Adams Police Chief Richard Tarsa posted a lengthy statement arguing that his officers did not racially profile a man stopped just after a shooting in town on Jan. 24. Watch video
Adams police are pushing back against a claim of racial profiling following a vehicle stop just after a shooting in town on Jan. 24 in which officers questioned a black man and pointed a service weapon at him.
Adams Police Chief Richard Tarsa read a lengthy statement to the town's Board of Selectmen on Wednesday night that was later posted on the department's Facebook page. In the statement, Tarsa denied racial profiling and said his officers stopped Aaron Chappell because he fit a description given by the shooting victim.
The police department in the northern Berkshire County town also released dashcam videos of the stop.
After questioning Chappell not far from the shooting scene, police released him.
Chappell later told the Berkshire Eagle and posted on Facebook that he believed the stop was the result of racial profiling.
Just before 4 p.m. on Jan. 24, police responded to a shooting on North Summer Street. The victim suffered multiple gunshot wounds. Police said Wednesday he remains in critical but stable condition in a Pittsfield hospital.
Before he was transported to the hospital, the victim told officers three people were present when he was shot -- a white male and two black males. All three of the suspects were initially believed to have fled on foot. One of the black males was described as light-skinned with facial hair and wearing a red hat and a red hoodie, police said.
"They had a different car description and the (suspect) was white," Chappell posted on his Facebook page.
According to a Tarsa's statement, an officer canvassing the immediate area of the shooting about 15 minutes after the initial call saw a black man in a tan vehicle who loosely fit the description given by the victim. That cruiser and a second cruiser stopped the vehicle on Columbia Street and detained the driver, who turned out to be Chappell.
Like the suspect, Chappell is a light-skinned black male with facial hair and wearing a red cap, police said. The hoodie Chappell wore was gray.
Tarsa described the stop as a "high-risk" situation. Chappell was treated as a possibly armed suspect and was ordered to the ground while one officer pointed his weapon at him, Tarsa said. He was checked for weapons, placed in the back of a cruiser and detained in handcuffs.
Once officers determined Chappell was not the suspect they sought, he was released from the back seat of the cruiser and allowed to drive away from the stop. According to dashboard video footage released by Tarsa, the entire stop took less than five minutes.
Tarsa told selectmen that Chappell was informed as to why he was stopped and officers apologized once they determined he was not their suspect.
Tarsa said published reports indicating that Chappell had been held for more than 20 minutes before he was released were wrong. The "Cruiser 42" dashcam video shows Chappell's car being stopped at approximately 3 minutes into the video, and he was sent on his way about 4 minutes and 45 seconds later.
Chappell contended in a Facebook post that police should have been sure that he was the shooter before making a stop. "So let's start by saying there are some stand up cops but my stop was without a doubt racial profiling doesn't matter if the cop is doing there(sic) job you cannot illegally stop and search someone at gunpoint unless you are absolutely sure you have the right guy I did not match any of the descriptions nor vehicle I was minding my own when my life was threatened for no reason," he wrote.