Morales’s family comes together with CIW, Collier faith and community leaders to make public call for transparency, justice…
Lucas Benitez, CIW: “A police officer killed one of us a month ago in the quiet streets of Farmworker Village… We can’t bring Nicolas back to life; we can’t give his son his father back. But we can work together to ensure that justice is done, that the truth of Nicolas’s death is told.”
Collier County Sheriff’s Office reveals deputy who shot farmworker Nicolas Morales already back on active duty in Immokalee;
Last month, Nicolas Morales, a single father and longtime farmworker in Immokalee was shot and killed in the early hours of September 17th by a deputy with the Collier County Sheriff’s Office. Since then, in spite of urgent calls for transparency from Nicolas’s family and a broad coalition of Southwest Florida community leaders, the CCSO has done little to cast light on the events of that night, releasing only three short, contradictory statements while withholding key information, including the official autopsy report and dashcam video that sits with the State Attorney’s office more than a month after Nicolas’s death.
Earlier this month we provided a detailed analysis of the many significant contradictions contained in the CCSO’s three statements on Nicolas’s fatal shooting, concluding:
Indeed, rather than build a believable picture, and comprehensive understanding, of the 13 seconds between the deputies’ arrival on the scene and the firing of the four fatal shots, the CCSO’s statements contain a number of significant inconsistencies, factual discrepancies that prompt yet more urgent questions. In the end, rather than assuage the community’s concerns, the three statements only cast more doubt on any conceivable justification for Nicolas’ violent and untimely death at the hands of those committed to protecting — not killing — the public whom they serve.
You can find our breakdown of the CCSO’s statements in its entirety here.
More than a month after one of its deputies fired four shots from his service weapon and took Nicolas’s life, the CCSO has failed to take any of the steps necessary to explain the deputy’s actions, rebuild trust with the community, or provide some semblance of closure for Nicolas’s family. On the contrary, as NBC-2 revealed on Wednesday, the CCSO has placed the deputy involved in the shooting back on active duty in Immokalee – despite the fact that the official investigation remains unresolved.
In the face of the CCSO’s callous indifference to the community’s concerns, patience is wearing thin in Immokalee. On Wednesday, Nicolas’s family gathered with faith and community leaders from across Collier County for a press conference in Naples to demand the immediate release of the dashcam footage, the autopsy report, and other key information and recordings from the night of Nicolas’s death – and their voices were carried by every major television and radio station in Southwest Florida, as well as some national outlets. At the press conference, which was hosted by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples, Nicolas’s family was joined by the CIW, the Collier County NAACP, Moms Demand Action of Southwest Florida, Collier Youth for Black Lives, the Fort Myers Congregational United Church of Christ, Collier Freedom, and the national Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), whose Stated Clerk sent a statement in support of the call for transparency read by Uriel Zelaya Perez of the Alliance for Fair Food.
Before diving into the local news coverage, we want to share the CIW’s statement in full, which was delivered by CIW’s Lucas Benitez during the event:
I’d like to begin with a quote from Langston Hughes’s poem, “Let America Be America Again”:
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed —
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
You have heard the facts of this case from Mr. Probinsky — of the death of our friend, of a father, of a farmworker, at the hands of the police — so we will not belabor the facts. The details speak for themselves — Nicolas was killed, holding nothing in his hand but a gardening tool, shot four times by one of three police officers armed with guns and a trained police dog, a mere 13 seconds after they arrived at the scene. Nicolas didn’t deserve to be killed that night, to be crushed, in the words of Langston Hughes, by one above. His death was not inevitable. It was wrong. His family, and his community, need all the information that the police have, and have yet to share, so that justice may be done for his wrongful death.
Instead we will pull back from the details of that night to look at why Nicolas is no longer with us, and what we must do to fix a system that is so clearly broken. And why it is so urgent that we fix what is broken together.
As members of a society, we know and understand that we must cede some of our personal freedoms so that we can all live free, and safe from harm. It is the social contract that holds us together as one community, living in peace. We endow the police with awesome powers — the power to use force, and sometimes use lethal force — to protect us from those who would threaten the peace. When it works, it works almost invisibly, operating largely in the background. But more and more today it isn’t working as intended. Our contract with the police is breaking down, the force we entrust them with used without justification, its victims disproportionately people of color. And when the police kill people without justification, they become yet one more threat to our collective peace.
No system is perfect, mistakes happen. But, more than that, centuries of our history leave no doubt that prejudice exists and insinuates itself into the structures upon which our society is constructed in ways both explicit and implicit. We can no longer be surprised when a person of color is wrongly killed by the police, it has happened too many times, for too many years. What matters now is how we respond, because it is one thing when one police officer abuses the trust we place in him and uses lethal force unjustifiably. It is something else entirely when the police as a whole come together to defend the unjustifiable actions of one of their members, and when we as a society allow that to happen.
