Black Lives Matter leader in Utah seeks accountability after unjustified shooting of autistic teen

SALT LAKE CITY — The leader of Black Lives Matter Utah is calling for police accountability following Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill's decision not to file charges against a Salt Lake police officer who Gill ruled was not legally justified when he shot a 13-year-old boy with autism.

Gill's decision came almost three years after officer Matthew Farillas fired 11 shots at 13-year-old Linden Cameron in 2020. Five of those shots hit Cameron, who was having a mental health episode and trying to flee from police.

Black Lives Matter Utah Chairwoman Rae Duckworth condemned Gill's decision in an op-ed Monday for the Salt Lake Tribune. Duckworth's cousin, Bobby Duckworth, was shot and killed by police in 2019. As with Cameron, the officers who shot Duckworth were responding to a mental health call.

"Over and over again, Salt Lake County residents hear their district attorney give elaborate excuses for not prosecuting police who unjustifiably use deadly force," Duckworth wrote. "Every day the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office ceaselessly files charges against people who have legitimate defenses, including those with self-defense claims. These prosecutions proceed against defendants — often at disparate rates — who are Black, Latinx, Indigenous and poor. For these people there will be no press conference explaining a lack of prosecution. But when it comes to police who use unjustified force, Gill has simply abandoned his duty to protect the community."

Gill justified the decision not to file charges was based on the high burden of proof required to successfully prosecute the officer.

"We believe that because of the way the statute is written, we're not likely to prevail," he said during a 90-minute press conference announcing the decision. "It was a very difficult decision. We went over it multiple, multiple times. And the conclusion was, collectively from the team, that while we can certainly file on this, the likelihood of us actually meeting our burden (is low). ... We are confronted with a statute that makes it nearly impossible to prosecute to meet our burden of proof."

Duckworth called Gill's decision a double standard, pointing to comments Gill made in 2021 promising that his office would aggressively prosecute those who commit violent crimes with a gun.

"That professed standard should apply to everyone in Salt Lake County, even the police," Duckworth wrote. "In the eyes of justice, a police officer is the same as every other person and should be held to the same standard. That is especially true when the district attorney acknowledges that a police officer's conduct was unjustified."

She added that many victims of police violence and their families have not had their day in court and that calls from Black, Indigenous and other communities of color for justice have been ignored.

"It is 2023, three years after our nation erupted in protest over the police murder of George Floyd, and we are still witnessing Salt Lake County families left with medical bills and unanswered trauma from police shootings," she said. "His office leaves our community to pick up the pieces and support families of police violence as best we can."

Duckworth encourages Salt Lake residents to demand action from their elected officials regarding police accountability and police shootings.

"We have raised our concerns and shared our heartache with the Salt Lake County district attorney and the Salt Lake City mayor, and nothing changes. But change is necessary to make our communities safer and rebuild trust that has been destroyed by inaction," she wrote.

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