Left: Jocques Clemmons in 2009 (photo by Eric England); right: Officer Josh Lippert (photo courtesy of MNPD)
One year after Metro Police Officer Josh Lippert shot and killed Jocques Clemmons after a brief foot chase through a parking lot in East Nashville's James A. Cayce Homes, he is working in the department's Records Division. The officer, who has been on the Metro force for six years, was formally assigned to records in November, but he'd been working desk duty there, on administrative assignment, since the shooting.
Metro Nashville Police Department spokesman Don Aaron tells the Scene that, as of this writing, Metro Police Chief Steve Anderson "has received a report from the department’s Shooting Review Board. He has not approved it. He has it under advisement."
And so, after a year during which the fatal encounter prompted dramatic protests, revived calls for civilian oversight of the police department and fueled a relentless campaign led by Clemmons' grieving family, the matter remains unresolved.
Lippert did not face criminal charges for Clemmons' death because Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk concluded that the officer had a legitimate self-defense claim. Police said Clemmons was carrying a gun — pictures of which the MNPD posted on Twitter immediately following the incident — when he attempted to flee a traffic stop, and that he dropped it on the ground at one point during the altercation before picking it up again, allegedly ignoring orders to drop it. As Clemmons tried again to run away, Lippert opened fire, striking him once in the hip and twice in the back.
But even if he wasn't to be held criminally responsible for Clemmons' death, could Lippert still be a police officer? His disciplinary record includes 20 days of suspension. In his short time at the MNPD he'd been disciplined for unnecessarily escalating encounters with citizens. Activists began calling for Lippert's firing almost immediately after the shooting, and a smaller group, including Clemmons' mother, began regularly protesting outside the MNPD's East Precinct in October.
One night in November, a group of activists showed up at the MNPD's temporary headquarters on Lebanon Pike asking for a meeting with the chief or, at least, the opportunity to schedule one with him. That led to a bizarre standoff between the activists and the owner of the building MNPD currently leases space from, who was insisting that the group be arrested.
Clemmons' mother, Sheila Clemmons Lee, ended up getting to meet with a deputy chief. In a letter to the chief, Lee had written, “You have it within your power to give us some peace.”
And a letter from Anderson informed Lee that an internal police department panel looking into the incident had presented its findings and that he had asked for additional investigation before a complete report is issued.
“I completely understand your request that Officer Lippert’s employment be immediately terminated,” Anderson wrote. “However, that is not a matter that can be concluded summarily. There are procedures that must be followed and there are, frankly, limitations on the authority of the chief of police to impose any disciplinary action.”
In January, activists were riled by a list produced by the Metro Human Resources Department that showed Lippert had taken a promotion test. The MNPD said, however, that inclusion on the list merely showed the results of the testing and that promotion decisions were made by the chief. For now, Lippert remains an officer of the MNPD, albeit one who isn't working on the streets of Nashville.
But the matter remains unresolved in another way for Clemmons' family — the authorities still have his phone.
A federal lawsuit filed Friday by Nashville attorney Daniel Horwitz on behalf of the family seeks to force the phone to be returned.
"Mr. Clemmons’ cell phone also contains — among other things — cherished family photos that his family wants returned," the suit states.
Horwitz also argues that police had no constitutional basis for taking the phone in the first place. A month after the shooting, the MNPD obtained a warrant to dig through Clemmons' social media history — a move that was seen by many at the time as an attempt to find ways to paint Clemmons in a negative light.
“Mr. Clemmons’ Facebook and Instagram accounts had no conceivable bearing on the supposed crime that the MNPD claimed to be investigating, and Officer Satterfield’s comically unconstitutional warrant applications did not even bother to pretend that they did,” Horwitz said in a written statement. “Further, at the time that Officer Satterfield applied for the search warrants at issue, there was literally nobody on earth who was less likely to be arrested than Mr. Clemmons, who had been deceased for nearly a week. These search warrants could not have been any less valid if they were written in crayon. We hope that the Mayor and the MNPD will do right by Mr. Clemmons’ family by returning his cell phone and relinquishing whatever private information they pulled from his social media accounts in their effort to assassinate his character.”
Clemmons has been dead for a year now, but peace remains elusive.
