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SEATTLE — The acquittal of three Tacoma police officers charged with killing Manuel Ellis ended their criminal troubles, but the fallout from Ellis’ death is far from over.
Officers Matthew Collins, Christopher “Shane” Burbank and Timothy Rankine were all found not guilty Thursday. They still face, along with two other Tacoma officers, a civil suit from Ellis’ family that appears headed for trial. Ellis’ family already has settled a lawsuit against Pierce County, which botched the initial investigation of Ellis’ death, for $4 million.
Collins, Burbank and Rankine also face an internal affairs investigation that will determine whether they can remain employed at the Tacoma Police Department.
Earlier internal reviews of officers Masyih Ford, who helped restrain Ellis, and Armando Farinas, who placed a spit hood on him, cleared them and they returned to work. Tacoma police policy was silent on spit hoods at the time of Ellis’ death, so there was no policy for Farinas to violate.
Similarly, Tacoma then lacked a policy on neck holds and hobbles, both of which were used on Ellis by the acquitted officers. Ford and Farinas are also named in the civil lawsuit.
But it’s unclear whether the acquitted officers even want to remain at the department, according to one of their lawyers.
“I would be surprised if our client Shane went back into law enforcement, and if he were to — probably for all of them — it wouldn’t be at this department,” said Wayne Fricke, Burbank’s attorney. “It’s not because they don’t like the community, but obviously there were some tough times here over the past couple of years.”
Ellis, 33, died March 3, 2020, after struggling with police in a south Tacoma intersection, saying at least five times that he couldn’t breathe while the officers continued to apply force.
The Pierce County Medical Examiner ruled his death a homicide caused by oxygen deprivation from physical restraint. Lawyers for the officers argued that enough methamphetamine was in Ellis’ system to cause his death, particularly because he had an enlarged heart.
Jurors accepted that argument, according to Fricke. After talking with jurors after their verdict, Fricke told reporters that doubts about Ellis’ cause of death and questions about the credibility of civilian eyewitnesses who described officers as the aggressors were the foremost factors that led to acquittal.
But a different standard applies in a civil case, lower than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” threshold in a criminal case. In civil actions, the party bringing the suit need only show that their argument is more credible than the respondent’s, essentially that the lawsuit’s claims are more probable than not.
“It’s not a setback,” James Bible, a Seattle lawyer representing the Ellis family, said about the verdicts. “In part, that’s because we have negligence claims (in the civil case).
“We have officer Farinas and the spit mask he put on a man who’d been hogtied, beaten and choked. That spit mask had warnings on it that said, ‘Don’t do it,’ and they did it anyway. That’s more than enough,” he said.
The civil suit, filed in U.S. District Court in September 2021, was on hold until the conclusion of the criminal trial. Now that it has ended, Bible said the next step will be to coordinate with lawyers for the city of Tacoma to schedule a trial.
Bible said he expects to present evidence that was blocked from being presented at the criminal trial by Pierce County Superior Court Judge Bryan Chushcoff, including incidents from the officers’ pasts.
Among them: a failed exercise at the Washington police academy that caused trainers to question Rankine’s fitness to be a police officer, and numerous internal investigations of Burbank at his last police job in North Carolina for use of force and one allegation of racial profiling. In all of them, Burbank was cleared of wrongdoing.
During the civil case, Bible also intends to introduce training materials that he says will show the officers violated their training, and steps that law enforcement agencies and personnel took to minimize the officers’ actions.
Judge Chushcoff excluded testimony about the officers’ training, Tacoma Police Department policies, and references to the law enforcement wall of silence against other officers were off-limits in the criminal trial.
“There’s a great deal that will be shown in the civil trial that did not see the light of day in the criminal trial,” Bible said.
Bible said the door remains open for federal charges against the officers for violating Ellis’ civil rights. The last officer in Washington to be convicted for an on-duty death was Spokane’s Karl Thompson, who was found to have violated the civil rights of Otto Zehm in 2006.
“I don’t think anyone wants to address this at this point,” Emily Langlie, spokeswoman for acting U.S. Attorney for Western Washington Tessa Gorman, said Thursday when asked about a potential federal investigation.
Tacoma Police Chief Avery Moore is expected to review the internal affairs investigation of Collins, Burbank and Rankine and the resulting recommendations before forwarding it to a board for a decision on the officers’ futures with the department.
The process is expected to be complete in two weeks, according to Tacoma City Manager Elizabeth Pauli. Until a ruling, the officers remain employed on paid leave.
Former Tacoma Police Chief Don Ramsdell initially decided to retain the officers after they were charged, and Moore stuck with it. Collins, Burbank and Rankine have collected about $1.5 million in salary from the department since they were placed on leave well over three years ago.
During that time, they received multiple raises and continued to accrue pensions and paid time off. Each of the officers banked hundreds of hours of vacation that the city of Tacoma would be obligated to pay them for if they left the department.