The contract at the heart of our community is founded on trust — and that trust is impossible without transparency. A police officer killed one of us a month ago in the quiet streets of Farmworker Village. The statements by the Collier County Sheriff’s Office in the wake of his death have been contradictory on the key facts of the night. Furthermore, by all appearances those statements have been incomplete when it comes to sharing the evidence needed to judge the actions of the police officer who killed Nicolas. The 13 seconds between the officers’ arrival on the scene and Nicolas’ shooting cited in one of the CCSO’s statements is a very specific number, it was clearly recorded by something. That recording has not been shared. That lack of transparency only fuels suspicion, and division.
The public needs to know everything the CCSO knows so that we can deal with Nicolas’ death together, as one community, within the bounds of our contract. The evidence may show that the officer committed a crime and, if so, the police, and the courts, must treat him like any other criminal. But until we have the truth, and all the truth, our contract will be broken, the collective wound of Nicolas’s death will not be healed, suspicion and division will continue to fester. And until then, Nicolas’s family, and the Immokalee community, cannot mourn in peace.
We at the CIW have worked with the CCSO since the early 1990s, when our work investigating forced labor rings and bringing the ringleaders to justice brought us into collaboration with the law enforcement community, both locally and at the federal level. Since then we have worked with the CCSO to solve and prevent crimes against farmworkers in Immokalee and around Southwest Florida on many occasions; indeed, one member of our staff received an official commendation from the CCSO for her help in solving a homicide. We will continue working together when possible to protect the farmworker community from those who would exploit it for many more years to come.
But, once again, trust is the foundation on which that partnership is built, and that trust is impossible without transparency. We can’t bring Nicolas back to life; we can’t give his son his father back. But we can work together to ensure that justice is done, that the truth of Nicolas’s death is told.
If we do that, we can, in the words of Langston Hughes’ poem, let our small corner of America “be America again — the land that never has been yet — and yet must be.”
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
While there were too many moving statements from Wednesday’s press conference to share them all, we do want to include an excerpt from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s powerful letter of support, signed by Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, and Rev. Dr. Diane Moffett, President and Executive Director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency:
Statement from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Regarding the Death of Nicolas Morales Besanilla
Oct. 28, 2020
On behalf of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), we send our deepest condolences to Nicolas Morales Besanilla’s son, his extended family, and all who knew and loved him. We grieve the death, at the hands of sheriff’s deputies, of Morales Besanilla, who we understand was the father of a 13-year-old son and a longtime Immokalee community member. Our denomination has a long-term and deep relationship with the farm workers of Immokalee, and we join them in mourning the loss of Morales Besanilla.
Regarding this tragic loss of life, we wish to express our concern about the lack of transparency on the part of the Collier County Sheriff’s Office. The circumstances around the killing of Morales Besanilla, along with troubling inconsistencies in the three reports we’ve seen from the sheriff’s office, make even more critical the full disclosure of the details surrounding this incident. We echo the community’s call for complete transparency. In particular, we join in the call for the release of the autopsy results, all dashboard camera footage, and all audio and text communications from and to the deputies.
And now we turn to a sample of the extensive media coverage from Wednesday’s press conference. First up, we have the in-depth story from Fox 4:
Fox 4: Family calls for dash cam video of deadly deputy-involved shooting to be released
COLLIER COUNTY — The family of an Immokalee man, who was shot and killed by deputies last month, is demanding answers.
They’re calling on the Collier County Sheriff’s Office to release dash cam footage from that night. Nicholas Morales-Bessania was shot and killed by deputies who were responding to a 9-1-1 call last month. Deputies said he was carrying gardening shears and they shot him out of fear for their safety, but the family says they aren’t going to know what really until that dash cam footage gets released.
“There are two sides to the story, and the truth needs to be revealed,” said Marisa Andrade, Morales-Bessania’s step-daughter.
Andrade spoke at a news conference at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples Wednesday, surrounded by supporters. She was also joined by Morales-Bessania’s brother, Francisco Morales.
“It’s important for my family that there are consequences for this. That we don’t just leave it there,” said Morales…
Next is the news from NBC-2, which uncovered the shocking information that the deputy who killed Morales was only briefly placed on administrative leave, and returned to active duty in Immokalee weeks ago:
NBC-2: Family of Immokalee man killed by deputies calls for transparent investigation
COLLIER COUNTY, Fla. – The family of an Immokalee man who was shot and killed by deputies is calling for transparency from the Collier County Sheriff’s Office in their investigation.
