When you hear the term “cop killer,” what do you think of? Do you think of a hardened criminal? Do you think of a dangerous, violent felon with a rap sheet a mile long? (Do you think of the Ice-T song protesting police brutality?)
In today’s story, we’re talking about someone who actually did shoot and kill a police officer, though, it’s not the kind of situation that you probably think of when you think of a cop killer. And maybe that’s why this one received what many would consider to be a really bizarre sentence. Leon Wolf writes,
Wayne County, Michigan prosecutors are defending a controversial plea deal offered to a man named Eddie Ray-Jr. Johnson who admitted to fatally shooting Detroit police sergeant Elaine Williams in 2019.
Unlike many other recent officer-involved shootings, Johnson and Williams were not strangers, and were in fact apparently involved in a romantic relationship. Prosecutors say that after a lengthy investigation into the incident, which involved a confusing crime scene and allegations of domestic abuse, they would have struggled to meet their burden of proof at trial.
Now, to be fair, this doesn’t appear to have been a malicious shooting in which a criminal shot and killed a law enforcement officer while trying to escape arrest or in retaliation for police actions. It involves, in addition to the allegations of domestic abuse, large quantities of alcohol on the night of the shooting. Wolf continues:
Williams reportedly had a blood alcohol concentration of .240 – three times the normal limit for intoxication – at the time of her death. Johnson was tested at the scene and also had an extremely high blood alcohol concentration of .189. Neighbors reported hearing the couple arguing loudly as they returned home.
That’s a lot of alcohol in a person’s system.
Now, clearly this is a complicated and tragic case, but this doesn’t appear to have to do with resisting arrest or criminal vindictiveness, and maybe that’s why he received a plea deal of three years of probation for this shooting death.
Still, it’s unfortunate that a police officer died in this situation.