-year police department veteran, then fired.”
The body camera footage shows officers rushing in toward Griffin and releasing a dog, which pins Griffin down. An officer stands over Griffin, yelling at him, “Show us your hands and I will get him off you!”
Multiple officers can be heard yelling, “Where’s the gun?”
At that point, it sounds as if a shot is fired. The MNPD claims that shot came from Griffin’s pistol. Seconds later, Grindstaff shoots Griffin, who is still on the ground.
Griffin was pronounced dead at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