Nicolas Morales-Bessannia, 37, was shot and killed on Thursday, Sept. 17, after deputies claimed he was threatening them with a shovel and landscaping shears.
During the incident, the sheriff’s office said Morales-Bessannia charged toward deputies, causing one of them to shoot Morales-Bessannia.
“The K-9 can neutralize him, he doesn’t have a gun, he can’t shoot the officers,” family attorney Brent Probinsky said. “It’s inconceivable, it’s reprehensible, it’s unjust that he was shot and killed.”
Local TV was joined by WGCU, the NPR station for Southwest Florida, who included an in-depth update from Brent Probinsky, the lawyer representing Nicolas’s family:
Immokalee Shooting Victim’s Lawyer Gives Update
It’s been a little over a month since an Immokalee man was shot and killed by a Collier County Sheriff’s deputy.
During a press conference in Naples on Wednesday, Probinsky said he requested for CCSO to preserve any evidence relating to the shooting.
“It was a long bureaucratic answer but the bottom line was, ‘we don’t acknowledge your request to preserve evidence’,” Probinsky said. “So I’ll have to take my own measures to intervene to ask a judge to order those in possession of the evidence to preserve it.”
Probinsky said the case could take several months to be reviewed by CCSO and the State Attorney’s office. He said asking a law enforcement agency to preserve evidence is “common” in civil and criminal cases.
“Once we review all that, we’ll decide whether we think there is a valid civil lawsuit of wrongful death against the Collier Sheriff’s office for excessive use of deadly force,” Probinsky said.
Numerous local organizations including Collier NAACP and the Collier chapter of Moms Demand Action spoke in solidarity with the Morales-Bessania family demanding transparency throughout CCSO’s investigation.
In addition to local TV stations and radio, the principal newspaper of Collier County, the Naples Daily News, came out to cover the story:
Naples Daily News: ‘We deserve to know what happened’: Family, community demand transparency in case of man killed by deputy
Community members and family of an Immokalee man shot and killed by a Collier County Sheriff’s Office deputy gathered Wednesday to demand transparency in his death.
Nicholas Morales-Bessannia, 37, was shot by the deputy around 1:15 a.m. Sept. 17 outside a home in the Farm Workers Village neighborhood in Immokalee.
“We demand from the Collier County Sheriff’s Office full transparency so the family, friends and community can know what happened,” said Brent Probinsky, a Sarasota attorney representing Morales-Bessannia’s family. “We deserve to know what happened.”
The encounter between Morales-Bessannia and three deputies called to the scene lasted 13 seconds before one of the deputies was in fear for his life and the lives of the other deputies, according to the sheriff’s office.
Cpl. Pierre Richard Jean fired four gunshots at Morales-Bessannia and another deputy released a K9…
… The sheriff’s office has released three statements to the public about the shooting but has denied public records requests for video of the shooting due to ongoing investigations.
Probinsky said the information released by the sheriff’s office has been contradictory and doesn’t add up.
Probinsky pointed out that Morales-Bessannia was 5-feet, 1- inch tall, weighed 120 pounds and had a reputation for someone who was mild, law-abiding, meek and hardworking.
At a press conference Wednesday, Probinsky questioned why deputies needed to use deadly force. At the most, Morales-Bessannia, was armed with gardening shears, he said.
Probinsky asked why the K9 alone or a taser was not used to neutralize Morales-Bessannia if he had a weapon and was threating deputies.
The fight to uncover the truth of Nicolas’s tragic death at the hands of a Collier County Sheriff’s deputy has only just begun. The CIW will continue to support Nicolas’s family in their efforts to establish the facts of that night, and we, together with a growing coalition of local and national leaders, will not rest until we do. We close with a final quote from the CIW’s statement:
[C]enturies of our history leave no doubt that prejudice exists and insinuates itself into the structures upon which our society is constructed in ways both explicit and implicit. We can no longer be surprised when a person of color is wrongly killed by the police, it has happened too many times, for too many years. What matters now is how we respond, because it is one thing when one police officer abuses the trust we place in him and uses lethal force unjustifiably. It is something else entirely when the police as a whole come together to defend the unjustifiable actions of one of their members, and when we as a society allow that to happen…
… The public needs to know everything the CCSO knows so that we can deal with Nicolas’ death together, as one community… The evidence may show that the officer committed a crime and, if so, the police, and the courts, must treat him like any other criminal. But until we have the truth, and all the truth… the collective wound of Nicolas’s death will not be healed, [and] suspicion and division will continue to fester. And until then, Nicolas’s family, and the Immokalee community, cannot mourn in peace.