Don't work police operator
M873 with the address.
Uh, I'm calling about my neighbor.
OK, what's the address?
1203 E Highland Ave.
OK, 1203 E Allen Ave.
What's going on there?
Wherever front doors have been
opened since 10:00 o'clock
and haven't seen anybody.
Moving around,
it's not normal for them to have
go for the doors open this time.
I remember getting a call early in the
morning on that Saturday that a Tatiana
Jefferson was killed and my source said.
You're not going to believe this.
You need to get to Fort Worth.
We have a similar situation as Amber Geiger.
The trial for that fire Dallas police
officer Amber Geiger ended just 10 days ago
with a conviction and a 10 year sentence.
Geiger was off duty but still in uniform when
she killed John inside his own apartment.
And I remember thinking, Oh no,
that that just can't be true.
There is no way that we have
another situation like this.
My first reaction was. Oh, no.
Here we go again.
I remember the day that my
news director called me.
I just had finished anchoring
on the desk for that morning.
And she said, listen, we've got an
officer involved shooting in Fort Worth,
and we need you to go.
We need you to go right now.
When I got there, there were no officers,
no crime scene tape.
It was very quiet.
That street was very, very quiet.
And then I see one man across the street
come out on his porch and he's looking at us.
So I introduced myself.
I say, hi, I'm Cleo.
And WA and he walked U toward me
and he was very quiet and he looked
very emotional and he said I.
I called police last night and he's like,
I called police.
I I called the welfare line to see if
they could come and see what was going on.
He's like and now she's dead.
Very early on,
the Fort Worth
Police Department did come out and say
that they were troubled by this shooting.
Had the officer not resigned,
I would have fired him for
violations of several policies,
including our use of force policy,
our deescalation policy.
And unprofessional conduct, really,
in the wee hours of the morning. And
officers responded. Apparently
they never announced themselves.
They walked back behind the
house and Tatiana Jefferson
heard some noise
and she had
a weapon, which she was
legally allowed to do and.
Officer Aaron Dean shot and killed her.
Woman is inside her home.
She's playing video games with
her nephew and and within moments
she's going to be dead through
no fault of her home. The people
I talked to that knew a Tatyana
Jefferson are still trying to figure
out how did this college student,
this college graduate end up in a
situation of being killed by police.
Certainly in Texas we have a
sense that people have a right to
protect themselves in their home.
She legally owned that weapon.
She had a right to that weapon.
She had a right to defend herself.
And we'll never know what
she knew in those moments.
Did she realize this was a police
officer outside that window?
We just don't know.
I had a friend that knew the neighbor,
and he called me and said that
he really wanted to talk. He was.
Obviously so distraught because
he was the one that called.
People say, well James, it's not
your fault, you're not your fault.
But I made a call.
I made the call because I thought
that they were going to do what I
called them to do, check on my name.
And they didn't do that.
Tell me that he blamed himself.
And then, you know,
he came to accept the fact that
it really wasn't his fault.
He was just doing what
a neighbor would do and
pray. And I've cried.
You know, pray in the crowd.
Not to quote a song,
but I've done that.
So now I have to add,
I pray to cry,
and I'm gonna fight.
So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm ready
to say, right?
Justice. No. Peace.
So when that happened,
we just knew we had to gear up
for something very serious.
And it wasn't just a Tarrant County story.
It was. A North Texas story,
a Texas story,
a global story story. People
were still really
upset because again, Dallas had just
gone through all of these protests in
light of Amber Geiger and Dallas police
officer that murdered Botham Jean.
And so the protesters were
really still upset.
That was still on their minds.
They were upset because Amber Geiger had only
gotten 10 years for killing both them, John.
And then this happens. And their lives,
what in the world is happening in DFW area?
And so the protest did get,
you know, pretty, pretty heated.
I'm not going to speak for everybody
who was in that protest, but for some people
who were there, there was some deep
hurt even before the protests happened.
