In 2018, Officer Andrew Delke shot a fleeing Daniel Hambrick in the back, killing Hambrick and leading to a murder charge against Delke. But less than a year before that incident, the young officer was admonished for not pulling his gun during a foot chase with an armed Black man. The officer who gave that criticism, Sgt. Matthew Boguskie, is now at the Metro Nashville Police Department's training academy, preparing prospective new officers to join the force.
The MNPD confirmed to the Scene that Boguskie has been at the academy since January.
When WPLN first reported that Boguskie told Delke he should have pulled his gun during the 2017 chase, the department said that Boguskie's advice aligned with MNPD policy. But it still raised questions about how Nashville police officers approach the job — questions that are front-and-center again as thousands have protested, rallied and marched throughout the city in recent weeks. The local demonstrations are part of a national uprising against police brutality and racism following the killing of a black man named George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer named Derek Chauvin.
In an "informal counseling session" after the 2017 incident, WPLN reported, Boguskie told Delke that he would have been justified in pulling out his gun. According to police records, Delke told his supervisors that he'd been reluctant to do so because of an earlier fatal police shooting in Nashville, when Officer Josh Lippert killed Jocques Clemmons.
“I discussed with Officer Delke that we cannot allow outside factors to detract us from our training and what we know we should do in dangerous situations, particularly situations that could quickly rise to a deadly force situation,” Sgt. Boguskie wrote in a summary of the meeting, according to WPLN's report.
Later, North Precinct Commander Terrence Graves wrote in a memo, “Based on this case, we may need to add an element of training that addresses not letting the possibility of media attention override our training and policy.”
This isn't the first time a Nashville officer involved in a public controversy has later been sent on to train the next class of Metro cops. In 2018, the Scene reported on Officer Joe Shelton, a white officer who moved to the training academy after he shot and killed a Black man named Reginald Wallace. After responding to a reported burglary in the Edgehill area, Shelton encountered Wallace. The officer later said that Wallace ignored commands to surrender and tried to flee. As he did so, Shelton said, Wallace reached into his pocket and pulled out a shiny object. Shelton fired, hitting Wallace three times and killing him. The shiny object turned out to be an iPod.