Fort Worth hired a police monitor
and a lot of people think that
came out of a Tatiana Jefferson
because it was just months later,
but it actually came out of Jackie Craig.
You underweight.
Jackie Craig was a woman living in
Southeast Fort Worth who called police
on her white neighbor for basically
attacking her daughter when police arrived.
Instead of arresting the
man she called police on,
they tackled her to the ground
and her daughter to the ground,
put them in handcuffs,
and it was a very violent,
graphic arrest that was all caught on camera,
and that's what eventually led to
the creation of the Racing Culture
Task Force. People in Fort Worth have
for a while been asking for another
outlet to basically complain about
police community interactions other
than going to the Police Department.
That's what this citizen
Oversight Board was going to do,
and it had finally come to.
A vote just a couple weeks
ago on election night,
the city voted and for hours debated.
It was emotional.
And how do you heal a place?
There's been a lot said tonight
that I don't agree with.
There's been a lot I do agree with.
There were tears shed by by even the
mayor during that meeting and it failed.
The board didn't pass on A54
narrow vote and now that I think
the city and a lot of community
members are left wondering,
what is the path forward look like?
What is next?
I can't breathe.
You know, every time you go into a trial,
you think, oh, you know everything,
but you really don't.
We sure we've seen some of the body Cam,
we've heard the police radio traffic,
but I think we're going to learn
a lot more about the facts and
circumstances of that night.
I think that obviously they're
going to bring in the, the witness.
And the main witness in this case is Zion,
a Tatiana Jefferson's nephew,
who was in the home and
witnessed everything at Zion was.
Been reviewed by forensic experts and
apparently when he did the interview,
they they taped it.
And so I suspect that they're
going to play some of that tape.
And I believe that the defense is going to
say that Zion said that he saw a badge.
It is going to be very interesting to
see how the defense team defends this.
I think they're going to
boil it down to that moment.
They're going to say in
that moment in time,
he feared. For his life,
that's always that keyword.
He feared for his life.
He saw someone with a gun.
He feared for his life. So
he fired. You know, I don't know
if he's going to take the stand.
Typically, officers that have taken
the stand don't do well on the stand.
But also defense attorneys like to
put officers on the stand because
it gives them they're the only ones
that know what they were thinking.
So if he says I feared for my life,
I saw the gun, the only person
that's going to be able to say that.
With him, if that's going to be his defense,
Aaron Dean is the first officer
in Tarrant County to be tried
for murder on an on duty death.
And so I do think that the jury
poll will look a little different
because Tarrant County does tend
to be a more conservative in general.
I think the prosecution's going
to be looking for a juror who is
more skeptical of law enforcement,
someone who doesn't automatically
assume that law enforcement is correct,
right? And now I think.
On the converse side,
you're going to be looking for the defense.
We're going to be looking for
people who are going to be more
willing to give law enforcement
the benefit of the doubt.
Again, when you look at the video
and then you see what happened,
the video is going to be very
key in the minds of the jury
of what happened that night.
And was it reasonable force that Aaron
Dean used when a Tatiana was killed?
I never knew how. Significant.
October 12th was gonna be
for the rest of my life.
It's been more than three years
since a Tatiana Jefferson was killed.
And I think that has really
been a weight on this city.
It's been a weight on police
and community relations.
It's been a wait on family
members that I talked to for,
for Tatiana Jefferson who have been
wanting this trial to move forward
for community leaders who've been
wanting this trial to move forward.
Got a chance to speak to
Fort Worth community leaders.
And you know, they were upset
and they said, you know.
Justice needs to be served.
This young girl should not have been shot.
This young girl is dead.
I mean, certainly what happened
that night is shocking.
I mean, I don't think you
can get around him and here
we are now three years and in
three years time. Things boil up,
you know, things build.
Although attachment,
Jefferson's mother and father passed away,
her family, they're still
waiting for their day in court.
There have been so many delays.
But her sisters, Ashley and Amber,
they have attended every hearing in
this case, and they are determined
to see it through to the end.
They want their day in court.